last week

I am definitely bitersweet about project ultimately coming to an end. I really enjoyed it. My sponsor was awesome and my project was very lively and interesting. It makes me even more excited about my future. I did different taks on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I will talk about those here.
First, my day Tuesday. I hate to say it, but Tuesday was the one day of project I actually did not enjoy. It was pretty boring. I did 2 things. First, I worked with another lawyer in the office and finding evidence and information regarding the ability of the government of Mexico in dealing with cartels and crime, to help her with an upcoming trial. Then, in the afternoon, I spent at least 2 and a half hours dilvering sipeanos in rural Ohio, also known by some as, Nobamaville. Needless to say, this was a pretty big waste of time. This is because one person had no idea what the trial was, one house was abandoned, and one company went out of business around a year ago, meaning I did all of that driving and wasted all of that gas for nothing! Oh well, at least I got to listen to some Kid Cudi on the road.
Secondly, my day Wednesday. On Wednesday I saw the beginning of a trial. It is a rather interesting case. It is about business malpractice. 2 people are accused of stealing money from each other and the company. This means that my sponsor, while being on the defense, is also somewhat acting as a prosection, because he is also trying to prove to the judge and jury that the other man did in fact steal money. The beginning of the trial was centered around discussions of money transactions, and most importantly, co worker statements. Both sides brought in 2 types of witnesses. One that would say how great of a boss their client is, and how he would never as well as could never do something like this. The other type of witness they brought in was one that hated the other side's defendent. This type of person would testify about some sort of harm that he caused him, to try to show the jury that he is the exact type of person to commit this sort of crime. Ultimately, I am not going to be able to see what happens with this trial, but I am eager to catch up with my sponsor at some point over the summer, and this will definitely be one of the questions I ask him.

Trial time

Last week I did not spend one of my days with my sponsor. Instead, I followed around a different criminal defense lawyer. The reason I did this was because he had a trial going on. Basically, this is what happened. A young lady, around 22 years old I believe, was walking by herself in downtown Cleveland. She was walking down a deserted allie, where she was met by a 25 year old African American male. He told her to go with him into a garage, where he allegedly verbally abused her, and ultimately forced her to give him oral sex. He then told her to turn around and walk to the other side of the garage with her eyes closed. She refused this order over and over because she believed that if she did this, she would definitely die. Ultimately, the kidnapper "lessened" his demands to her counting to 100 before coming out. There after, she stumbled upon a family of 5 outside, and she begged for help. They gave her a phone and she called 911, in which case the authorities arrived immediately. Now, you may be asking yourself, how were they ever able to catch the man responsible? After all, couldn't he be anywhere in Cleveland? While this is true, there was a fairly important detail I left out earlier, because it is very graphic. When she was giving the man oral sex, at the end, he told her to "swallow." What happened was, she pretended to but did not, so when the police and the forensics team ultimately arrived and responded to her emergency phone call, the DNA team was able to use the sperm to find out who committed this hadious act. That happened about 7 months ago, which leads us to last week, trial day. My sponsor told me quite honestly that he has absolutely no idea why the defendent wanted this to go to trial. The woman says it was him, and DNA evidence proves it was him. Despite that, there I was sitting on floor 16 of the justice center awaiting the start of what seemed to be a very one sided trial. I watched 3 parts of the trial; the opening for the prosecution, the opening for the defense, and the cross examination conducted by the prosecution. The opening for the prosecution really tried to play at the hearts of the jury. The lawyer talked about all of the harm brought open such an innocent woman, etc. This pattern was repeated in the cross examination, in which the prosecution used this time to ask questions to the victim. There was a tremendous amount of sadness and crying, which even made me feel very emotional and inclined to send this man to prison if I was a member of the jury that day. And this also leads us to the opening by the defense. Basically, it went like this (2 parts). The lawyer said that first, remember they have the burden of proving him guilty, which is difficult to do; and second, that it was not a rape kit, it was a sex kit. All I can say is, I hope that man enjoys jail food, because I see no way he can possibly win.

A lot of really interesting things have been happening on project lately. I will talk about a few of them in this blog post.
First and foremost was the dealings between my sponsor and his client, a man named Derrick. Derrick was with a group of people whose plan was to buy marijuana, and then rob the seller and get away. To scare the dealer, 2 of them (not Derrick) brought BB guns. The end result of all of this was all 4 of them being arrested. Derrick is a nice, very well presented 20 year old Caucasion male, who also happens to be a great soccer player. His involvement in the crime was in fact extremely minimal, all he did was stand there, however, he didn't stop the crime when he clearly should have. Before his sentincing, I sat in on a meeting between my sponsor and the judge, in which they discussed their opinions on the case and the ultimate sentencing that was going to occur afterward. The judges ultimate stance was that she did not want to do anything that would cause harm to the well being of Derrick. Now what that essentially means is she does not want to do anything that may cause him to lose his job, his car, his house, among other things. However, at the same time, she wanted and needed to instill it in Derrick's mind why he should never even consider committing a crime ever again. To do this, she sentenced him to 10 total days in jail, which he would serve on the weekends for 2 days. The end result of this sentincing was one that did not harm the well being and ability of Derrick to be productive in society, but still one that sends an important message about life choices.
The second dealing I have had in the past few weeks was with a man named Paul. Paul is..interesting, very interesting, to say the least. Basically, the story goes likes this. Paul works for a man named Ryan, and they truly hate each other. Paul thought that Ryan was stealing money from him. Paul, in his brilliance, decided to not inform the authorities or anyone for that matter, but rather, decided to take the matters into his own hands, by trying to (secretly) steal money out of the cash register. So what my sponsor is dealing with is defending Paul from stealing money from his boss. This case has been going on for around 2 years, by the way. My sponsor got Paul a great deal, he needed to come up with 2 thousand dollars, and the felony would be completely dropped. However, Paul, being really really stupid, did not come up with the money, and is now a fellon. What I took away from this was do not ever be like Paul.

FINAL POST! I'M DONE!

