Continued Progress

Today I organized and sent out the Google Wave for the Recycling marketing. Hopefully the way I set things up will keep things organized and help people use it. I think the recycling project turned into a larger project than originally anticipated. When I started, I think we were just thinking of a few posters but now it has a larger scale to try and get people to recycle.

In thinking how I am going to end my blog for the summer, I decided to do a Top Ten List on why working at Penn College is awesome (I'll be more eloquent than that). I emailed all the student affairs professionals I've interacted with this summer and asked for their top 5 reasons. I'm hoping this will be a cool ending to the blog.

Late in the afternoon, I met with Krista and we discussed/brainstormed a bit on New Member Education for Greek Life. It was hard to brainstorm something without having a solid picture of what is currently being done. We both came up with our ideal educational and hopefully they can use some of that.

It's like 8:30 and I already feel like going to bed. Uffda.

Enhancing the Blog

Today I made a list of things I should add to enhance this blog. I probably need to expand on my profile a bit so people get a better understanding of me as the blogger. (Sounds lame but you never know). Even though I previously posted a link to a virtual campus tour, I think I need to take and add more pictures of campus or Williamsport. Also, I've noticed there are some limitations to the size of video that can be posted to the blog so I'm thinking about starting a YouTube account so I can post links to videos.

I brainstormed for much of the day, however then I realize I needed to work on a new Wave for the recycling stuff. I'll have to do that in the morning. It was also quite hot today. I find it a bit humorous that Pennsylvania is having days of record temperature while I'm here (take in mind I am most comfortable when the temp is around the freezing point). I am very glad I have an office with an air conditioner. My apartment is also quite cool.

Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)

As I had previously mentioned, I have two weeks left of my internship. What has also hit me was that I am not going to see everything I wanted to see while I am out here. I didn't create a list but here is what I was looking at:

New York City (with an expanded list of individual things, see Post Weekend Report: NYC)

Scranton, PA (The Office motherland, yes I know it's filmed in Hollywood, but still)

Lake Placid, NY (Herb Brooks Arena, 1980 Miracle Hockey Game site)

Niagara Falls

Woodstock (which is actually in Bethel, NY)

Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY

Penn State Campus

Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, OH)

Native American History Museum in Washington DC

Philadelphia

Valley Forge

Civil War Battlefields (all would have been this past weekend)

- Gettysburg (PA)

- The Antietam (MD)

- Monocacy (MD)

- Manassas (VA)

- The Wilderness (VA)

- Chancellorsville (VA)

- Spotsylvania (VA)

- Fredricksburg (VA)

- Richmond (VA)

- Petersburg (VA)

- Appomattox Court House (VA)

Boston, MA

I am probably forgetting a few more things but I'm not going to come close to completing this list. Who knows when I am going to be back this way? It is another reminder to always Carpe Diem, Sieze the Day. It is one of the first things I learned at Sigma Chi along with the standards and principles we strive to live our lives by. You never know what is going to happen in the future and I forgot that whenever a weekend came my way this summer.

One of my favorite movies of all time is the Dead Poets Society. So many lessons can be taken from it. Here is a YouTube link to the Carpe Diem scene (you may need to turn the volume up).

The last time I had a Carpe Diem reminder, I got into Grad school so who knows what lies ahead. Just one of the many things I have to thank Penn College for!

Friday and Post Weekend Report: Healing

Not much happened on Friday. I just worked on some recycling stuff. Overall, it was a disappointing weekend. I pretty much had to lay around so I could heal my back. It was all I really could do. I tried working on a few projects but technology failed me. It also dawned on me how little time I have left here at Penn College, which is like two weeks. I got a few other projects done and stayed out of the record heat. Definitely looking forward to work this next week.

Production

Even though I'm not feeling the greatest, I was fairly productive. I spent the morning working on some ideas for the recycling marketing. I reviewed the notes from our initial meeting to see what I could find that could be used as a visual representation of single stream recycling. The idea of a funnel popped into my head and I came up with a few mock ideas using Publisher. After lunch, the recycling team met and we discussed ideas and brainstormed. We got some solid directions to go and will probably come up with more before our meeting with Jenn George. I wrapped up a few things in the afternoon but my back was starting to get painful and it was tough to concentrate. The day was still productive but it's probably a good thing tomorrow is Friday.

