May 11

OMG, today is my last day at my placement. I finished typing all the names of people who registered for the gift basket at the Marathon. There was a lot of paper and I am glad I am done. It took me a long time. I thought I would never get done. It was frustrated to see that even though I was entering a lot of names the bag was still full. I turned in all projects that needed to be turned in. Then I said my goodbyes to everyone. For the rest of the day I spend it at the front desk with Delre. I will miss them. It was a GREAT and I learned so much from each of them.

May 2

Today is a normal day as usual. My sponsor is not here, so I had to get all the projects done so that I could return it to her since the last week of internship is next week. I am currently working on new events for the new Newsletter. Then I have to pick 3 to 4 events for the weekly 1 minute radio events. I feel tired and frustrated today. I hope it will get better as we go. Today I learned that it is important to know how to manage your time and be productive otherwise you will be bored.

Last Day :(

Wednesday May 11th
I must say, I have some of the best sponsors ever. We started out by going to lunch at Timpone's. The Department Head took myself and Pablo as a congraduations into becoming students in the department for next year, but a few of the professors we have worked with came along as well. Pablo and I both received a bag full of FSHN pens, mugs and luggage tags which were pretty cool. I talked with Dr. Helferich for a while, who is the most successful professor in the department (he's brought in about $20 million of grants in the past 2 years). He gave me some great advice on classes to take and experiences to get involved in as well as how to approach grad/med school. He really pressured me to do a lot of service and other outside activities other than the basic studying that can overwhelm any good student. After lunch we went back to the lab and finished up our iron analysis from the day before. It took a couple hours and since was my last day I wanted to finish the job. Because I stayed late, Dr. Andrade took Pablo and I to Coco Mero which was super generous. We had a really nice talk about college and life in general. I gave everyone my thanks one more time and headed out. Luckily, I will be studying the department next year and I already have so many great connections.

Iron Analysis

Thursday May 5th
More iron analysis today. We started by picking up our samples in AESB (ag engineering building). The muffler gets over 500 degrees celsius, so we had to let them cool for awhile before we could remove them. We transported them back to the lab (goodness it was hot outside!) and let them cool a but longer in the polar fridge (we went inside for while to cool down ourselves). Once the samples were cool enough to analyize we labelled our tubes and weighed out the ashes into each tube. We then mixed our reagents (chromogen and BHT solutions; highly acidic). We then diluted to our recommended amount and analyzied our samples in the spectrophotometer. It was actually pretty rewarding to do the same procedure from my first couple weeks at internship. This time it was with real samples, but I still feel more confident knowing I've come so far in my research skills.

Last Day

Well for my last day, my sponsors, both Erica and Jeanine, made some food to bring in for a potluck for me. It was really nice, and the food was great too. One of the technicians came back and told me there was vodka in Erica's pasta dish and that I wasn't allowed to have any. Of course she was joking, and I had some and it was really good. After a short lunch, I set up my final presentation that I had been working on. It was a powerpoint about herbal medicines, and it went pretty smoothly. Erica always seems impressed with my work which is great. After I finished up my speech, they brought in two presents for me. I got a nice card that everybody in the pharmacy had signed which was really sweet. I also got a few small things, a keychain a candle and a pair of earrings. It was very unexpected and I really appreciated it. When I got out of my internship, I went immediately to Walgreens to pick up a gift for them as well. I'm sad to leave them all. :(

Wednesday, May 11

Well today was supposed to be my last day at Follmer Law Offices but I guess I will be coming tomorrow and Friday as well as I have not yet reached my average of 12 hours per week. It's kind of frustrating becasue I have really been looking forward to wrapping up this internship but I know Kent and Sarah could use the extra help. Lately I have been doing a lot of filing and revising letters and documents for Kent, as well as entering client names and files numbers into our computerized file-making system. Kent needs a full list of current clients, as well as files that have been moved to storage or destroyed, and this was one of the main projects he wanted me working on this semester since neither he nor Sarah ever has the time to do it. As I am nearing my last few days in the office I suspect they will really be pushing me to complete it. Sarah is on the phone right now and I think Kent is at lunch so I don't really have anything to do at the moment, hence this blog. Well that's all for now!