AND MY FINAL POST IS HERE! While this post symbolizes a closing of a very interesting senior project, it is also the closing of an entire era of students. I am actually graduating. It's no longer just an intangible topic that may come up in casual conversation, no, it's real, and it's actually happening. This project has been a roller coaster ride, and has been a lot of work; much more than I expected. However, I think this project has helped me grow up a little bit more and give me a taste of what the real world is like, prepping me for my nearing college experience. Being able to have complete autonomy to explore the city and interact with citizens, completely unhindered, was a new and exciting experience for me that let me see a new side of the world. I never thought a senior project would require so much effort though. Up until this year, I had the preconceived notion that senior projects were a way for seniors to just goof off for 3 weeks and study the "physics" of working out etc. While I assume that some still go that route, the route that Claire and I took required planning, creativity, vigilance, and the ability to pivot on a dime. After planning for an entire year the project still didn't go as planned, but because Claire and I were able to pivot and meet with our proctor and adviser to come up with a new game plan, our project was still a success. If I were given the choice to redo this project, of course I'd say yes, and go about it a different way, but as it is, and as it always will be in the history of my senior project, it's flaws allowed for growth and tested my ability to bounce back when things don't go my way. And hey, that's the real world.

Wise Words From Ms. Davis

"I've noticed  trend in your blogs. You might not notice it, but you keep saying how much your project sucked, but if you look at all that you've accomplished and what you've done when you came back, in reality, you're project was a bigger success than you planned in the first place" - Ms. Davis. Ms. Davis is always the one to go to for wise words of advice, and although what she said to me today was not advice but simply some words of wisdom and incite, they seemed to him home; hence the blog post. But Ms. Davis, you were completely right. My project didn't completely, 100% suck. Even though it wasn't what I expected that definitely doesn't make it a bad experience. Coming back to the states and having to watch Quebec films and research Quebec music was more intriguing to me then, having just come from Quebec and being able to relate the separatist's movement and the other political issues to what was being sung about and what the movies were actually trying to portray  It made things seem deeper, and I understood what the movies and songs were really talking about, more than just on the surface level. So thank you Ms. Davis for making me really take a step back and reevaluate my perception of this project.

Presenting For The Juniors

So Claire and I are about to present to the Juniors and Sophomores tomorrow for the very first time, and she hasn't seen our final presentation yet. This honestly isn't a big deal. Since nor her or I will actually be "talking" we have nothing to worry about. Our presentation has our voices recorded coupled with a slide show of pictures from our trip, so it should be extremely intriguing to those who we are presenting to. Our presentation is really just our interviews and did not include anything negative about out experience, but simply what we had accomplished over the course of the trip. The students will be able to get an incite into what the separatist's movement actually is and how different the opinions of Quebecers can be (not EVERYONE in Quebec actually wants to succeed!) While some kids may not be entirely intrigued by our interviews, the pictures that we took of the city, the food we ate and all of our surroundings will surely keep them engaged! I have no doubt that this presentation wont run smoothly. It's going to go just as planned and Claire and I will, without a doubt, pass out senior project. After the interviews and the whole trip itself came to a close, I can surely say that Claire and I learned a lot about our essential question as well as ourselves, and our continent in the process.

Last Post WOO!

My last major project last week I got to work with Carolyn Herfurth again, the business development strategist with whom I attended the Women Entrepreneurs Rock the World NYC 2013 Conference. Carolyn offers a free program called "Declare Your Dare." DYD challenges people to pick a goal or a dream that they've been wrangling with and actually achieve it through her micro-steps. Carolyn then creates a forum on Facebook that the participants join where they encourage each other and offer feedback. For 21 days, Carolyn sends them out an email describing a small action for them to take that day and advice for moving forward in their dare. At the end of the challenge, she asked the participants to take a survey about their experience. Carolyn also emailed a different survey to entrepreneurs about why they became entrepreneurs and how they currently feel about their respective businesses. She asked me to analyze the responses, look for trends and make comments. Since she is so invested in her clients it's hard for her to view the data objectively as, well data. I created for her a document describing my findings (and proof to back up any generalizations I made). We then had a discussion about marketing; what people are going to be most attractive to her services and how to market to their needs. It was really interesting having these discussions and analyzing the data.

LAST POST!!! Last Day / Cain Park / Recycling

this is my last blog post.

its so sad.

just kidding.

i hate blog posts.

i think they are really stupid.

and a waste of my time...

if you couldnt tell from previous posts.

ANYWAYS.

as we wrap up our adventure, its good to keep in mind that this is not the end. i will actually be working (getting paid) with vincent all summer whenever they need me, so thats a little positive end to the project.

in this last post, I am looking at 4 final photos to post and i am going to spend a paragraph each talking about them...

so first thing we did this week was pull the cain park summer order. since cain park, being outside, can only do shows in the summer, it doesnt make sense for them to own much of their own equipment, so they rent from us. but wow do they rent. they rented over 150 source 4 ellipsoidals from us, which all had to be put together and tested. that was a fun 3 hours doing all of that...


next up was another slow day, so i organized the boxes for the sales department. super fun times. I also sorted paperwork for justin, the inside sales guy and he was talking to me about working for the disney on ice tour and work in the entertainment world in general. it was pretty interesting. plus i got to learn about how another part of the company (sales) functions, which was cool.

the last thing we did today before leaving was to sort through all of the metal scrap. the entire time ive worked at vincent there has been this huge bin of metal that needed to be sorted, so it seemed fitting that on the last day we finally went through it. we sorted it into copper, steel, aluminum, and computer parts. it was really messy but a good thing to get done.

we also got mitchells ice cream today :)

that was fun!


well thats all forever! goodbye damn blogs. i hate you.

here are the final photos

Browns / Draft Day Movie

so i lied.

i didnt actually get 5 posts done last night like i wanted to.

BUT fear not! i'll do the other two tonight.

ive already done 4 in one night... what could be worse than that?
literally, there are starving kids in africa who are thinking to themselves, at least i dont have to do blog posts...

in our last episode, we were at the intercontinental hotel downtown, doing lighting for a cleveland clinic event. lets jump forward almost another week from that to this past thursday.