PS. It's July 1st. The summer is going by so fast. It still feels like I just got here!

Bad Back

First of all, I finished 4 drafts of fire posters and sent them off to Brian. I still think they need a little touch up but at least we know the look I'm going for. Brian will be on vacation the next few days so I'll get feedback on that later.

Unfortunately, I spent my afternoon at the hospital here in Williamsport. I have a lower back infection that is getting worse and I went to see if they could do anything for it. They prescribed me some antibiotics and it's a wait and see thing. If it gets worse, they will have to perform a procedure. This has happened to me once before so I'm not too nervous. Just disappointed. Also, this probably spells the end of my Civil War Battlefield marathon I had planned for the weekend. The plan was to drive to Lynchburg, VA on Friday and over the weekend hit Appomattox Court House, Petersburg, Richmond, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, Fredricksburg, Manassas, Monocacy, The Antietam, and Gettysburg. I don't even know if I would have got to all of those but the chance is now very slim.

Work

Ever since Connections started, my days have been simplified. Instead of taking tours and bouncing around from place to place, I walk to my office and work on my projects. Although I value what the tours brought to my view and perspective of Penn College, it's good to sit down and just work on the projects I've been tasked with. I think the reference card is going to be approved. The fire safety posters are nearly done. We're making progress on the Recycling marketing and I've started a new project working on procedures. I also think this blog is going pretty well. I met with Brian before lunch and we had a solid conversation. I hope I didn't take up too much of his time as I ended up having a lot to say. I've started to think about various projects to end my experience and help Penn College attract another intern next summer. I'm learning a bit more about what I will be doing this fall in my assistantship. I'm getting a little anxious about where I will be but I'm confident things will be great!

Morning Walk!

So here's what I experience every morning when I walk to work. It's best not to watch it full screen as my camera is not that powerful for videos and you lose a lot of clarity. I made another video of my office but it is too big to load to the blog. Unfortunately, if I can't load large videos, my New York video may be a bust. Or I'll create a YouTube account which I reeeallly don't want to do. I'll figure it out.

Oh boy!

So I have discovered in my extreme laziness of the weekend that all that sitting around caused a possible pinched nerve in my lower back. It is really uncomfortable to sit. But I'm not complaining too much since Sara Hillis has a bulging disc in her back and feel that would be even worse.

As far as work today, I finished the draft of the reference card for RAs. It looks pretty good. Had a little trouble with the formatting but I think it should work out. Lee liked it and I passed it along to Brian and Tim. I then started playing with the information needed for the recycling posters. I'm not sure how it's going to work but we shall see! Here's to a better day tomorrow!

Post Weekend Review: Heat!!!

OMG! It was so hot this weekend that I threw all plans out the window. I watched the World Cup Soccer match between the US and Ghana, which was a losing effort on Saturday and did my laundry Sunday night. Those were the only times I went outside. I was perfectly fine staying inside, posting New York Pics on Facebook, and creating a New York Picture video for this blog. I also started researching a possible Civil War Battlefield Tour for the 4th of July weekend. Like the New York Trip, it's ambitious and I'm not sure if there will be time to cover it all.

Senior Visit Day!!

After a morning of putting together the GoogleWave tutorial for the Recycling project, I helped out with Senior Visit Day. Penn College invites students who are going to be entering their senior year of high school to come visit the campus. From what I understand, these are students who have already shown an interest in Penn College. I assisted with the tour of Rose Street Apartments, basically greeting and delegating visitors to one of our 5 tour guides. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the Summer RAs and Adam, a Conference RA. We also received pizza from Wegman's which was delicious!

As far as the tours go, most were really short tours. I did not go on one of the tours but I remember the tours I gave at Bailey Hall at Minnesota. I was always 20 to 30 minutes and I showed them everything and had time for questions. I will say I am a little bias as we had to really push Bailey Hall as a place to live since it wasn't on the Main Campus of Minnesota. From what I gather, the emphasis for this Senior Visit group was to see a room. Also, this group of "tourists" may not have started their research yet. It just seemed really short to me but short and sweet may work here!