4/25

My day started my day out different because the patient forgot her shoes. So we couldn’t really do anything that was planned. But we did stretch and she walked on the treadmill for 10 minute, then she did 2 sets 10 of calf raises as well as the windmills which is where the patient is working on their balance, 2 sets of 15 of donkey kicks, steps down 30 on each leg, and then we stretched her again but the lower body. (D) I was a little confused because I don’t know how my sponsor was going to respond to the patient. But my sponsor just told her that she could either leave or re-schedule her appointment or that she could stay but when she leaves her feet are going to hurt. So she ended up staying.(F) I know how to go about problems like today.(A)

LAST BLOG EVVVEERRRR - 5/10/11

So the last two days haven't been extremely excciting. I started to clean out and organize my desk because tomorrow is the last day! I still can't believe it came this fast. Yesterday I finished up a few small projects I had been working on earlier in the semester and today I'm doing the same. My sponsor(s) seem to be pretty occupied so I'm just keeping myself busy. Reflecting back on the semester I can honestly say I enjoyed this internship. This truly was a great opportunity and I feel like I am ahead of the game in my career field for students my age. My internship was so happy with my work that they even offered me a summertime job! This is great news because I really needed a second job to help figure out how to pay for my college tuition, and I get to continue my knowledge in the field of law. I'm going to miss being an intern here because I won't have the leisure of choosing to sit in client meetings and go court-watching because I'll actually be getting paid. Most likely I'll have to do a lot more housekeeping and busy work. However, I am still excited about this summer. I guess this is a bitter-sweet ending to our long internship program. Goodbye Blogger! :]

5/10

Today is just a continuation of last week - closing files on JANO. But, there is also a party going on in the office...I have no idea what for but I do know that I get free cheesecake, which is never a bad thing.
Also, tomorrow is my last day at my placement, and I am kinda stressing about when I should give my thank you card and what it should say.

5/4/11

vocab- no real vocab again today

(d)Today, I mainly did a lot of manual labor around the back of Bryan's office. All I mainly did was take down older machines, and set them down on the bench to see if they worked. (a)I went through quite an amount of them, an I believe only 4 or 5 actually worked. The ones that worked we pretty much took out what was really good about it, and threw out the older stuff that looks out of date. (f)I felt as if I was helping Bryan clean house in a way. I didn't mind though, the day went by pretty fast and I was actually pretty tired. Internship is winding down, and less things are being thrown at me. Which, at this point, I don't really mind because I have finals and all of that. But Bryan knows that and sees that, so that is why he gives me the tasks that he does in the winding down weeks of the program.

5/9/10 VOLITION

Vocab Xbox design kits- developer xbox's made for game design

(f)Man today was the best day ever. I went to volition today, which is a local game design place on campus above Kofusion. (d)If you don't know of some of there games, they have made the Saints row series and Red Faction series. I own the Saints row games and getting to see there studio was awesome! I worked with programmers today and they all showed me physics, and graphics programming. They let me test the new Saints row 3 that is coming out in November! That was so awesome, they even asked for tips on what could be improved. (a)They considered my ideas and my input my go somewhere! The whole place was filled with posters of there games, and various old systems everywhere. Most of the day, they shared secrets about what is new, what is old, and what they are coming up with. I felt so special in them letting me play the first 3 levels of the game! The guys were all very nice, and new a lot about programming! They got to show me how the programming transfers code to the xbox as well. It is pretty simple, in that anything you enter auto saves and can be read through the program that is used by the xbox. What a day that was, I would love to go back!

New Project (5-5-11)

Since Shanon had has been gone, Neil has been having me scan files into the computer. It's pretty long and boring but i keep pushing through them. Neil had told me that Curt was getting this huge atb for me to do. Today he talked to me about it and asked if i wanted to start it, but i said no because i was about to leave. He told me that it needs to be done by the end of Monday so i'm gonna be working hard on it on Monday. The purpose of all this is that i'm expanding on my knowledge and i'm excited for me to learn more.
''

Fumbling on the last couple days May 3rd

Today I walked into the office feeling a little out of sync.  I just couldn't get into the groove of being amazing, just kidding.[F]  Our first patient was a problem patient and it was up to Chuck and I to diagnose her.  The patient was experiencing abnormal pain, diarrhea, joint pains, however with the absence of rectal bleeding.  This is a simple case of Crohn's disease; however I was so out of it that when Chuck asked what my thoughts were I just could not speak.  The patient and chuck both stared intensely awaiting my answer.  Nothing came out and Chuck finally said it was Crohn's disease.[D] When we got back to his office Chuck gave me a hard time about missing such an easy diagnosis, any trained monkey would have known the diagnosis however I failed miserably.  As punishment chuck has given me 5 diseases and disorders and it is up to me to write reports on them.[A]  I feel the punishment fits the crime.[F]