JT gave me another opportunity to do some production work, this time at the browns training facility in barea. there was a movie shooting there this past weekend called "draft day" and it stars kevin costner and jennifer garner. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2223990/ if youre interested.

anyways we were tasked with setting up several large truss arches and hanging banners from them as well as setting up several truss uprights for the lighting crew to put lights on... yes if youre keeping up, we are a lighting company thats not doing the lighting (at least for this one event). It kind of makes sense though, because its a movie and we specialize in more of a theatrical style.

so we went in and took about 4 hours to load all of the truss in and set up the event. the scene was the draft day party and it looked pretty cool when it was done. i got to meet the production designer, stephen and he was really nice also. it was really interesting to actually work on a movie set and see how many hundreds of people are all there doing different jobs just to make the movie happen...

then saturday morning at 8 am we were back to load the entire thing out. they shot it on friday. load out only took about two hours, which was nice. typically load outs take about half as long as load ins so that made sense.

between the two events i only hurt myself like 5 times! woohoo!

here are some pics of the set up, before, after, and the plans...

Wrapping Things Up

Wrapping things up in Savannah was pretty interesting. It was cool to look back and think: wow, we had a lot of things planned that we didn't do but a lot more stuff happened to us than we ever expected. We attempted to set up an interview with the famed water colorist Mary Whyte to talk to her about her take on the changing economy and small business industries in the South, and we were quite close to making it work when she got invited to the international water color summit in China! She was one of 10 or so artists to be selected, and it was just our bad luck that our trip coincided with this huge advancement in her career. Needless to say she was not able to fit in time to talk to us after that development, but we were excited for her and thankful for how courteous and kind she had been to us. We also attempted to get in contact with the owner of a local book shop, but our plans fell through with her as well. On the other hand, we did a lot that we hadn't initially planned. Those last minute decisions and unplanned escapades resulted in some of the most fun, educational, and amazing experiences we had the whole time. We took a road trip to Hilton Head, ate mountains of doughnuts, went on a ghost tour, met some nice people, met some mean people, got food poisoning, walked through downtown every day, got to know and amazing couple, laughed a ton, and had the most amazing time. I know I'm going to cherish this entire experience so much, I'll look back at the time I spent these past weeks fondly. Special thanks go to Caroline, who was the best roommate, sister, weird cat lady, personal cheerleader, and friend I could have asked for on this trip (Caroline, if you're reading this, I am complimenting you. Enjoy it while it lasts.) I can't say I regret a single thing I've done over these past four and a half weeks, and I feel so thankful to have been able to make this last little part of high school the best they could have been.

Final Post

Well, it's been quite the adventure these past four weeks. Writing my final report was a great way for me to realize how much I truly learned about writing, Savannah, and myself. It was one of the more rewarding things I have ever done. Thanks everybody for sharing your stories, it was great reading material for me and Bella while we were away, and it was awesome to see how much you learned in your respective fields. See you all tomorrow!

WHat do I write abouttt

It’s kind of hard to write a whole bunch of blog posts when all we do is weeding, I’ve used every possible idea that I have.  This seems to be an issue. I’ll just wing it. On the bright side, I did have a lot of great puns over the experience (shocker there). Just a few of them; (every time we saw a deer: OH DEAR!) or when we saw a dam blocking some water “DAM that’s crazy!”. Well now im just rambling…this is awkward. I guess today was sort of interesting because we went off site for the first time, to collect trees from a donor.  These trees are going to be used for the second biggest event of the year at the nature center.  This is a tree planting ceremony, which honors important people in the community.  This also helps raise money for the nature center, while providing entertainment for the entire nature center and the entire community. Anyways, this is the last blog post, so I bid you all a grand farewell, and it was awesome hearing about all of your great projects, and I look forward to seeing the presentations on Friday!

Bittersweet Endings

The last day on the job was a bit of a bore, we continued to water plants in the morning, and watched some a freshman class attempt to do what we have been doing all of project.  Unfortunately we later had to go back down into the marsh and correct their mistakes, though they gave it a valiant effort.  Hawken is taking a trip down to the nature center tomorrow, for part of the internship day I’m assuming, which should be interesting, even though I won’t be there to watch.  The final day was a little bittersweet, as it was nice to finally be done with project, and look toward graduation, but it was also extremely sad, because I have become such close friends with a lot of the people who work at the nature center, as well as the other senior project students.  Towards the end of the day, I made sure to talk to each of the employees in the center, hoping that I fulfilled what they were expecting, and made sure to get my goodbyes from the two main people who helped us, Sarah and Jessica.  Once again, it was bittersweet but in the end, totally worth it!

Bird Banding round 2

Most people tend not to approve of the concept of bird banding, because it can be considered torture and painful for the birds.  However, many people also believe that it is beneficial for tracking birds to gain information. The nature center has three volunteers who do bird banding three times a week, and have been doing so for 13 years!  The lead lady claims to have banded over ten thousand birds in her efforts.  The process is simple, the birds fly into an almost invisible net and are carefully removed and receive a almost weightless bracket with a code number, and have a few important characteristics recorded.  These characteristics are weight, wing span, where they were found, and what type of bird they are.  The professionals here are very careful with the birds and there is rarely any harm done to the birds.  This is a very controversial topic and not usually supported by citizens, but the intentions are to gain information for the Nature Center. I am not in full support of the process of bird banding, because it could be potentially harmful to the birds and we should let them be, but it was definitely an experience.

Bird Banding

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The most important thing that I learned throughout the project is that to someone in the world, anything is important.  The way that the people at the Nature center perceive nature is amazing, and they worship it on the daily, while most of us choose to ignore it and focus on other things.  For example, the day in which I did bird banding, a hummingbird was accidentally killed from the rough netting.  One of the people working with us considered this a real tragedy, and had a very hard time dealing with it.  What most people don’t realize is that this is his true passion, and it means the world to him. Most of us would just pass on by saying “it’s just a bird” or something of the sort, while he worships the small creatures.  This is the most important thing that I took away from the project, that everything means something to someone in the world, and that it’s something to respect.

Musing on Coincidences

During out last night in Savannah, Caroline and I began musing on coincidences, or perhaps patterns, that we noticed in Savannah over the course of our stay. Now that I'm back at home, I feel like I can appreciate those differences even more. Here's a list of things I noticed, please note these are huge generalizations and I in no way mean to offend anyone!

