This week's project

Hello all!
This week has been so busy, of course with it being the week before school actually starts. I have been put on a new project while I am at Westhills. Every agent has their own form of advertising for themselves. I am working twenty+ binders that will be given to the agents to hand out to clients so they can learn our process and see if it is right for them.
In this binder I will put their testimonials and the company’s information. First, I had to email all of the employees to obtain this information. Stacey guided me through this process as I had to use her account for the company logo and everything.
So this week has been a lot of typing, reading, data entry and less in the way of working with our clients. I start my pre-licensing course this Wednesday and I am a bit nervous because I won’t know any of the adults that while be there. Some of the agents have been advising me to overcompensate for the fact that I am younger. They said my confidence will have to be high when working with my first couple of clients because as I will need to seem like I have already had some experience in the field. (A new wardrobe maybe??!) Though I think it has to do more with my mannerisms.

Write me soon!
cm

Internship at LVSYS

Hey everyone, I am currently an intern for LVSYS, a tiny software and website design company. Over the course of this internship I will be working on one major project that will hopefully be useful enough for small businesses to purchase. My goal is to create a software that allows a business to input a series of related business data (product info, employee info, research and development, and many others) and outputs a projected income report for different intervals of time (one month, one year, perhaps up to four). So far I've been able to create the basic fraimwork for the application, like how forms react with each other and their connection to a main database. Here's to hoping that I'm not in way over my head, more posts to follow.

My Internship at West Hills Realty

Hey everyone,

My name is Calynda, Calyn for short and I will be using this blog to write about my experiences as I intern with a real estate company in Mac. For one reason or another, I am starting this blog after a month of already working for West Hills.

I am the assistant to the assistant, we have two, so it's either Stacey or Valorie. Stacey is the assistant to the principle broker and Val is the assistant for property management. I've shadowed with both of them.

Today, I just wanted to write about the first time I helped to show a house. That was quite an experience! I was invited to go with one of the agents to a house for the showing and we drove to Westvale street and got out. From the front of the house everything seemed quite ordinary, but the the back of the house was the impressive part. This house had a detailed outside functioning kitchen, a covered porch, a special area for their hot tub as well as two lean-to structures for carpentry. The garden was also well taken care of and their decor was simply divine, but I never would have guessed that from looking at the outside of it. (Again this judging a book by it's cover thing comes up!) Well the couple looked at the house for probably an hour, (which is a long time in the real estate bus.), that helped to key me into the fact that they were interested in making an offer.

They spoke highly of the property the entire ride back and ended up making an offer on it. We are still working out the kinks of the contract however, so I cannot yet tell you if it has sold.

Will write more later,
thanks for checking it out.
cm

News-Register intern gets the scoop

Being the first to know something is an awesome feeling- especially if you are a reporter. Being the first to know something important is a thrill. Today was a milestone for me. I was sitting in the newsroom working on transcribing an interview for a feature I plan to write and someone from the front desk asked where everyone was. I didn't know, and for that reason she transferred a call from Captain Ken Summers to my desk. He told me that a prisoner escaped from the courthouse that day-- BREAKING NEWS delivered straight from his mouth to my ear. He wanted N-R to put something up on the internet about what happened, only he didn't give me a full description or tell me what the man was wanted for. I called around and around and around- believe me, and I eventually found information on his description. I typed up a medium sized paragraph, but Dan Shryrock did one better. He told me to condense the info into a 90 character blurb, he was going to text message it through our system to the people who were signed up for that service of ours. Genius, I thought. We listened to the police scanner to keep abreast of any details and there really weren't any. I gave a call to Steve Bagwell and he told me to e-mail him the breaking story so that he could post it to the Web immediately. I couldn't do that without finding out more details. I called around and was given the direct number to Capt. Summers. Summers gave me a name and told me a what he knew about the escapee's criminal background. It was quite interesting what I learned from him. I was the one who got the info all together when no one else was around. How exciting. It really was quite amazing. Dan says that was the greatest thing that could have happened to me. I feel like a star sort of... But this star has to go to church. As of a quarter to seven the suspect. Andrew James Webb, 28, has not been located although he is BAREFOOT, in a BLUE JUMPSUIT and HANDCUFFED. It is believed that he planned his escape--- I hope you read the story about him, he was pretty clever.
To be continued.
I got my big break. Bigger than being on the front page at least once.
___ Update____
My name isn't on the story, but I had the info first. And it's not that grand a deal to me anymore so I guess that's that.
Septembre 'The intern' Russell

Yamhill County Jail Tour

Have you ever been to jail? I have! As part of our training, Lisa organized a tour of the Yamhill County Jail for all of the interns. This is relevant to our industry because of the cases we see daily about parole, failure to appear, warrants, etc, as well as it just being an interesting experience.

Our tour was lead by the Yamhill County Sheriff, and first we had to sign in and promise that we weren't bringing any weapons into the jail. The Sheriff then took us around the building and we entered the building like we would if we had been arrested and were arriving in a police car. The jail has a holding area that can fit 2 cop cars so that they can close the doors to that holding area and unload the arrestee with no chance that they could escape. This is a new addition to the jail, and much of the construction for this remodel was done by inmates on work release. The jail has many opportunities for inmates to work within the jail on various projects, and many who meet the criteria take advantage of this.

