Senior Projects

For all 8 weeks of my senior project, I will be spending my time at Lamar Johnson Collaborative. LJC is a interior design and architecture firm. I will be attending Maryville University in the fall majoring in Interior Design and Architecture. Being able to shadow this company would give me a good idea what I want to do for my future career. During my time at LJC I will create 3D models for upcoming projects, create presentations for future clients, and learn how to use different computer programs.

Week 1-2

I will be working with the owner of Granada Cyclery and learning what it takes to run a small business. I’ll be learning about the cash flow, talking to vendors, and how to manage orders.

Week 3-4

For these weeks I’m going to be working with Underdown Trenching. Specifically I’m going to be going to all the different job sites and learning site surveys with David the job site manager.

Week 5-6

I’m going to be working with Lueken Housing Development. We will be going over what it’s like to buy houses, get a loan, property taxes, and other things related to buying property. I will also be working on the houses and renovating them to get them ready for people to live in.

Week 7-8

I will be going back to Granada Cyclery for the last two weeks. I’m going to be working on marketing materials and helping advertise for the business with an employee.

For my senior project I will be spending my time at two different places. I wanted project to focus on an engineering theme, but also be something I would enjoy and find interesting to do.

For the first five weeks I will be spending my time at Marc Christian fine cabinetry. This is a company that specializes in making high quality custom cabinets for their clients. I will be working both in the store room/design center working in the software and helping with customer orders, as well as working in the actual manufacturing shop, where I will get to help turn a blank piece of wood into a quality cabinet.

During the last three weeks of my project I will be working at the Country Club of Saint Albans on the golf course maintenance crew. I will not only be learning the hows and why of keeping a golf course in playable condition, but also getting to work out on the course and help out with the day to day work.

Week 1: I will be working along side the assistant manger at the Gateway Kartplex. Throughout the week I will learn about the mechanics of a go kart and how to keep your kart running in peak condition. Additionally we will cover the business and marketing side of racing.

Week 2-3: The next two weeks I will be working with a real estate agent and her daughter who focuses on sustainable housing. I will learn the business behind real estate and how to flip a home using sustainable materials and technology.

Week 4: I will build a website for the makerspace business club using squarespace.

Week 5: I will spend this week with my uncle who owns three Cleaning Authority franchises. We will cover what goes into running a franchise, what are the benefits and negatives of owning a franchise rather than your own business, and the big picture of running a business.

Week 6-8: I will spend the last three weeks at Columbus Design Management. Garrison is the sole designer who works here and I will be following him around. I will learn how he designs and flips homes as-well as other design projects he works on. I will also spend a bit of time with his contractors, some include a cabinet building business, engineers, and more.

For my senior project, I’m going to spend my time on several different independent studies related to personal passions.

The biggest one is a graphic novel project where I’ll interview my neighbor (who is like a grandmother to me) and illustrate the stories she tells me about her life. She’s traveled all over the world, lived through the Great Depression, and taught English in Japan at an army base during WWII, among other things.

While I’m working on that, I will work in Makerspace with Dr. Urbano making a comic template (which is a rectangular stencil made out of clear acrylic with interchangeable lines to help make panels more efficiently). This will be helpful for future projects as well as the ones I’m working on now.

Additionally, I’ll be taking art classes once a week at Washington Community Arts Studio, and I’ve arranged with the owner to rent out space in the studio three times a week to work. While I’m there, in addition to the graphic novel project, I’ll work on graphic adaptations of poems (which I’ve done for English class before). When I’m not at the studio, I will work in nearby libraries and cafes. I’ll also spend time making a collection of live sketches in parks, nature reserves, museums, etc.

As well as studying art, I will spend my down time studying poetry and becoming more familiar with it. I will take my observations and incorporate them into my own work.

I will also study Arabic with Mrs. Hassan. It will work mostly like an independent study, but we will have check-ins a couple times a week. I hope to study Arabic in college, as I really fell in love with it this year.

My goals from this project are: to immerse myself in the world of art and poetry and pursue it deeper than I could in school. I will write, read, draw, and observe daily. I will also get to know myself better as an artist. By the end, I hope to have expanded my taste and created many things I am proud of.

I just realized that I forgot to make my final post for senior project. For the sixth week and last few days, I finished watching all the videos from Gross Cutting Room, listed next.

• Femoral Head Dissection
• Radical Prostate Dissection
• Autopsy Heart Anatomy
• Postmortem Examination
• What is a Frozen Section?
• BKA Dissection
• Lymph Node Dissection Tutorial
• Simple Mastectomy Dissection
• Anatomy of a Uterus

The project has taught me a lot. Not only did I learn a ton of general information, whether it be about how a dissection is done to new terminology or other facts, but I also learned some things about myself as I said in the newsletter about senior project. If you did not read that, I said that I learned that working with live people may be more of an option for me than I though, as I really enjoyed shadowing in the operating room. I still have an interest in autopsies of course and that is still what I want to pursue as of now, but you never know, I may end up somewhere else in the medical field. I also confirmed my stomach can handle anything, which is great of course.  I already knew I had a strong stomach of course, but now I feel especially numb to anything I see after seeing so much. 

I really enjoyed this project overall despite missing out on more shadowing experiences. I still got a ton out of this project and leave it being a more knowledgable person than I was before. 