1) Northern people dress nicer. We just do. We look a lot more put together, and we all have much more distinctive senses of style. We're more stylistically diverse in the North, and we pull of those styles better.

2) Southern teenage girls are shockingly unkind to other girls. We experienced this a couple of times over the course of our stay (one in the form of our first encounter with my cousin's girlfriend, who I pray will never find this blog post) and in most of them we were simply being our goofy selves and enjoying ourselves when other girls began to make fun of us, not very subtly, right in front of us! It was something neither Caroline or I had experienced before, and it was a little shocking!

3) The food is way better in the South. This may seem self evident, but I can't think of a bad meal I had while I was there. We ate out multiple times a day, and from a picky-eater's perspective, it was absolute heaven.

4) In the South, people are much more inviting and willing to help. This applied to a lot of situations including doing interviews, asking for directions, or just wanted to have a good chat. It's not just that the people are nicer, it's that they're far more open to new experiences, which I greatly admire.

Of course everybody's experience may be unique, but for me, those little distinctions in Northern and Southern cultures became very apparent after a solid two weeks spent on "the dark side" if you will (:

One Last Time, All about Hawken

Well, I guess this is the wrapping of the present. And the present being my senior project at North Coast Media and the time I've spent at Hawken School.

I really can't put it in words all of the various things I've taken in over the past month. Whether it might be riding the rapid and public transportation to work everyday, finding a new place to eat if I didn't pack lunch, working on a project that I've never had experience with, or talking to someone for the first time. All of these various things are starting to shape up into a masterful piece of artwork. This piece of artwork you might ask, yeah it's a sculpture of a little thing called the future. The good thing about this sculpture, I've started before a lot of other young artisans have and that's one of the reasons I am very grateful for everything Hawken School has done including Hawken Projects. Not only do I want to talk about this senior project in review but my whole year in review and how some of these things shape our minds differently from the normal high schooler.
First, education. I really don't need to speak much about the education at Hawken because we all know it's top notch. You can't say you didn't learn something one day because you'd be lying. Hawken educates us with knowledge not only for our next test but for life. We are learning more than just simple algebra and the importance/order of sentence structure. It's challenging at times but in the end we know the struggles we have gone through are only preparing us for success later down the road.
Second, the athletics. I've been blessed to be able to play 3 sports each year at Hawken and couldn't ask it any other way. I've created friendships that will last me forever and have gotten to know others around me just from playing sports. Not only does this teach us how to be sociable but understanding and empathetic. It's different from all sports but being on the course, field, court, track, pool, we all share something in common - the urge to win and succeed. The only difference you might ask? If we don't win, we know how to lose and what's appropriate.
Last, real world application. Though I am one of few at Hawken, I've been able to take classes such as Entrepreneurship that is completely out of the box and normal high school education. The class, instead of teaching us dates and facts, teaches us skills to learn and interact with adults in the real world. To solve problems for companies dealing with real money and issues is something we do everyday and that can't be compared to anything else.

I guess through all these words comes a lot of nostalgia and sadness, that 14 years ago, as a little boy, started his journey through Hawken. I definitely wouldn't have been able to talk about everything I might learn throughout my journey because I didn't know where I was going but looking back on it, I am glad it has paved out this way. I don't know what I would do if I hadn't been put to work testing my skills and knowledge throughout these 14 years. I know this has nothing to do with Senior Projects but its the intangibles that we learn everyday in our community that can't be matched, just as I have done here at North Coast Media. I wish I could start this journey all over again but I know that a new one is just around the corner holding things that maybe one day I'll be able to talk about again.

The only way someone could actually know exactly how and what these emotions are like and the skills I've gained from my time would be to live through it. I'm sure glad I did just that.  

Final Everything I guess

So, lately, I feel like everything I type has the words "final" in front of it: "Final Podcast" or "Final Senior Project Reflection" or "Final Graduation Dress Decision" (don't laugh, that struggle was real). My point is, though, I really have the sense of everything coming to an end now. My senior project is over-- something that is very surreal for me, considering Madi and I have been planning this since September.

As I'm writing this final reflection or review or whatever of our project ( for which, by the way, I feel  we have received veerrryy little guidance), I'm being hit with the realization that we're actually leaving, and these words that I'm typing are some of the last I'll type for the cause of a passing grade at Hawken School. I'm not being sentimental (for once), I just genuinely think it would be a shame to completely disregard my final assignment, so to speak, for Hawken.

On the same note, though, it seems like a shame that my final contribution to Hawken is entirely about something that has nothing to do with my Hawken experience. My senior project was the least-Hawken-like thing I did in my entire high school career, and rather than reflecting on my four years, and giving underclassmen advice for how to really appreciate their last year as a Hawken student, instead I'm spending my time writing about something that I did in an entirely different city for a pass/fail grade that has everything to do with my future and nothing to do with the past four years. That's what really seems like a shame to me.

The Struggle's Real

Let me just preface this by saying I HATE Windows Movie Maker. For the better part of 3 hours I have been sitting in my office desperately trying to trim the audio and add transitions to the movie I am making for my finally project, but Windows Movie Maker is adamant that it doesn't want to let me. I just need to cut 3 seconds of audio! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?? I want this presentation to look clean and concise for the day that Claire and I present and I have a strong gut feeling that it might suck because of the limitations I am running into. PC's are far less superior that Macs when it comes to anything remotely creative and as I work more and more on this project I am realizing that I might want to switch to the Mac side before college. Regardless, I am struggling immensely but will push through. I always do when I work on this god forsaken laptop. Even if the presentation is not "perfect" it will still be intriguing regardless of transitions, simply because what we researched during I time in Montreal is something that most people might not know about, so the information in our presentation may come as a surprise to most. What American actually knows that Quebec is trying to become it's own country? I know I didn't until I went up there and saw it for myself.