4/5

Although today was not a good day for everyone else in the office, I found that I was very quick and efficient with the tasks assigned to me. Unfortunately, there has been talk about the dismissal of one of the PA assistants. Her absence hindered everyone’s schedule because there needed to be someone to take on her duties for the day. Apparently this has been a reoccurring issue with this individual but it occurred to me that this can happen to anyone. It is important that one stays committed in a professional firm with all issues set aside and that advantage is not taken of fellow coworkers by unexpectedly taking days off. At one point there were three other staff members compensating for this individual’s absence. This can be detrimental in a medical setting because scheduling is tight and the providers need all the help they can get. The other employees understand that they cannot afford to behave in this way and it will not continue to be tolerated. Overall, it was a frustrating day for everyone but it was a unique experience for me. Because I was able to finish charting early, I was able to shadow one of the PAs, Dave Freeman. Dave was excited to have me shadow him, probably too excited, because he was asking me to do things I was not trained or certified to do. However, I appreciated the hands on experience. He trusted me enough to remove one of his patient’s sutures and was going to have me carry out a trigger finger cortisone injection, but I was hesitant because I have only seen it done once before. He challenged me to do it next time but my time is now limited in the clinic and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to work with him again. My placement welcomed me to come any time during the summer to do further shadowing. This is something I am considering and hopefully more opportunities like this come.

FINAL PROJECT!

5/5/11
NEW VOCAB: I didn't learn any new words this week that I can think of, but I did learn how to insert page breaks on Microsoft Word.

With this being my last full week of internship, Susan gave me one final project to work on: I am putting together a recipe book that includes all the recipes we have used in cooking classes this semester, and recipes that she and her interns used last semester as well (D). She makes a recipe book at the end of each year with all the recipes she used that year, and she thought this would be a great final project for me to work on. She emailed me all the recipes and the book template that she uses every year, and I immediately got to work. When I first started, I didn't think it would be too difficult of a task or that much work, but I was way wrong! First, I tried just copying and pasting all the recipes onto one page, but they were all in different formats, so I had to make sure they were all the same formats. I got so frustrated several times because the formatting seemed to never stay the same for all the recipes, no matter how hard I tried (F). I had a lot of trouble with certain lines indenting that I didn't want to have indented. I JUST finished finally getting all the recipes in the same format and under appropriate categories, but I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me. My next steps are to alphabetize the recipes in their individual categories and make sure that the recipes stay on one page (and don't run over onto a new page). By creating this recipe book, I have learned the importance of allowing plenty of time to complete projects, even if they seem simple on first glance (A)

5-03-2011

It has been a busy few past weeks. Along with a couple Community Cinemas and the Freedom Riders event, Sonie and I have been diligently working on our audio pieces. A lot of them have turned out really well and seemed to be ready for the big show! A few will still need some touches and fixes, but mostly I feel confident with how things are turning out. Since Sonie and I divided the individuals up before starting audio work, I was left with 5 interviewees’ audio to edit, as was Sonie. I am really happy to say that by next Monday I am assured I will have all 5 audios done! Time flew by so quickly I can hardly believe it’s been almost 5 months! Tuesday Sonie and I will compile all audio stingers into one large piece to test how it sounds. I already did a mini tester myself yesterday and so far, so GREAT!

Sick for the week of May 2...

cold read- reading something you haven't read before, sometimes used in auditions or after a play has been cast

I'm really sick and I haven't been in school much, so I have been to my placement much. Kind of a bummer for my last week. I've still had some work at home. I finished up transferring all of Tom's notes into a spreadsheet and I sent that off to him. Wednesday I felt well enough to go to school and it was my last playwriting class. We brought actors in to do cold readings of our plays. They just sat up front and read the parts. We also had someone reading stage directions for each, that way the actions in the script were made apparent even though the actors weren't using blocking. It helps tell the story, since a large portion of a play can be visual. I had Nic Morse and Noah Gehrmann come in to read for me. Jillian, a girl in my class, brought in two actresses who agreed to read my script as well. It was kind of nerve wracking and I'm glad it's over. We turned in a copy of our script, and Professor Miller took notes and he's going to e-mail us feedback.