I spent this week working on the dock at Lake Ozark. The dock at my Uncle’s house is very old, and it’s probably been there for 30 years, which is unusual for a dock. The wooden boards on the dock are cracked and are covered in algae, so it was time for some new boards. We started on the walkway down to the dock, which is the hardest part. When constructing a walkway, you have three layers: 1. the metal bars that support everything, 2. the vertical runners that run from the shore to the dock, and 3. the wooden boards that go horizontally across the runners. The walkway is right over the water, and without the boards there, you’re just walking on the metal support bars. I made this collage to show the progress we made over a couple of days.

Working over the water is the worst place for construction. Even by the dock, the water is extremely deep, and my uncle can’t swim! Every time he would slip it was a little scary, but luckily he didn’t fall in. The only thing that fell in was a very expensive ratchet, which we tried to recover, but sadly it’s now one with the fishes. It was so nice to be out on the lake though, and working with my uncle was fun. I became the master of using the drill to unscrew the boards. We aren’t quite finished as you can tell by the last picture, so we will have to work on it another week. Overall, I had a really fun time getting to help my uncle and learning about how docks are made!

My last week of Senior Project was supposed to be spent at Higher Focus Photography- just 15 minutes away from school- assisting Jill Gray with client portrait sessions, this includes: holding/positioning lights and reflectors, looking for hair or clothing distractions on the subjects, and giving posing suggestions. I would have also been: learning Jill’s editing style and editing photos alongside her, checking client orders for accuracy, auditing order revenue to be sure income and expenses are recorded properly, checking client photo uploads, creating Graduation Galleries online for all 2020 seniors, and assisting with creating future social media campaigns. However, instead of spending a whole week working with her and being taught the operations of a small business, I went over to her studio on Tuesday. 

When I arrived we went to her office and she showed me different aspects of my camera that I hadn’t discovered yet, knowing what your camera can do and how to make it do it is a time consuming task with lots of trial and error but in the end you get a very rewarding result. Later on in the day we set up her studio to take pictures of different flavored coffee beans for one of her clients. We had to make each picture cohesive but get creative by adding different props so the viewer would be able to distinguish the flavor just by looking at the image; some of the flavors included: Chocolate Raspberry, Caramel Cream, English Toffee, Blueberry, Bourbon Pecan, Buttered Spiced Rum, and many other… interesting… flavors like, “Mudslide”… what is that even supposed to be?After taking the photos she taught me how to edit on Adobe Lightroom.

It was such a great experience and I had a lot of fun being with her. She let me express my creative ideas whilst shooting and encouraged them all, even if they missed the mark. I wish we got more time so she could really show the inner-workings of her small business instead of just talking about it for an hour or so. Jill is very welcoming and even offered to let me assist with client portrait sessions when businesses open up next week! If you are or know someone who would be interested in getting photos taken by Jill for a variety of occasions- business headshots, family photos, senior photos, etc.- I have three $50.00 gift cards that I would love to give you!

This week I was supposed to be at Entercom Communications located in St. Louis. Entercom features radio shows, some being: 102.5 KEZK, 97.1 FM TALK, NEWS RADIO 1120 KMOX, NOW 96.3, and Y98. If you have ever turned on your radio driving through the St. Louis area you have most likely flipped through one of these. At first, I contacted Courtney Landrum from Y98’s “Courtney & Company Morning Show,” asking if there were any opportunities for me to shadow a marketing position at the radio station for a week or so. Ms. Landrum got back to me, saying that she would put me in contact with someone from the station’s marketing department. A week later, Bridget Harrison, HR/Business Administrator, emailed me asking for more specifics about Senior Projects and the timeline.

Sadly, this opportunity had to be cancelled. I would have been observing the various roles at the radio station during the week with them. This included sitting in on radio shows, learning from their Program Director- Cat Thomas- and observing the marketing team. In other news, I’ve been doing a variety of things this week from programming to sewing. My Dad brought home a pile of “some” invoices –which I know for a fact he hadn’t touched since I last sorted them in 2018– that needed to be organized and filed with their purchase orders.

I am very proud of completing my upcycling project with the American Eagle x Adidas jeans because I had to get creative with lining up the middle Adidas stripe and the side seam of the jeans- let me tell you, hot glue is a girl’s best friend. I am in the process of applying to St. Charles Community College so that I can take MAT 158 College Algebra that transfers to Arizona State University as MAT 117 College Algebra. If everything works out I will be able to start my first semester on track and take Brief Calculus with the rest of the students in Marketing!

This week I did lots of outdoor activities! My mom and I started playing tennis together, which has been very fun! She played tennis a couple years ago and now she’s starting to play again. It’s so awesome being able to hit with her because I haven’t been able to hit with anyone in a while. My mom, uncle and I started construction on a wall to go around a tree in the yard. We started by digging up all the brick around the tree and we put it in our backyard. Our plan is to use that for riprap up at the lake to break the water. Unfortunately, it was very rainy on Monday, but we kept working. We cleared all the brick and then we started to dig up some dirt around the tree. On Thursday my Uncle came back and we moved the new bricks out to the tree. The new bricks had been sitting on the pallet for a while, so when we pulled them up, there were a bunch of snails underneath. They were so cute. In a couple weeks we’re going to rent a water saw and start cutting the brick to the right length and then we can cement them down.

I’m back up at Lake Ozark and we’re starting dock construction tomorrow!