Listening To The Interviews Again

After coming home and being taken out of the element that Claire and I had worked in for almost 3 weeks, and re listening to the interviews, for me personally, gave me an entirely new incite into the actual opinions that those we interviewed had. They were no longer just interviews but genuine incites into the life of a Quebecer and the outlook that they had. Until i re-listened to the interviews, I didn't realize how emotionally charged they were. These people weren't just casually talking about a normal topic, but a topic that carries a significant amount of weight and that has been around for generations. This topic for a Quebecer is the equivalent of talking about if you are democratic vs republican as an American and why you support the party that you do. I did not realize just WHAT Claire and I were asking until I came home and reviewed what we had done for 3 weeks. It's really interesting be taken out of the element and reveiwing what you'd done for weeks and seeing just what you had accomplished and how people reacted. At the time of the interviews, I was not really paying attention to their tone, body language or expression but simply seeing if they were giving us a long enough interview to use for our final presentation. Going back and watching/listening to these interviews allowed to to see just how uncomfortable some of our questions made them. It was a really interesting revelation

Making The Final Presentation

Unfortunately, I do not have a mac, so having to use a PC for any sort of video editing can be a pain in the but, however, I pushed through and was able to make something that is quite decent. With the help of Claire and her editing skills, she was able to splice together all of our podcast's into a format that is both entertaining as well as informative. While she was working on this I was busy at work making a moving picture presentation of all of the photos that we took on the trip so those in the class are able to see what we saw, and the entire city of Montreal. Along with this, individually, we wrote our final presentation essays, and for me, it wasn't the daunting beast that I was making it out to be, it was actually quite simple. I sued the final essay to really vent about the entire trip and how much I didn't enjoy myself. Having such a bizarre senior project experience has really let me give some good incite to the rising seniors on exactly what not to do and what to do, in terms of planning and preparation.

War with Garage Band

So as Madi and I returned home a couple days early from Montreal, our new challenge was tackling the podcast that we had proposed to make about the Separatist Movement. In preparation for being home early, we crammed in extra interviews in our last days in Canada and we ended up with over and hour of Francophone and Anglophone people talking.

Sounds great right? Doesn't it sound great? We were proud.

Until we realized that someone had to comb through all that material over and over in order to make a podcast that was only 12 minutes and 7 seconds long (we compiled a slideshow of all of our pictures and that happened to be how long it was). At first I booted up garage band, and honestly I was having a grand old time. I imported all the material, I was sifting through it, making funny labels on all the tracks (such as "Super Intense Asian-Canadian Man").  I was thinking, I could stand to do this for a couple hours.

Well, a couple hours turned into a couple days, and the headaches I was getting from staring at a screen for that long were becoming rather distracting. I just crawled out of my Garage Band hole yesterday though with a squeaky clean, freshly finished podcast that I can be proud of (and it only has a few awkward pauses).

Cleveland Clinic / Intercontinental

Wow. another blog? I'm so glad that i have to do these blog posts. They totally enrich my learning experience and in no way take away from the enjoyment of the project.


Where we left our heros they were battling the rock hall, playhouse square, and passion pit.

Now lets jump forward a week in time to the following friday. This was another opportunity for me to go and help out on a production because there was nothing much happening in the shop. This week we were headed downtown to the intercontinental hotel ballroom for a cleveland clinic benefit. It wasnt a super large order (at least the day that i was there) but it was some truss and a few cases of lights and power distro and some control capabilities.

The loading dock at the intercontinental is in a really stupid place. In order to get gear off of the truck and up to the ballroom, you must unload the truck into the adjacent hallway, then take all of the stuff around the hall, into the elevator, around another hall, through a kitchen and into the ballroom. Its kinda a pain. and the best part is that the truss doesnt even fit in the elevator so we have to lean it at an angle and can only take 3 pieces at a time.

After we got it all up though it wasnt too bad. 70' of truss flying together with some 3" fresnels on it just to give a nice wash of the stage. Nothing too complicated but I was still able to learn a lot about the process. Attached is a picture of the truss with the lights on it about halfway up.

I also thought that since im always talking about orders, id attach a picture of one so you can see what it looks like...

Return of the Rock Hall / 3rd Federal and Playhouse Square

Woohoo! another blog post! there is definitely nothing better that i could be doing with my time right now...

So in our last episode, I was pulling the rock hall gala. We then left for a commercial break. And now I'm back for the return of the rock hall. But its not that simple...

I left on friday afternoon like i usually do, the event was saturday night, I came back on monday and the stuff was back in the shop. Magic? Ha. Lets go through all of the behind the behind the scenes action that took place over the weekend.

Trucks left saturday morning to arrive at the venue. Following that, the 3 vincent production guys told stagehands what to do for the duration of the load in and set up for the event. (its a union venue = must use union stagehands) Thats about the next 10 hours. Then once everything was ready to go, all of the guys sat there during the event, running the show. Taking all of the cues and deciding on looks. After that was done (about 11:00) we move on into load out. Load outs typically take about half the time of a load in so lets say about another 5 hours. That brings us to 4am sunday morning. Then everyone has to come back to the shop and dump all of the equipment off the truck because it has to go out again on monday, ill get to that in a sec. Then by that point its about 5 or 6am and dont even think about sleeping because its now mothers day. Thats what i call a long weekend.

Come monday when i get back into the picture we have to do a massive shift because on tuesday, most of the equipment has to go back out for another event. The 3rd federal benefit at playhouse square. This one is fun because it takes place in three separate venues. There is the cocktail party/reception in the state theatre lobby. Then there is the dinner on the stage in the state theatre. Then there is the actually show, complete with CEO rising through the floor on a stage elevator with confetti cannons, in the ohio theatre. Another huge event, thus it uses much of the same equipment. So everybody frantically checks everything in and prepares to send in back out for this next show.

If that is not enough, the passion pit tour is also coming through this week, so in addition, we have to pull and prep all of the passion pit rigging materials, moving lights, and other assorted stuff.

I have no pictures of the rock hall gala, but here is what passion pit turned out to look like...
and one of our marked cases

Revisiting

On our final day in Savannah, we decided to revisit some of our favourite landmarks in the city. We parked and walked to a very small vegetarian restaurant we had visited on our first day downtown. Looking at the restaurant you would have no idea how great their food was (employees at Marc Jacobs called it sketchy when we asked about it) but it was some of the best food we ate the whole trip! Next, we went to the cupcake shop across the road that we had actually never been to, but had being eyeing from day 1. I had never had a gourmet cupcake before, so I was looking forward to crossing that off my bucket list. Needless to say, it was an absolutely enlightening experience and I am forever changed by that cupcake. Later, we made a nighttime run to Leopold's, a famous ice cream shop ranked as on of the best ice cream places in the country, which we had already visited upwards of 5 times over the course of our two week stay. To be completely honest, I wish we went more often. There are so many great locations around the city that have such amazing personality, I'm glad I got to experience so much!