Wednesday May 4 PROBLEMS

This week has been a very interesting one. Wade is out since he had his baby Tuesday so I am pretty much in charge of the office and letting people who call know that he is out and trying to take care of every situation as best as I can. Monday, Wade was here so nothing much went on that day. Tuesday was my first day by myself, and everything went super smooth, no problems, no voicemails, nothing. It was peaceful. So, I go in Wednesday expecting the samething. Boy, was I wrong! I walked in to many problems. I'm not going to go into detail about them, but I'll tell you about a couple issues I had to deal with that day. I had 4 voicemails, so I had to call all of them back and get all of that taken care of. One of those voicemails was a realitor looking for space for a client, THE WEEK WADE IS OUT! Luckily stuff like that can typically wait a week. Another one was from the roofer doing the hotel roof, he thought someone had stolen his ladder, luckily one of our securtiy guys put it up because he did not know whose it was, and didn't want it to get stolen, so that was also resolved. Another issue we had was with our radio, it wasn't playing the right station, so now we have no radio in the mall until Wade gets back. This is only a little glance into what I had to deal with on Wednesday. Needless to say, it will be great when Wade gets back.

Rehab

May 4, 2011

Vocab:
Aquatic Treadmill- Litterally a treadmill that is surrounded by glass, the machine has a tank next to this treadmill to move the water into and out of the tank.

Today I was assigned to walk two of the dogs that have been staying at the clinic, both had knee surgeries. After I walked and petted them I was able to do the hydro therapy by myself on a great dane. I had to monitor this dog for 30 minutes whie she waled in the aquatic treadmill. The great dane has been getting hydrotherapy for two years now, because she has a hip fracture which healed wrong. This makes her leg rotated, meaning her foot is facing outward. To ensure she continues to use that leg she has been doing therapy. I did the same thing with two more dogs (D). Today I felt like I was helpful because Kim was able o do her paper work while I would monitor, set up, and take out the dogs from the machine. It makes me excited to know that I was able to learn in three days how to handle the animals and machine (F). I realize just how easily dealing with rehabilitation patients is, and how easy it is to work with the aquatic treadmill.

4/2-4/5/11

Four of the Carle pharmacies have now been sold to the Walgreens company. For the Carle pharmacists and technicians, this means that they all have to reapply for their positions. For me, I think it'd be much harder to get a job at the main pharamcy. So instead, I think I'm going to apply at the Walgreens pharmacy. It'll be easy then if I want to work at college because there's a Walgreens right down the street from the campus. So then if I'm already in the system, hiring me will be easy. I do still wish I could work at the clinical pharmacy, but I won't mind a job at a retail pharmacy either, hopefully.
So Erica told me that I've completed all of her projects that she had planned. So for my last few days I'll just be doing technicians duties.

5/4

Today has been extremely boring. I have continued to work on updating the closed files on JANO today, which wouldn't normally be a problem...but today IT updated all of the computers, and switched us all over to Word 2007, so technical problems have been interrupting me all day.
Also, many of the files that I looked through today were mistyped or were in the wrong format, some were even missing paperwork! I felt terrible for having to ask Ellen (she's taking the traffic position while the main attorney is on medical leave) for help every 5 minutes.
Altogether I learned that changes no matter how good they sound, always come with complications. I think this is why the SAO has not shifted to an all electronic filing system.

VOCAB:
earnest payment - a deposit showing a persons commitment to a contract, the rest of the $ is due at a later date.

5/3

Today was certainly not my most densely packed schedule. I began with keying in entries from the Home and Garden show register to win. Jenny sent me a spreadsheet template with the participant's name, adress, zip code, phone number, town, and e-mail. So far I have only keyed in 127 participants and there are over 2000. Not only will it be impossible to finish before my internship is over, but it is also a rather annoying and tedious task.

After I was finished keying in a full stack of register to wins slips Jenny called me into her office to have a short conversation. She informed me she was doing performance evaluations of the other interns and wanted my input for it. Apparently she sensed that they were not working to their full potential and made little or no effort to show me the ropes to entertainment marketing. When I was asked how I felt, I politely agreed. I certainly hope that she doesn't tell the other interns that I felt that way.