The booking area was the next stop on our tour. The entire jail has white brick walls, and this was no different. I began to feel somewhat claustrophobic when we were shown the seperate men's and women's holding cells, both very small spaces. The sheriff explained that in the remodel they also added enough holding cells so that there can now be an isolation cell if certain inmates who are waiting for booking cannot be in the same room together (i.e., fighting). There is a toilet in each holding cell with a short partition separating it, but it really would offer no privacy. There were also hooks placed intermittently along the wall so that the inmates could be handcuffed to the wall if need be. These were sights that I can't say I didn't expect, but they were shocking none-the-less.

Once we saw the whole process through which an inmate was booked, which includes a strip/cavity search with a same-sex deputy, we saw the personal items that each inmate receives upon booking. This includes a orange jumpsuit, plastic shower shoes, and a bedding roll that had one cotton sheet and one wool blanket. The mattresses were about 2 inches thick. Inmates do not receive pillows. The sheriff said that inmates can petition for an extra mattress if they have back problems or something, but that is the only exception.

Seeing inmates in the mess hall was a strange experience. Most of the inmates were walking in circles around the room, just to get some exercise. Others were playing games, watching TV, or writing in journals. The mess hall has 2 rather large flat screen TVs, but the sheriff was quick to mention that these were NOT paid for by tax payers' money, but rather from the proceeds of a program that allows inmates to buy special items like paper and pens, candy, or toiletries. I thought this was an interesting program and I was glad to hear that something like this was being utilized.

After the tour we were able to ask questions about parole and conditions of release, and we gained a lot of insight that has specific relevance to our jobs. Lisa is offering a tour to the Federal Prison in Sheridan, but I don't think I'll be attending. The jail was sobering enough, and I really have no more desire to spend another day in jail!

A month so far - Summer internship 09

Hi all,

I hope all of you are doing OK! It has been a month so far since the first day I got back to Vietnam and started my internship. Everything has been going pretty well for me.

I've finished my first project: designing the summer newsletter for Operation Smile Vietnam. I felt really struggle when I received this project since I have no experience in editing news. My writing is not excellent, and so is my designing skill. Things that helped me most were the previous newsletters published few years ago with "old-fashioned" format and lay-out.

However, stress time fade away quite fast, I felt interested in my job when doing a lot of research about the organization as well as its charity programs and activities. I had chances to meet the children and adults who had cleft lips or palate deformities. I had chances to talk to celebrities and famous individuals such as CEOs of several big enterprises in Vietnam. I also could improve my designing (photoshop) skill.

I started my second project: patients tracking. Operation Smile Vietnam has been running programs in Vietnam since 1989. My second project is to finding the patients we operated within the period from 1989 to present, updating their information, and writing stories about their life since being operated. This is a pretty hard job because we only have their medical records which were saved by the time they came to Operation Smile. However, those records do not provide full information such as full address, phone numbers, and so on. Moreover, even the address might be recorded, it could be changed after a few years. We have been trying to contact authorities and other helpful agencies to ask for our patients' address.

It has been really busy for me, but there's been a lot of fun :) I hope you all enjoy the summer!

D.H

News-Register intern drops the ball.

Ahh!
I was a little worried about my lack of posts for the past, let me count, five weeks. My last post was at the culmination of week five and here I am in the middle of week ten. I was somewhat relieved when I returned to find that I wasn't the only one unfaithful to the blogging cause. I think I missed the due date for the second paper, too. There is a reason for that. Things sort of tapered off for a little bit- though I'm here to admit that they have picked up but I have also been busy with school and looking for paid employment, too. So there it is. I apologize and I will give a well-deserved update on what I've been doing (and writing)!
Sidebar: I'm working on a brief and also waiting to follow a lead on a story about a lost dog who was recovered--- exciting!

The End of the Line

The end of a experience tends to force a person into reflection mode, and being at the finish line of my internship, I would like to share a few things I learned this summer.

1) Marketing tells a story. In a short period a writer needs to convey an original reality, how their product improved that reality, and the end result of the change. The reader needs imagine themselves in a stranger's story, capable of seeing that particular product also improving their life. In an age where tons of information comes crashing toward anyone and everyone, marketers have to fight harder and harder for several minutes of your attention span.

2) Working from home has benefits and pitfalls. On one hand, the home office comes packaged with short commute times (from my bed to my computer, how will I ever make it!), cheaper fixed costs, and the convenience of making money while in your slippers. On the other hand, life is a adventure, and staying home is not. I felt a little socially isolated, always staying inside Debra's home, just a cat to share my 'office' with. A traditional office, with water-cooler gossip and parking space battles, is more my preferred environment. Last summer, working on Capitol Hill, I sometimes didn't really want to leave work, instead preferring to spend time with my co-workers. When work becomes fun, life is grand.

3) The small business world is mean, crowded, currently desperate, and packs a long-term memory. The Portland high-tech marketing and public relations industry pool is fairly small; a former co-worker could become your adversary, and a once-friendly colleague could later put you out of business. Paths may divide but often cross again, and you must be careful what you say. A distasteful remark concerning a former colleague can come back biting down the road. Often, the most important P.R. campaign a agency can undertake is their own.

If you were wondering, Debra did eventually prevail in the contract war previously mentioned, and her tiny agency now has a brighter, stable future. She was generous enough to shower me with gallons of stories from her career, advice from past situations, and projections of the business future. While I'm undecided whether the high-tech marketing world is right for me, I am grateful for this experience. I've learned more about marketing, about business in general, than Linfield's textbooks and lectures have conveyed in three years. My perception of my professional future is much more realistic. It's a jungle out there, but at least I now know that.

My ride on the Debra Seifert Communications LLC express has come to a close. Once far away yet clearly visible, my stop on the railroad approached. As I left the train, the engine began to revive, and again began grinding toward the future.