Senior Projects

The people were super busy today because they were off Saturday and Sunday. I basically just did some house keeping and took some photos. I cleaned a Ferrari 458 Spyder that I believe is going to auction. I moved some cars around the shop. I took some photos. I made some videos. I am supposed to be getting content for their media pages. I made a Tik Tok. Tomorrow they said will be a better ‘intro day”. This is also a personal interest project. That means, I am getting video content to post on my personal YouTube. Everybody benefits because the media overlaps between both accounts.

The real estate agent has a walkthrough scheduled later today. I cannot make that; it just means that the agent will walkthrough the house inspecting it. Its not an official inspection, but these clients are buying the property without seeing it. Obviously, when you buy anything that expensive you want to know most (if not everything) is working.

Today I spent 6 hours on showing apartments and town houses. I always admired and aspired to have the busy “non-stop grind” type of life and today I witnessed that first hand. The person I am shadowing is a real estate agent on the side. It is a very fast pace of life. Today this morning at 10 am, we had no showings to do. 1 hour later I get a text saying thats a lie. I learned a lot. There is a lot more than heres a house and a price. As a buyer, you have to think how do you want to purchase/finance this place, are you willing to financially compete for this house, and what other expenses will you have? I never even thought about those before. As an agent, you are on the go at all times (especially if this is a side job). He had people calling him about listings, he was calling other agents about listings, he was calling carpenters about his property that he plans to flip, he negotiated deals, he filled out an amendment while waiting for clients. It was a “on go mode’ type of day. The last showing was impromptu. As we were leaving the apartment these people called us asking us to show them the property. The clients looked pretty sold on the places that they looked at, so today was more likely a success than not.

Monday I start with RP Exotics. Ill be creating the Instagram content for them as well as making walkaround videos for potential clients. They got a lot of new inventory over the weekend. They got a Mclaren 720s and 12c, Lamborghini Gallardo Performante Spyder, Porsche GT3, Ferrari 458, and more all this weekend so I have that to look forward to on Monday.

I spent this week doing mostly the same things I did last week, which were wrapping up the interview process with my neighbor Arlys and finishing my comic stencil in Makerspace. Next week I will have a different schedule, where I will spend more time doing live sketches and drafting the Arlys stories, of which there are a lot.

I have nine recorded sessions with Arlys, and each is about an hour and a half long. Last week we talked about her childhood, her time in college, and her time teaching abroad; this week we talked about her other international trips, how she met her husband, and started her family. Even if we’ve talked about a particular time before, she always has a new aspect of it to share, so it’s not redundant in the slightest. I combed through most of the transcriptions this week (I only have one to go), and I made a list of stories from each recording that I’d like to touch on. I marked about 20, so I’m going to pare down my list and combine a story or two. Even though the stories are separate events, my goal is to make them fit together into one coherent narrative for the graphic adaptation.

One of the things I was most excited about this week was finishing my comic stencil! (I’m also looking for ideas of other ways to call it— “comic stencil” doesn’t seem to fit right.) I decided to only make it out of wood, as acrylic is expensive and difficult to glue. Even though I would have liked the transparency, it would have been too challenging to be worth it. I also liked the weight of the wood much better than the acrylic; it helped steady both my hand and the paper. I made a copy for myself, and I also made a copy for the school that now lives in Dr. Hurwitz’s room for future students who do graphic adaptations for English class. I attached photos of the one for the school down below.

I didn’t have as much time in the mornings for poetry this week because I was working on the transcriptions, but I still managed to enjoy some. I went deeper into the Mary Oliver book and started on Elephant Rocks by Kay Ryan. I’ve kept writing down poems I like, and I’ve actually found a couple that I might want to make into graphic adaptations. Overall, my process hasn’t changed much since last week. Next week I’m going to start the Shakespeare book, which will definitely take me a fair amount of time. I’ve been reading free verse poetry so far, which is harder to memorize than poems written in verse, and I wanted to try to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet or two.

I’ve also been having a Zoom call with Mrs. Hassan on Saturdays to practice Arabic. Right now we’re studying verb conjugation, which is challenging, but I just need to stick with it.

Today I finished my internship at Carrollton Bank. I started off the day at the driving range because a key thing that my site advisor emphasizes on is learning to play golf. Golf is a business sport, so if you want to go into business learn to play golf. Golf was not part of my internship but I felt it should be included in my write up. This internship has taught me a lot about business. Good customer care is the backbone to any company. The business portion of it was super useful because I know I want to go into business, whatever it is I will do. Banking was also useful because I learned how loans work and taxes. Hopefully, this knowledge will benefit me when I am in my twenties trying to buy a house or a Mustang. Obviously, this knowledge can be applied when you’re any age; however it is tough trying to get home and auto loans in your twenties because lack of credit.

