Sunday, April 18, 2010

Family

My family is hilarious.  When we get together, all of us, comedy is sure to ensue.  We're always trying to sharpen our wits.  Our memories are sharp, and we always employ inside jokes from our pasts.  We do make fun of stupid things that other members of the family have done, but we all know that it's just in good fun.  This humor is one thing that we all have in common, and I am really glad that that's how it is. 

Another thing that we all have in common is our love of food.  We are true gourmets, all of us.  We like going out to eat and trying new things.  It wasn't always this way.  My brother and I were the pickiest eaters as children.  Lately, I have started being more and more open to new flavors and ingredients.  This has provided me with many new outlets with which to relate to my family.  I just love talking about foods and flavors.  If you think about it, food is something that all people have in common.  People, naturally, need to eat.  Therefore, practicing this discussion of food with my family provides me with more social skills down the road. 

My whole family, close and extended relatives, are very artistic.  Most of all, we are musical.  I have three cousins whose college majors deal with music.  I play saxophone, my mom is a band director, my brother plays trombone, my cousin is a prodigy of the flute, my other cousin is a successful percussion and music major at the Manhattan School of Music, my OTHER cousin will be attending Western Michigan University this fall and majoring in Music and Bass, and my OTHER cousin plays the oboe and was marching band drum major in high school.  My other relatives who do not play instruments have, what I judge to be, fantastic tastes in music and art.  Basically, we're just really artsy people, and I really like being a part of it.

Spring Break

My spring break was enjoyable.  Actually, thinking about it, I didn't really do that much.  What I did do, however, was either very fun or very productive.  At the very beginning of my break, I decided to get organized and make a homework schedule for the whole rest of my break.  I felt that this work would all have to get done by the end of break, so I could either do it all in one day at the end of break, or make it a whole lot easier on myself and split the work up to a tolerable amount per day.  Then, after my work was done each day, I could have some fun and relax.  This relaxation would involve video games or hanging out with friends.  Also during this time, my mom forced me to help her with some spring cleaning.  Also, I had to help her with packaging of jewelry for her polymer clay jewelry business.  Being incredibly awesome, my dear friend Hannah offered her assistance in these two tasks. This made both much much more tolerable.  We cleaned things that I never thought could be clean.  Our biggest project was scraping off my stove.  Ever since my family moved to the house that I live in currently, the stove has had this black layer of gunky stuff on it.  With some elbow grease and hours of scraping with the back ends of silverware, we cleared off this layer.  It was a long, grueling, and disgusting task, but we were determined to succeed.  After the job was finally done, we went to Coldstone Creamery and ate some absolutely fantastic ice cream.  Overall, it was a fun and productive day.  It was really surprising how fun it ended up being cleaning my house.

Near the end of break, my aunt from the Chicago area came to visit my mom and do jewelry for a couple days.  She brought with her some Italian beef from the amazing restaurant Portillo's.  I ate so much beef over the next couple days, yet I didn't ever grow tired of it.  Overall, it was a great visit with my aunt.  This whole break was different from any others that I have had in the past, but I loved it.  I would gladly do it all over again.        

Job Shadowing

Job Shadowing was a fantastic experience for me! I went to Allen Henderson & Associates Structural Engineering Firm downtown.  My Job Shadowing person was Mark Henderson.  As I arrived, he introduced himself as the husband of a teacher I had in elementary school, my Enrichment teacher.  The company was in an old house, and it was an interesting small business environment.  Previously, I had seen Engineering as only a big business venture, so this was a fresh new experience.  The company's workers, being part of a small business, had more experience in many aspects of Engineering.  The first thing that we did to start our day was surveying.  We surveyed the whole parking lot in front of the company.  The surveying that we did was a great experience.  Previously, I had been introduced to surveying.  However, the others that had previously attempted to explain this process didn't really explain what it was that they were trying to accomplish.  While shadowing, I learned of this purpose.  The surveying device we used was quite interesting.  One surveyor would hold a prism at a point of data to be recorded.  The other would use the surveying gun to locate and record the point.  Points were recorded on x, y, and z axes.  Matthias and I took turns shooting the gun and holding the prism for several hours, but the time passed by very quickly.  When we finished surveying, we took our data up to the office.  The original plan of the day included us entering this data into CAD; however, the time escaped us, and one of the office workers ended up completing this task for us while we were at lunch.

Before lunch, we went to a construction site.  The site was a future long term care medical facility which the firm that we were shadowing had helped design supports for.  We received a complete tour of all floors of the facility, and even went up onto the roof.  This tour was guided by the construction manager of the site.  This put into perspective just how much work goes into an engineering, architecture, and construction project.  The firm was only a small part of the project, intermingled with work of electrical and mechanical engineers.  On top of all of this work to make the building functional, architects worked to design aesthetically pleasing aspects of the building.  After all of this was designed, construction workers were employed to carry out the designs laid out for them.  This process, being quite extensive, was not perfected.  In fact, we fell witness to long-standing arguments between the construction workers and designers.  These arguments, we were told, had resulted from stubbornness of Engineers and Architects.  All argument could have been avoided if these designers could have just admitted their mistakes.  This was a truly eye-opening experience.

After this site visit, we went to lunch, where I ate WAY too much pizza.  However, Mark was impressed with my massive stomach capacity.  I felt quite accomplished...

Anyway, after lunch we went to another construction site, the bridge under construction on Washington Street (the one that they have been working on for over a year!).  Apparently, due to inconsistencies in the design and construction processes, this bridge collapsed early in construction, and the workers were forced to start over.  It was interesting to see this familiar bridge that I drive over quite often from the perspective of an Engineer.

Overall, the day was a fantastic experience, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it!