cawep2016

Special Guest (Day 8)

On the last day at Carolina Ear and Hearing Clinic I was able to continue following audiologists in their appointments. I was able to see hearing test being administered and learn how the audioligsts clean out and replace parts in the hearing aids. As we were getting ready to see another patient Ms. Allen surprised us. Finally, Dr. McElveen lectured on acoustic neuromas. Since I stayed at the office a little longer I was able to see how the audiologists make ear molds and even practice myself. I had never really considered audiology before this so I’m glad I was able to get the exposure.

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Surgery Practice (Day 7)

The day started off with more appointments. I saw a patient with a cochlear implant. After the patient left an audiologist explained cochlear implants to us and how they work with patient models and pamphlets. Then, Dr. McElveen took us to a lab and we were able to work on temporal bones. It took a lot of practice to get used to using the microscope as my eyes while using various surgical instruments!

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Tympa…what? (Day 6)

Tympanoplasty is the name of the surgical procedure I was able to observe in the operating room today. Tympanoplasty is a surgery in which the eardrum is reconstructed. It was so fascinating to be in the operating room and see the procedure on a TV monitor. Most of the time it was pretty quiet in the OR because Dr. McElveen and the nurses needed to focus. However, Dr. McElveen did explain what he was doing when he thought it was important for us to know. We talked to the nurse anesthetist and hopefully we’ll be able to shadow her and continue to observe surgeries.

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Day 8: Final Step

Today was the day. We woke up ready to seize it. Ready to finally embrace our destiny. We slowly tied our boots and prepared for what was coming. We didn’t know what it would be but we knew it would be good; we knew we would be ready. We ate a breakfast of champions: pancakes and a banana. Now that I was fueled, I waited for Kirans arrival.

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Robert, who was with us yesterday, picked us up for our full day at his office. Upon arrival, Robert gave us pedometers, and our mission was to test how accurate they are. We conducted numerous experiments to test the accuracy, some of which were walking on a treadmill for 5 minutes while someone counted and testing to see how many steps the person and Fitbit recorded. We concluded that the Fitbit was fairly close, it missed the amount of steps by around 100 or 150 which was close in our opinion for a 50 dollar fit bit.

All in all it was a wonderful experience and I couldn’t be luckier to have been chosen.

Day 7: This is my Reality

Today a girl from Cardinal Gibbons interned with us. We were back in Building 7, where we had started, and it was somewhat of a relief to be in a familiar setting. We were with a man named Dr. John Holloway, who had specialized in virtual reality.

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Dr. Holloway loved his job, and was very enthusiastic to teach us all he knows. We spent the day in his office, listening to him explain the process of designing a virtual reality.
We ended up sitting in on a meeting with professors from the University of Northern Texas, some of the top scientists in his department. Dr. Holloway and his superior were very nervous to be speaking to them, because the boss of the professors actually founded a speciality in their department and he was apparently very famous.

Day 5: I Didn’t Do It

It was our first day in RTI and the campus was extraordinary. Kiran and I got lost driving to the building, because the way RTI is set up is like a college campus. There are designated buildings for different departments and the campus is enormous. Once we found where we were supposed to be, after going through many different security gates, we managed to find who we were shadowing.
We began by shadowing a doctor who specialized in locating drugs in bake and DNA. They had complicated machines to find the drugs and described the process of it all. A lot of it involves chemistry and the doctors there had all majored in it. It was a fairly short day, because we had left at 12, but we got to tour the labs and the campus and had a great time doing that.

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Day 6: Urine for a Treat

It was hard transitioning from the long weekend to another week of work, and it seemed to have taken a toll on the doctors too. The forensic doctors admitted to us that they were sluggish and moody and yearned for the weekend. But once everyone woke up they were enthusiastic about going back to work again, because everyone there loved their work.
Today we went down to a basement to discover even more labs. The lab that we worked on today, however, wasn’t exactly ideal. The doctors explained that sometimes you need to locate drugs in urine, and to do that they need a lab space to gather this urine. So Kiran and I spent the entire day pouring urine into a giant container to gather enough DNA to ship off to a different lab.

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Day 4: It’s not the End

It’s the last day and we’re sad to be leaving, we had an incredible time here and we’re so grateful that all the doctors let us shadow them all day and follow them around.

Today I spent the day following around Nicole, and Kiran was with me this time. We had spent most of the time separated and doing separate checkups but this time we did all the checkups together. All the doctors knew that it was our last day and they wanted to celebrate by ordering pizza for lunch, so they told us not to pack a lunch today. I didn’t really get upset until we were all eating lunch together and I realized it was our last day with them and I had really gotten to like the doctors.

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We worked more on patients in need of cochlear implants, and helped each patient regain their hearing and we saw how some of them had dealt with it. One woman, actually, hadn’t heard the chirp of a bird until she was 45 years old, which we found absolutely astonishing. She was 51 now and she heard so well and fluently.

Final Days of DICE-ing at SAS – Day 6&7, Reaghan

My final two days working in the social selling department, I worked on finishing my projects and continuing to get a feel for environment. It was really cool to be able to collaborate with Alli and Courtney to understand their experienced perspective. While the project of analyzing 1500 professional LinkedIn profiles seemed monotonous at first, it did end up very interesting in the long run. After Courtney’s explanation of how using social media can be such a building factor in business, it was really surprising how underdeveloped most of the employee’s profiles were. Pulling up each profile brought a sometimes very surprising profile picture, for a corporate setting. Not a day went by that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the incredibly welcoming environment of SAS. I didn’t run into a single person that didn’t match the friendly and personable traits that seemed to fit every employee. Aside from learning about the specifics of Courtney and Alli’s jobs, it was very interesting to learn about the social selling/marketing department as a whole. It’s very much a team atmosphere – what one person manages for a personal account, there’s a whole team of employees working on a company’s online presence. I didn’t really have an expectations going into my first day in the social selling department, and I’m very happy with the experience that I ended up with!

The Necessary Evils – Day 3, Reaghan

Today was relatively laid back with not as many meetings to attend. Most of our day consisted of editing & uploading the video from Courtney’s social selling class, which has to go through an approval process before being sent out to all of SAS’s social selling department.  There were a few meetings after lunch with Courtney’s co-workers, but it was really interesting to hear how the team is putting the program together. Social selling is a fairly new department for SAS, so it’s a building process. SAS locations all around the world have social selling reps, and one of Courtney’s responsibilities is to travel to these other locations. She uploads really cool pictures of her travels to the Facebook page linked, it’s definitely worth checking out!