Preparations for the Rock Hall Gala

So next on my list of blogs for tonight...

A few weeks ago was the Rock Hall Gala downtown at Public Hall

Usually when we get an order in to pull for a production or a rental it takes us an hour or two to pull and check everything to make sure its working. well we got the rock hall order. It took us three days to pull this order. To quote ben who was in charge of the show "we're not taking like one of everything. we're taking at least 8 of everything."

That was pretty much the reality. We had over 50 moving lights. 8 color blaze led strip lights, and million other smaller fixtures. A picture of this order after it was done is attached. This event was so big that all three of the production guys were supervising the load in. Also because it took place in two distantly different parts of public hall. There was the reception in the lobby, but then there was also a full concert in the main hall. When it came time to load the order, we had to load all the stuff for the concert into a semi because it was so much, then we loaded all of the lobby stuff into the standard 24' truck. All for one night.

One cool thing about prepping this event was that I got some console time. The main lighting control console they use it called the grandMA 2 which is about a $60,000 console and is a very high power, very complicated console. As part of all of this I got to play around a little and ben showed me a few things, which was pretty cool. Attached is a picture of that console too.

Not much happening...

So I got an email this morning saying that I am way behind on my blog posts and that I need to do 6 of them this week...

Well, thats completely true, due to the fact that I choose to spend my time actually doing my project and working extra hours as opposed to writing about it...

So anyways- here they come. fast and furious. 5 blogs in one night. and pictures.

I am saving the last one for my last official day tomorrow.


Okay here we go. So like two weeks ago (around the time i mysteriously disappeared from this blog) we had a few slow days at vincent, and since then we've had several more, so I thought id talk about one of them.

Its very often the case that we are extremely busy and everybody is constantly working to prep shows that are about to go out or check back in stuff that has just returned. Sometimes though we hit small dry spells where really nothing is happening. All the orders that are going out in the near future are pulled and prepped and theres nothing much coming back in. This is when we have to find projects to entertain ourselves, or work that otherwise has been pushed off that we finally have time to do.

For me, and the other two part time girls, our first stop on a day like this is the repair shelf. Often there is cable or small fixtures that have been damaged in some way sitting of the shelf here. On this particular day there were two 10' dmx cables that i got the pleasure of fixing. Dmx cables are harder then a typical power cable because its smaller and as opposed to a power cable, you cant screw the wires into place. they have to be soldered into place. luckily, as part of what i do at hawken, I am pretty good at fixing these cables and i have a lot of experience soldering.

Another thing we like to do on days like this is fix the multitude of broken moving lights sitting around in the shop. This is something i dont know much about but I have been learning a lot. There is actually a training course for a week held in texas where people can go and learn (and be certified) in fixing these moving lights. All moving lights are is really a bunch of small moving pieces, wheels, and motors, all contained in a nice shell. The inside of a moving light is shown in a picture below.

Ive also attached a nice photo of a moving light that decided to start smoking out the lens...

Interview of a Lifetime

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Caroline and I met an extremely interesting man on a ghost tour last week. In setting up our interview, he recommended that we meet him and his wife at his house as it was built in the late 1700s. Over the course of our stay, we had become more and more interested in the history of the city and it's inhabitants, so we jumped at the opportunity. When they bought and renovated their home, it was the last one on the block to be restored, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Sitting in the cozy sitting room, we interviewed both husband and wife about their younger days, what led them to Savannah in the first place, their role in the community, and much more. They told us about how they both started off as teachers teaching on the West side of Chicago and ended up traveling, in a sail boat of all things, across the the Atlantic ocean to Europe. Can you believe it?? On top of all this, they both personally knew many of the people involved in the Savannah murder scandal as chronicled by the international best seller "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". In fact, Mrs. Johnson even knew the author, John Berendt, when he began to write his international best seller and even helped him edit it! The couple told us story after story, which were quite star-studded, of their fascinating lives. They are prominent members of the Savannah community who actively fight against making their beloved city overly-commercialized by the tourism industry. They agreed that the tourism that was brought to the city by Berendt's famed novel was extremely beneficial for the economy and the community as a whole but that the line had to be drawn somewhere. You'll be able to read more about the amazing couple in our final piece!

Last Day

Today was my last day of work! I can't work tomorrow because the Lifer Dinner interferes with restaurant hours. Everyone was so nice and said that they would miss me, but little do they know that I'm coming back at the end of July! I have never loved working a place so much before and I think that the people really made a difference. I was accepted into this little culinary family and it has been so fun. Maybe I want to be a chef and maybe I don't but I think I have plenty of time to decide exactly what I want to do with my life and, as of now, I'm just playing it by ear.

Wrapping Up

We spent our last day in Savannah preparing to leave and saying goodbye to our favorite spots. SCAD had it's graduation the day before we left, so the city was even busier than usual. We packed up and made sure we have all of our contact information and notes saved to continue writing in Cleveland. Now that we're home, I've been doing a lot of writing. I want to make sure we adequately capture all aspects of Savannah and our experience, not just the highlights. Capturing the vibe of the city is going to be challenging, but if we can pull it off it will certainly be worth it.

The Art Museum

They say a picture says a thousand words, and in the case of the Cleveland Museum of Art, their pictures certainly say a lot. To say that the museum is impressive is an understatement. A recent 300 million dollar plus addition to the museum propelled the already internationally renowned museum to even higher esteem; the cutting edge technology, interactive exhibitions, and of course, breath-taking works of art, make the museum not only a enjoyment, but a privilege, to attend.

If any organization has embraced the practice of experiential learning, it is the Cleveland Museum of Art. Filled with a variety of interactive activities, students, teachers, and visitors alike are welcomed to participate in surveys about the symbolism in works of art (see photo), attempt to replicate a Baroque painting using a tablet canvas, learn the history behind any work in the entire museum in seconds with the touch of a finger, and investigate the lines and shape patterns in various painting and sculptures through a hands-on drawing activity. The museum is filled with opportunities for visitors of all ages to engage stimulating and engaging activities.