Friday morning we walked through three different houses. In the afternoon, we ran CMA’s (comparative market analysis) on the properties. Through this analysis, we look at properties within 0.25 miles of the possible house that have been sold in the past year. This shows us what ready to move in houses are being sold for in the area. After you get the list of houses sold in the past year you will find the most similar ones. This includes the closest square footage, bed and bath count, and livable space. After finding the one or two that are most similar you will look at pictures of the house and pick the one which has the closest architecture. After picking the final house you can see what the house sold for which gives you a good idea of what your house could sell for after renovations. This lets you plug numbers into a spreadsheet to see after you buy, renovate, and sell the house if you will be able to make a profit.

This week was a very busy week in the office. Lots of meetings with clients and reps. Monday I was able to sit on the “Day 1 at Clayco” orientation meeting for new hires. At the orientation, we talked about the company history and the major factors that play into being such a successful company. CRG, LJC and Clayco all work together to work efficient and successfully. Tuesday I sat in on a confidential project meeting known as “project sunshine” This project is currently in the construction phase but is planned to be finished by June 2021. This meeting was just a check up with the different teams that are involved in the construction of this project. Each team shared what they were currently doing and what there next steps were. The next meeting was a design meeting with SCAD (Savanah College of Art and Design). We are currently building 2 new buildings next too the current building that we built a couple years ago. The Landscape architect and interiors team were catching the rep of SCAD up with current plans and drawings of the new buildings. Such as the light placement outside the building, what kind of trees and plants go where, and if the students work desks should have multiple or one drawer. Wednesday morning we had another rep update this time with growing green. The rest of the day was just organizing the interior library and shipping back samples to reps. I started a project binder and plan to finish it by next Monday. Thursday was probably my favorite day during my time here so far. I got a lesson on how to use some adobe software applications such as photo shop and InDesign. I then had a meeting with reps from lighting associates. Friday I had a meeting with Luke from the CDC discussing what products to get for project sunshine’s bathroom. Such as the hand dryers, the soap dispensers, the sinks, and the waste bins.

Wednesday and Thursday we were quite busy at the shop. I did a lot of odd jobs along with stuff that the other people there were working on. I took inventory of all of our shoes and and then wrote up and order list on what we needed to order. I then did a similar thing but it was with things that the owner said are quick moving items. I learned that the longest you ever want to keep something as inventory is. Six months. If something is taking longer then that to sell, you are using utilities and space and are essentially paying for it be in the shop since you could use that space for an item that would sell faster. I also checked in a lot of bikes for repair, built a few bike racks, and built some bikes.

Wednesday morning we had a zoom meeting discussing different HVAC systems. What are the best for sustainable purposes? What is the most cost efficient? (this is normally what you want to use in a flip since you want to make the biggest profit margin.) After that, I was searching the area to find possible flips to go visit on Friday. In the afternoon we visited a house in North St. Louis that one of her agents want to flip.

Thursday was a short but very informative day. In the morning we had a meeting with the mortgage company they use. We discussed the best types of loans for different situations. Currently, there is a huge shortage of houses in the market. You are almost guaranteed to sell your house if you put it up right now. There are about 4,200 houses/properties on the market in the STL area roughly 80% of those are move in ready, the other 20% want most people to consider junk houses and will not look at them. Since there are such few houses on the market if you can renovate those properties people will start to look at them.

Later Thursday a smart home sales agent from Vivint came in to discuss smart home options for houses. Long story short this meeting was not anything we were expecting but I did learn a lot from it. Vivint relies mostly on door to door sales. They have high school and college kids go from door to door throughout the summer selling their product. The majority of the meeting he was trying to sell me a job and tried telling me I could make $300,000/year. Well all you have to do is a quick google search to find the real numbers. We tried questioning him on his product and he couldn’t even give us specific details. He also hinted at specific ways they are taught to gain more sales, most of them are by lying. I also looked them up and found they settled an alleged false information scandal from their sales reps for 3.2M 3 months ago. In the end I learned a lot of valuable lessons from the meeting.

Today was fairly similar to yesterday in that I am working with Cabinet Vision to create a rendering of a room for a customer. I had to submit a student application to Chief Architect to get the free student version but we are still waiting on an answer. While we wait I am continuing to learn about using the Cabinet Vision software and how to make precise measurements to creat cabinets that fit perfectly for the customers space. I have also learned a lot about what I think I wanna be doing for my career as an adult and also what I don’t want to be doing. Staring at a computer all day can be draining but so can working around a shop all day. But I am enjoying them both an look forward to continuing with various projects around the shop and company.

Today I spent more time working on and learning how to use some of the software that the company I am interning for uses to create 3D renderings of cabinets and rooms. Today I was supposed to be using a program called Chief Architect to create an actual rendering for a client project, but we couldn’t get the program to work so instead I am doing it on the program I used last week called Cabinet Vision. I have the entire room lasted out and have a table, windows, and one wall finished. I am still learning how to use the program but it’s getting easier the more I work with it. Below is a picture of my progress so far: