Liza Day 7: A Whole New World

Today, I experienced a new perspective going from Production to the Creative Strategic Department! It was a whole new world.

To start off the morning, Regina and I were crunched on time so we didn’t scout for possible HB2 locations. Instead, I continued updating Smart Sheet and reading over the new script.

Around 1, I was called for lunch duty.  I ran over to Only Burger and grabbed the team’s lunch for the day. Everyone has to do lunch duty at some point!

After snarfing down my delicious Veggie Burger, I got to sit in on a meeting conducted by 3 members of the Strategic Department at McKinney. This was SUCH a cool experience and I was so fascinated that my interests (psychology and media) exist right here at an advertising agency! Chris Walsh, the Director of Consumer and Business Insights, introduced me to the “model” McKinney has used for the past 13 years and how it needed to be updated. In addition, we watched a video called “Marketers Are From Mars and Consumers Are From New Jersey”, which nailed the psychology around consumer preferences. I encourage you to check it out, it’s hilarious!!

Later in the afternoon, I attended a team debrief “Tune In.” This is the meeting where they review McKinney’s current projects and track each department’s progress reports. This furthermore gave me an insight into how complex, yet integrated the world of advertising really is.

Regina and I stayed late to miss the traffic, so I continued working on the Olympic Project and HB2.

-Liza

Day 8- What is a Non-profit?

Today was spent at the Autism Society of North Carolina’s main offices in Raleigh.

I was very surprised at how large the office actually was with around 40 employees working there. How the Autosm Society supports these employees is through their large network of donors and fundraising events. My first task was unwrapping Christmas presents!! These presents were donated last December, but never unpacked to send to families affected by autism. I got to take inventory and help assign the presents to certain families.
Next, I worked writing thank you cards to the many donors that donate to camp Royall. Not only individuals, but many well known businesses donate. Autism is becoming more and more common with 1 in 59 NC children being affected and donations to research are so important to help understand this rise in cases.

Next, I was able to help insert names and contact information into the large data base of donors. Even though my tasks today weren’t as fun as at Camp Royall they are so important to help places like Camp Royall function!

– Fiona

Day 8: Wish We Could Turn Back Time…

…But now we’re stressed out! That’s right, today we were able to play with really cool smart devices that allowed us to track certain responses of the body including stress levels! We actually met our mentor for today, Robert, yesterday when he came in to hook us up to a smartwatch when we were experimenting with the virtual reality “Oculus Rift” technology. This was his first experiment recording the body’s response to a person being submerged into virtual reality, and the data that was collected was very surprising and cool!

Me using the “Oculus Rift” virtual reality headset with my body’s response to being in the virtual reality state:

KTW

In the graph above, the blue line indicates my stress level, which is shown to be steadily and constantly increasing. This stress level had the same increasing tendency for all three of us interns, which shows that virtual reality may not be healthy for the body if it constantly increases our stress levels the longer that we are in it. This experiment is prompting Robert to continue analyzing stress levels for people who are submerged into virtual reality, and he considers this new knowledge to be revolutionary! Can you believe that we were the guinea pigs for revolutionary knowledge?! After learning about stress in the human body, we were suited up with complimentary fitbit zips that we got to keep! With the fitbit zip we tracked the accuracy of number of steps taken using the fitbit, apple watch, and “Moves” app. We walked on a treadmill for 5 minutes while all of the devices were counting and while someone else counted the actual number of steps we took. We found that the fitbit was the most reliable source because the number pf steps that it counted were closest to the number of actual steps.

Jonathan on the treadmill with his devices counting the number of steps he took:

Then, just for fun (and for science :)), we decided we should try to cheat the fitbit and rack up as many steps as we could. For our first experiment we taped the fitbit onto a drill bit, and turned the drill on. Surprisingly, all of the quick rotations that the fitbit made did not contribute to a large number of steps taken. Then, for our second experiment, we duct taped the fitbit to the wheel of Robert’s car and we observed how many steps were recorded as Robert drove around. The fitbit racked up some steps, but not as much as expected. I guess if you want steps you have to actually exercise!

The fitbit duct taped to the wheel of Robert’s car:

Today was a really fun day since we got to come up with our own experiments and execute them! We also learned that we may have revolutionized virtual reality, so that was cool! Overall it was a really great way to end our internship at RTI, although it was also sad to say goodbye to the Work Experience Program. For me this program has been a huge success, and I hope it continues being implemented and offered to Cary Academy students in future years! – Kiran W.

Day 7- A Day at The Circus

Today was my last day at Camp Royall :(( After setting up the Courtyard Art for campers, I worked on organizing the Arts and Crafts activity with the other Activity Directors. The theme for the day was “The Circus” which means crafts included cotton candy painting, lion masks, and clown coloring sheets. Another activity that day was boating and after helping get out the boats I actually got to help lead the activity! I got to tell campers and their counselors what each station was and play with campers at the bubbles and corn hole stations while they waited for the boats.

After lunch, I helped with the evening acitivity which was set up to look like the circus to follow the theme. The playground was covered in a parachute to look like a circus tent and circus music was playing while activities included a “flying trapeze” or a zip line and a face painting station. This was by far the best activity I got to help out with! After cleaning up the amazing activity directors I have been working with for the past two days presented me with a going away gift.

I am so grateful to have been able to volunteer at such an amazing place! I will definitely be going back to volunteer this summer and hopeful will go as a counselor in the future!

– Fiona

Day 8- Mrs. Allen?!

Today was my last day at the clinic, but it was still packed! In the morning, I got to sit in on more appointments with patients. This is my favorite part because I get to talk with the patients and each case is different. Today, the audiologist even let me help replace parts in the hearing aids! I also got to help out with some of the hearing tests! In between these, Mrs. Allen showed up!! After lunch, Dr. McElveen gave us a lecture about acoustic neuromas. This is a benign tumor on the nerve in the ear that leads to the brain. This is fascinatin. This concluded my day at the ENT, but they invited me back so hopefully I’ll get to go back soon!

Drew Day 8 Logistics

This is the site that the meetings were for.

For the last day I started out in another finance meeting which was very quick and then we took some calls about the ceiling and prices we did yesterday and next we went to another meeting the longest one yet it was a double meeting first it was with the contractors and the inspectors for them to meet and talk about the logistics of what each of them are doing and how to be in contact. Then the contractors stayed and we talked to them about the logistics of the budget and other plans for it. After that we all went to the site we were there for about 3 minutes and then all went out to lunch together and talked about completely unrelated topics. The rest of the day was paperwork and phone calls about the ceilings and the TOA project.

Just Crush It

Did I ever think I would spend my time crushing butter-mints…not quite.

No longer minty fresh

It turns out it’s a lot of fun! Phil taught me the formatting of a real lab experiment by doing a mini experiment on butter-mints, a pretty big change of pace from our previous tests. Basically, we measured the durability (specifically how much force it can take before it splits) of the mints on a Chantillon 200 LBF machine. After I collected the data we discussed possible variables and then Phil gave me a crash course in Excel. He also explained various statistics used for data analysis like ANOVA, and Pvalues.

Excel Data: Butter Mint Crush

Next, we ventured to NC State to meet a group of scientists that work in a BSL3 lab, which is a lab containing “safety” chemicals that can be harmful to humans and could possibly be used detrimentally in large quantities. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss proper safety procedures and determine how to manage the various pathogens being used. Phil and Jean are involved in a study that is about to take place concerning the Zika virus and its effects on cells and tissues. It’s important to use extreme care to minimize possible exposures to the diseases being tested in the lab (which includes Rocky Mount Spotted Fever and Bartonella). The coolest part, however, was getting to tour the lab and see how all the safety procedures are implemented.

I ended my last day with a mini staff ice cream party in front of the copy machine (classic) and Sarah showing me the basics of a SEM machine. An SEM machine uses a beam of electrons to chart the typography of the surface of particles. To be completely honest this just means it takes super cool up-close photographs of particles and stuff (kind of like a fancy microscope for materials). The photographs you’ve seen of thread and other fabrics (hair is a popular one for shampoos) close up are probably produced using an SEM machine!

I can’t believe the internship is over! It has been an amazing experience, much better than anything I could have ever imagined and I hope everyone has an opportunity to do something similar before college!

Day 8 – Just Listen.

Today was my last day working with Trailblazer Studios, and the last day of the Work Experience Program. I have super happy with my experience and am so glad I was able to do it. At first I was really worried about whether I would enjoy the experience or not, but I am super happy about how it turned out. Now. On to the more important stuff.

I spent the day with a few different people in the Audio/Sound Design department. It wouldn’t be a day at Trailblazer without a Review session. Today’s wasn’t as long as the one yesterday, mostly due to the fact that yesterday we were reviewing a two-hour episode compared to today’s half hour episode. The room was full of people, not that it was a large room, but there were about six of us in a room made to hold like three. This review was also a lot different from the other two I have done. This is because we were looking at it from an audio standpoint and not a visual or content standpoint. It’s not something I’ve done much of before. I wasn’t even able to pick up on a lot of things that these people mentioned, even after I heard it a bunch of times. TBStudios - Surround Sound

After the review, I got a more in depth tour of the Audio Department’s studios. They have one review room, one smaller composing/editing room, one composing/ recording booth suite, and one room that had complete surround sound (Pictured on the right). The guy who usually works in there was sick, but he does the mixing for the bigger projects. Thus the surround sound studio.

After the tour I sat with David, a sound designer and avid guitar player. He does everything from mixing the audio on shows to writing/recording his own music. He was working on a song and he went through his process while creating these songs. He even whipped out his guitar and started playing the song he was showing me.

Once we had all eaten some lunch I sat in with Aaron, director of music and sound operations as well as a composer, and an intern who is working with the sound department for the summer. He showed us the programs he uses to compose and a couple of demos he has worked on over the years. The first thing he showed us was a current project of his, a SAS promotional video. He wasn’t too happy with the music and ended up making a lot of changes to it later in the afternoon. He also showed us some animated shorts that he composed the music for, one of which as a collaboration with another Trailblazer employee. Lastly he showed us the same video clip but with about four different audio tracks/composers. It really showcased how much music affect how one views a commercial and how the tone or beat of the music draws your eye to different parts of the shot. It was an aspect of movies and other kinds of media that I hadn’t really delved into much.

I have really enjoyed my time at Trailblazer Studios and met so many awesome people. I hope that I can work with them again in the future.

Day 7: Goodb-EYE

This was my final day at the Eye Center and even though I had to say goodbye, I didn’t leave without learning some new things. Through shadowing I got to see orbital fractures, hordoleum, and even ocular birthmarks. Hordoleum is an eye infection characterized by swelling on the eye lid or an isolated bump on the eye lid. There was also a case of ocular neoplasm which is pretty much a lesion on the retina. These are usually benign. I got to observe a technician under training to end the day and the experience. Since my experience has become whole, I decided to include a picture that shows the entire exam chair with all of the machinery.

Cameron Day 3 (repost?) – the Mystics of Optical Density

It’s… Get ready for it, HUMPDAY!!!!!

Anyways, hi friends!

Cameron again. I hope everyone is enjoying their week so far. Mine has been especially fabulous, and we started a new activity in preparation for the main project. Yesterday, I cleaned filters and put them in their proper placement. Today I tested the optical density of each, which is where we place them into a machine and run them through the color spectrum, recording how much light gets through. Hers a picture of the machine:

Jason McNeill (in the picture above) was my guide during this activity, and it was quite interesting utilizing the software. Despite several technical difficulties, I ended up processing all 50 plates in time for Jason to check their weights using a very, very picky machine. It took 15 minutes for just one filter at one point!
After helping out Jason, Mrs. Michelle took me to meet Andrew Dart, where we discussed some of the finer points of his machine. This machine, as it so happened to be, was the one we used for ECMs, and is picture below along with Andrew.

Andrew built both this and the extremely complicated machine hidden behind the one we used. It’s pretty awesome! He also works on the fireman project I discussed in my first post. Pretty cool, right? Not to mention he looks kind of like Sherlock from Masterpiece Mysteries…

Anyway, that’s pretty much everything for today.

Happy Humpday everyone!
Cameron L.

CA Work Experience Program 2016

DICE-ing in the Real World

Month: June 2016