I have said this before, and I will say it again. My greatest take away from my trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art is just how lucky my classmates and I were to visit the museum all throughout our developing years. Before we even learned  how to tie our own shoe laces, we were standing inches away from paintings by Picasso, Monet, and other masters. From the start of our young school days, we were taught how to appreciate, study, and interpret art. We learned how to draw our own conclusions about the meaning of Dali's "The Persistence of Memory", find the meaning behind Picasso's cubism, and question just why Rothko chose the colors he did. We supplemented our study of Africa with a visit to the ancient Kenyan pottery exhibit, and when we learned about the Egyptians, we were able to hear a lecture from a major in Ancient Egypt, while sitting before a real past Pharaoh's burial tomb.

And now, with the recent additions to the museum, future generations of students will continue to roam the museum halls with even more opportunities before them. After I toured the museum, and not to mention visit an exhibition on Pompeii, I felt so proud and lucky to have this resource in Cleveland. Even now, I feel that I still have yet to fully appreciate all the museum has to offer.

My conclusion: While they say a picture says a thousand words, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, a thousand words just won't cut it.

The Interview

Since our project evolved from being focused on the people of the city to the city itself, we only did one official interview, and we met the subjects of our interview completely by chance. On our ghost tour, we stopped near a residential area so our guide could tell us another story. A man happened to be walking his dog, and the dog led him into our group. He went on to interrupt our tour guide and tell us that the ghost stories were a load of bologna, and he had lived in Savannah for thirty years and never once encountered the supernatural. He sort of took control of the tour for a few minutes. As we were walking away to continue on our path, Bella and I looked at each other and said 'Wait, we want to talk to him'. We strayed from the group and asked if we could talk to him later in the week. He agreed, and told us about how his wife is a renowned novelist, and how the two of them were teachers for quite some time. He also told us about how he used to have his own radio program. We got his information and set up the interview. We met at his home the next day, and spend the first twenty minutes of our visit hearing about the wife. His wife showed us the whole house (it was tiny, beautiful, but tiny, so it did not take long), and explained the house had been built in the late 1700's. When they moved to Savannah, it was the only house in the area that had not been remodeled, so they decided to do it themselves. They kept all the original wood and didn't touch the front exterior (besides a much needed paint job), and added a staircase that led to the only bedroom in the house. The house used to be all one level. It turns out that the woman, Susan Johnson, used their home has inspiration for one of her books, which is about the history of the houses in that area. It was fascinating to hear her talk about her research and immense success. Outside of the home, the conversation was great. They led fascinating lives together. They both taught in the south side of Chicago for a long time, and they were part of the movement in the 70's that aimed to improve inner city schooling. After teaching, they sailed around the world on a 12x40 foot sailboat. They went everywhere from Paris to Germany, to South Carolina where they docked before finding their home in Savannah. Truly you would have to hear the interview to grasp how wonderful they were. It was the only interview we did, but it was honestly they only interview we needed.

Cook Book Fun Day

So yesterday we had 105 reservations at the restaurant... it was a very late night. Tomorrow the restaurant is closed for Memorial Day so I figured that I could work on this cook book I plan on making and think of something to make for my presentation Friday!

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum was a blast. I forgot how interesting and entertaining the museum is! I loved walking through the museum. Some of the highlights include seeing all the enormous dinosaur replicas, shimmering rock displays, and the awesome stuffed leopard and orangutan reproductions, to . Of course I was not alone in my excitement; it felt as if every second that I was there, the number of first graders surrounding me doubled.  Along with the exhibits, much of my enjoyment came from watching the hyped up little visitors as they traveled through the museum. I loved seeing them point at the different animals, and here the collective “WHOA” as they approached the giant dinosaur structure. In other words, I loved seeing these kids being entertained and interested in something other than Spongebob. In a society where so much time is spent “plugged in” and virtual baseball is more common than an actual backyard game, it was refreshing seeing the genuine enthusiasm on these students’ face when experiencing something off their computer and television screens. For me, this was my conclusion from the trip: museums like the Cleveland Natural History Museum allow for students to completely engage themselves in the environment around them as well as use all their senses to fully immerse themselves in what they are doing or learning. It takes students out of the mundane classroom routine and stimulates interest in topics beyond Facebook and Twitter trends. It allows for the opportunity to learn about something new and find enjoyment in something one typically wouldn’t explore. The museums mission statement is “To inspire, through science and education, a passion for nature, the protection of natural diversity, the fostering of health, and leadership to a sustainable future.” After my visit, I can attest to the fact that the museum is doing a great job living up to this mission.

Cleveland Orchestra

Last Week,  my trip to the Cleveland Orchestra was amazing. To put it simply, Severance Hall is exquisite and the musicians are beyond talented. I am going to be honest with you; if you scroll through my iPod you are not very likely to see much classical music on the most played playlist. However, I think my ability to be completely engaged in and infatuated with the music last night speaks highly of the work of the Cleveland Orchestra. As I mentioned, I am not an avid classical music listener. However, I genuinely enjoyed my evening listening to Tchaikovsky Fifth. What was my greatest take away from my visit-realizing just how lucky my classmates and I were having the opportunity to visit the Cleveland Orchestra every year in the lower school. Many of my classmates may disagree. From classmates I interviewed earlier, a common take away was that the Orchestra trip was long and boring. However, in my opinion, even if we didn't know it at the time,  whether you were one of the students who was completely enthralled by the music before you, or not so much, hearing the Cleveland Orchestra perform in person greatly impacted our development, . We heard some of the best musicians in the country bring Bach and Mozart back to life. We watched composers feverishly wave their arms up and down, we marveled at the intricately decorated hall, and we learned how to act at the symphony, from how to dress to when to clap. All of these things and more helped us grow as individuals and become more aware of the talent before us. I have no doubt that our many trips to the orchestra made us more enriched individuals, teaching us about the world around us, and allowing us to now, as young adults, just sit back and enjoy the show.