Wednesday, May 4

Well I just walked into the office and now have some free time before I begin my new assignment while Sarah is finishing up a quick email so I thought I would do some blogging. The past few weeks have been somewhat hectic here due to one large case in particular. This is the same case with all the emails that I had to sort through and it is extremely time consuming. Like I mentioned before, it is a divorce case involving some stock in a family owned business that has significant value. The ex-wife is a lawyer, but lives in Texas and is not licensed to practice here in Illinois, hence Kent's involvement. Right now we are focusing on creating motions to allow the Respondent (the wife) to display evidence in trial, as she is barred from doing so at the moment. We are also filing motions to continue and a motion for a mental health examination of the Petitioner (the husband) because he suffered from a severe stroke and Kent believes that he is now incapable of tesitfying at trial. There is a deposition tomorrow afternoon at 130 of the husband's brother that Kent said I could go to, so I am pretty excited about that. It's in Monticello and I have my AP English test tomorrow so hopefully I will get out in time!

ROAD TRIP! - 5/2/11

Today was not an ordinary day at all. Immediately when I arrived at the office, one of the law clerks told me that we need a few documents filed in the Piatt county's court system. I figured this was a normal task, just running to our court house and back, that is until she said she was going to print out google map instrustions of how to get to Monticello! I have never driven anywhere farther then the distance in Champaign-Urbana by myself before, so I was a little nervous. Luckily I had my own GPS system because I was driving my mom's car. The drive was super easy and went a lot quicker then I expected. I've driven longer distances then that before, but I have never traveled by myself so I was happy that I was able to get there so easily. Monticello is really small and old and their courthouse was tiny compared to ours! They have like 5 people working in their circuit clerk's office as compared to the many people working in Urbana's. I successful got the documents stamped, signed, and filed and was back in the office in just a little over an hour. I really enjoyed this task and I would be glad to travel for the office soon!

Department Head for the Day!

Tuesday 4/26

The Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE), which is another dept. in the College of ACES, had their annual Administrative Assistants Day Luncheon. Unfortunately, the department head, Dr. Ellinger :), was on a business trip and felt uncomfortable making his secretary set up her own party. I was called in as Interim Head for the day. It was awesome! I got a big corner office with a giant desk and really comfy chair. But I wasn't able to enjoy it for very long as I had to get to work. Melissa, the Head's secretary, had written me a list of things to do. I had to run a few errands to pick up food during my lunch, so I started laying everything out nicely. All the staff and graduate students in the entire department would be coming to there was a lot of food. I set out table cloths, arranged a fruit plate, a vegetable plate and some cheese and crackers. I also set out cookies, cupcakes and ice cream. I set up a drink station making punch, coffee and tea. Luckily, everything was set up before the party started at 2:00. They presented awards to all the secretaries, some of them with over 20 years of service to the department. They definitely deserved it too. I've observed them on a regular week day and they always seem busy and stressed. When everyone had left I cleaned up and Melissa thanked me again. She was really appreciative someone else had to do the busy work for once.

4/28

Mrs. Sherrick came to see me today! I showed her my usual routine, along with the projects I have been working on throughout the week.
I was continuing with the research for the Circuit Clerk and the files that she had given me, and when I had made copies of all of the paperwork and written up the orders I delivered them to the Judge handling these cases. This ended up being a very slow project that took 2 weeks to complete because no one had any idea what should be done. So we would do one thing, and then think "what should we do next?" and if that next step was wrong then we wouldn't find out till the next day when we had to redo everything that was done the day before. Also a few of the files I saved on my computer went mysteriously missing so I had to rewrite some of the orders for the return of exhibits. I was extremely frustrated with this project, and when we finally took the files/paperwork to the judges I was elated.
The second project that I was working on is closing files for the attorney that is on medical leave. She taught me how to do them before she left so it wasn't difficult, although there were a lot of steps to remember and get confused on. This was a relatively easy task due to the repetitiveness of it, and I haven't forgotten how to do it so I am pleased with myself.
This week has taught me that if you fail, try, try again. Eventually you will find your way through and you will have learned more than if you had just followed a standard method.

VOCAB:
Exhibits: an item/document formally presented to court.

Friday April 29

After seminar today I was able to attend a meeting with Wade. This was to show a potential tenant a few different space options. Luckliy Mrs. Franklin hadn't had her baby yet, if she had, I would have done this on my own. Doing these walk throughs with potential tenants are kind of fun. The people we showed on Friday though were kind of picky. They wanted to see a lot of things changed, had many questions, and didn't really seem to be very easily pleased. Overall though they didn't seem to uninterested in the spaces. This was a good experinece to see. Wade handles people very well, and in situations I personally would feel overwhelmed with, he always has a good solution that helps me to see it a different way.