We called it a day at 2pm. Plans for the weekend: I'm probably going to head north and see the Baseball Hall of Fame, maybe up to Lake Placid to see Herb Brooks Arena, and then work on the pictures I took in NYC! Definitely taking it easy tonight though.

Recycling

This morning I met with Katie, Krista, and Kyle Baker (Summer RA) to discuss recycling ideas. I did a bunch of research on what other schools are doing and also discovered RecycleMania, which is a nation wide recycling competition. There were a lot of great ideas that we could totally "borrow", although Penn College is registered as a team.

Once we got into the meeting, there were a lot of ideas but Kyle had a great idea keying on the statement "What's Your Number?" Plastics with numbers 1-7 can be recycled, it's kind of humorous and we can take it several different ways. Krista also had the idea of "Go Green with Penn College Blue!" which the recycling bins in the rooms are blue. Both are solid ideas. Then I started talking and things got confusing. There was some sort of communication issue going on but it was hard to identify and fix. From my perspective, Katie, Krista, and Kyle were focusing more on what they can do with those two examples while I continued to look for more ideas. At one point, I switched over to talking about what we could do with their ideas but that might have made things more confusing. I'm not sure if there are different philosophical things going on or if there was just too much trying to be discussed at once but hopefully things will go a little better next time. I definitely need to take some time and figure out how I can better communicate.

I continued looking at Recycling information the rest of the afternoon. Kyle passed along some information and ideas and I had the idea to use GoogleWave to communicate and share information because I can see our in boxes being overloaded. Brian and I have been using it and it has worked out but I think for the recycling project to be sustainable after Krista and I leave. or even Kyle, someone can see what we've done and picked up where we left off. I'm not sure if this will help communication but at least we can keep information organized in a single space. I'll see what they say.

Went to Wegman's to pick up some food supplies. Two things I am missing from Midwest grocery stores: microwavable bbq pulled pork and cheese curds. I can't find them any where in Wegman's and I'm thinking about branching out to a different store in my quest.

Surprise!!!

So Friday is Ashley's birthday and the Residence Life staff have been working on a surprise party. Apparently, Ashley loves celebrating office birthdays, organizing some elaborate extravaganzas in the past. The staff decided to have a surprise lunch at LeJeune Chef! The rest of the staff arrived at the restaurant early and we strategized how to surprise her. This was kind of funny to listen into because we kept changing what we were going to do. We finally decided on something and when Ashley arrived we unleashed the surprise! She was totally surprised, quote "I'm not even in birthday mode!" (This tickled my funny bone all afternoon!) The lunch was delicious. I had some beef dish, the name of which I cannot pronounce.

As far as the work day goes, I'm getting close to completing the RA reference card. I'm having trouble getting things lined up but have the bulk of my information. In the evening, I went to the Connections dinner, which was delicious. However, I had not seen the Links in a while. So, they razzed me a bit for that. I also showed up in shorts and a t-shirt, which they razzed me for not looking professional. I informed them my work day ends at 4:30 but they were hearing none of that! Haha! Good day!

Rainy Day

It's raining really hard here. Good day to be inside. The ResLife staff is interviewing another candidate for a coordinator position, I think. I had a short meeting with Brian. He wanted to check in on how I'm doing here, which I'm doing great. I think he feels a little bad that we haven't spent more time in conversations as he has had a busy summer with building a new residence hall, interviewing candidates, handling the end of the year closing, and preparing for next fall's opening. He's a busy guy.

I think part of having an intern is so they can continue to move forward with projects or ideas they had over the course of the year. I'm not sure who would work on these things or who would have the time if they did not have an intern. Basically, even if it wasn't me as their intern, I'm glad they have the opportunity to host an ACUHO-I intern.

Connections!!

Connections has officially started and the campus is buzzing! Nearly every employee is wearing a connections polo. The Residence Life staff is helping with check in. Since Link training is over, I no longer need to have a schedule printed for me by Barb. It's kind of sad that I won't be making my daily visits to the ResLife office and I won't hear the awesome/funny/weird conversations they have. However, it also means I won't wonder each day what my schedule is going to look like and I can plan my work week more efficiently. I really hope the Links' video went over well!