The Home Stretch

This past week has been the most exciting by far and it is leading up to the final days of project! On Friday, Ms. Davis came to visit me at my project and I was able to show her around and explain the gist of what I have been doing! Unfortunately, my sponsor was stuck in meetings all morning and was unable to meet her but she will be coming to my presentation and will see everyone then! Later that same day we were surprised with new equipment for teh clients from the Geauga Board! The equipment we were fortunate enough to receive consisted of outdoor activity bikes, indoor swings, sensory items, and a long board that helps clients who are unable to stand on their own go into an upright position for at least thirty minutes. Hopefully we can get use of these items and set them up within the next week!

Boat Regatta and Lunch With Mrs. K

Thursday was the big day that the third graders had been training for for the past four days.  The three third grade classes entered the pool area cheering and screaming sporting their assigned team colors of red, orange, and yellow.  I loved seeing the competitiveness and team spirit that each team showed for their respective class as each team was called up, one by one, to line up behind their boats.  My job was to stand in the water and make sure that the boats didn't crash into each other and that the kids didn't spin or float too far off of the path they were supposed to follow.  As the siren sounded and the race stared the water and the stands errupted into massive chaos.  Oars were flailing violently and kids were screaming and cheering as loud as they could.  Meanwhile i was frantically trying to help out as many boats as I could because most of the kids were more focused on speed rather than staying straight.  However despite all the chaos the Boat races went extremely well and all three teams finished in a timely manor and most importantly the third graders had a blast!

After the boat races were done I helped Mrs. Pavlik teach two kindergarten swim classes both of which consisted of me giving the kids rides, two at a time, in the dragon boats used in the regatta.  After that Mrs. Kahn surprised me and gabby, who had been working at the lower school on and off during her project, and decided to take us out to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen!  Finally after lunch we returned to the middle school to finish off the day with the Walk for Diabetes taking two laps around the school (inside because it was raining) and meeting in the Cafeteria for Popsicles afterwards.  It was a great end to an awesome day!

Photo Galore!

So I've been taking tons of photos lately and I figured I should share a few ^__^

The City Built Upon Her Dead

Bella and I decided that we wanted to explore a part of Savannah that makes it unique: it's relationship with the supernatural. Fittingly, we chose to attend a night tour called "America's Most Haunted City". Which is, apparently, an official title given by a board of people who can differentiate one level of haunting from another. The city got the title ten years ago. It was a walking tour, and it took us in and around the city over the course of about two miles. Walking those two miles we heard ghost and horror stories native to Savannah. It took seventy years for the amount of living people to outnumber the dead in Savannah, so there's no shortage of unofficial graves and unsettled souls. Plenty of tales to be told. One of the more graphic tales was about an Irish indentured servant who worked for an old man at his mansion. There's two versions of the story: one, where the man is a dirty old pervert who made her bathe him for kicks, and the other, where he was paralyzed from the waist down and was physically unable to bathe himself. In both versions, she decides the treatment is enough and plots to kill him. She and another indentured servant friend drown him in the bathtub one night, sow him up in a sheet, and send him down the river. The problem was, the river was still tidally influenced, so he washed up almost immediately. When the authorities approached her she immediately confessed and kindly sold out her friend. They were both sentenced to death, and her friend was hanged immediately. She, on the other hand, pulled the trump card and told everyone she was pregnant at the site of the gallows. She then spent nine months in jail, and was hanged five minutes after giving birth. Apparently, she still haunts the square. Anyway we heard a lot of stuff like that and it was great material, especially because it really spoke to a different side of Savannah. Besides that I'm close to finishing one piece and am excited to move on to another. On we go.

Nature Center Animals

Another aspect of the Nature Center is taking care of the animals on the inside.  There is a turtle and a snake, and the turtle’s name is Speedy.  Quite ironic if you ask me…Today we cleaned out their cages and gave them new food and water, and cleared the shredded skin of the snake.  On the outside, there are several animals that roam around, such as countless bunnies, chipmunks, and squirrels that tend to become a nuisance.  There are also a few families of dear that wander around and sometimes loiter around the parking lot giving a fabulous spectacle for visitors.  There is also a raccoon that roams around, during the day (a sure sign that it’s rabid) so we carefully watch out for this little critter.  There was one experience where we were throwing away some garbage and it crawled out of the compost bin, and needless to say there were some shrieks from the group, mostly from me.  All of the animals add to the experience of the Nature Center, and make it a complete place, and adds to the fun for all of the school groups that attend events here.

A muddy day!

One of the most interesting things that we have done during the entire Nature Center experience is clearing Yellow Iris from the marsh.  The yellow iris are an invasive species that take over entire marshes and don’t allow anything else to grow, but are not to be confused with the helpful plant called a blue iris.  The first day we did this, we were told that we were going to get very muddy, and that’s exactly what happened! We were suited up in knee high boots and journeyed in to the marsh, with shovels in hand.  These plants were difficult to dig up, and had a lot of roots under the thick (and smelly) marsh mud. Every step in the mud was a big sludge sound as the mud absorbed the boots, but we worked through it and dug out garbage bags full of this invasive species.  We did this two more times during the experience, when the marshes were much drier, which made it even harder to dig out the roots, making a very stressful experience.  Only one person fell in to the deep marshy muds, and once again, it was Claire. It was a very interesting experience to say the least, but she got to go home early as she didn’t have a change of clothes!

Poison Ivy is no fun!

One aspect of the Nature Center is the massive amounts of Poison Ivy that are scattered around the environment.  Thankfully, none of us have been affected by the poison ivy so far, but this is because we take extra precaution.  For example, our team is required to wear pants as well as working boots or old shoes, in order to navigate the dense forests.  Also while washing our hands, we use a special formula called Tecnu.  Tecnu is a combination of liquids that breaks down the oils of Poison Ivy.  We had to avoid a ton of Poison Ivy plants while pulling the weeds like garlic mustard.  Needless to say, we washed our hands quite often hoping to not be affected by this horrible plant. We also always wear gardening gloves in order to protect our hands, and usually avoid the poison ivy as often as possible! Hopefully throughout the rest of the project, we will all be able to avoid the plant.  I think we would all like to avoid the rashes and itchiness that come along with it.  Even though we have to avoid this plant, working at the Nature Center is still a great experience!