This morning was awesome because 1. Jonathan and I didn’t have to be at the office until 9:00 and 2. we got to learn how to operate the hearing test machines and conduct hearing tests on each other! First we examined each other’s ears with an otoscope to make sure that nothing was in the ear canal that would block sound from entering and reaching the ear drum, such as ear wax.
Me examining Jonathan’s ear canal with an otoscope:
Jonathan goofing around while I looked into his ear canal:
After we got the “all clear” from each other that our ear canals were clean, one of us headed to another room where the hearing test machine was located so that the “patient’s” room was completely silent and no sound would interfere with their hearing test. To conduct the hearing test, you start the sound at a certain frequency in only one ear, and change the amount of decibels each time. If the patient responds to a sound by pressing a button, you decrease the amount of decibels by 10. If the patient does not hear the sound, you increase the amount of decibels by 5 until the patient is consistently hearing a certain number of decibels at the one frequency. You chart this number and then change the frequency and start again until the chart is completed. After the chart is complete, you have the hearing test complete for the one ear, so you switch to the other ear and repeat.
Pausing during my hearing test for a quick selfie. In the picture the top left number is the decibel amount for the one ear (15 dB) and the middle number is the frequency (1000 Hz).:
After our hearing tests, our charts determined that Jonathan had normal hearing; however, he couldn’t hear the lower frequency sounds when the decibel amount was too low, while I had perfect hearing and was able to hear all of the frequencies even at 0 decibels (subtle brag… Jonathan was a little jealous of this).
Our completed hearing charts. Jonathan’s hearing chart is the one on the left while mine is on the right. Patients who come in with hearing loss will typically have points that are more towards the middle of the chart.:
After our hearing tests, we had our lunch break followed by some routine hearing aid checkups. Many of the patients that the audiologist and I saw were participating in a study with a new type of hearing aid that sends a laser light down the ear canal that hits a light receptor on what was described as “a contact lens for the ear drum” which causes a motor to vibrate the ear drum and allows that patient to hear. This new technology is very advanced and groundbreaking.
Overall today was a very fun and informative day as we learned about a lot about the technology that audiologists use in the current day and age. I especially enjoyed being able to conduct the hearing test on Jonathan, and the audiologists told us that tomorrow we would be able to do more experiments on each other using different types of technology. I can’t wait! – Kiran W.
Day three at Centerline has definitely been one of my favorites so far. The environment here continues to be both welcoming and fascinating, and I’ve woken up every morning looking forward to the day ahead of me. I’m starting to become less and less dependent on my NAV to get here which is a plus! Today I’ve spent the day with two really wonderful women: mackenzie ( hopefully I’m spelling her name correctly) and Valentina, who work in the writing and accounts departments respectively. My time speaking with mackenzie was really wonderful as I spoke to her about her education and the course of her career. We discussed for a while the difficulty of being a writer in a corporate environment and the struggle to implement her own creativity and voice into sometimes quite formal pieces of work. She noted that her job was to ” find the human” in the product, and to ensure a way to make the pieces connectable and resinate with an audience. Over the course of our conversation she also opened up to me about her relationship with her writing and the occasional cut and dry vibe of the industry. She said how quite often it takes quite a thick skin to be a writer in an agency, as scripts can get rejected and sent back incredibly easily. For a writer, who pours everything she has into what she creates, it takes a strong ability to focus on the final product and satisfaction of the client rather than her own feelings. After lunch and more chatting I met up with Valentina from the Accounts team who’s job seems to be another challenging one. Valentina ultimately works as a project manager, so her job demands extreme organizational and customer service abilities. She essentially works as the overseer of the marketed product from the moment she comes in contact with the client to the final sending off of the product. Through her complex schedules that she showed me in 2nd picture above, she organizes every single step of the process. While organizing and facilitating the production process along with the writing, film and animation departments, she simultaneously communicates with the client. Her goal is ultimately to figure out exactly what the client needs, ( the message they want to convey, their target audience etc.) communicate that idea to the creative teams, and ensure that the final product is perfect before its sent off to to the client. Long story short- if I ever hear that someone works in accounts again I will instantly have a massive amount of respect for them.
CA Work Experience Program 2016 