For my Internship project I was given the idea from my mentor to create a trafficking schedule that would measure the amount of people in each studio of the South Bay YMCA facility for each hour of the day that I was working. I began with simply making a spreadsheet of all the hours that the Y is open for each day, then inserting the classes that were being held within the certain hours. This was for me to know which studios were being in use at certain hours and which ones weren’t. After doing the class schedules, I began to conduct hourly head counts around the facility. I would go inside each room and count the people inside so I would be able to keep record for my final project. I was planning on creating three types of different graphs. An Hourly Traffic by Day graph, Weekly Trafficking Flow graph, and a Daily Traffic Count graph. My mentor told me I would be the first one in the whole entire South Bay YMCA facility to ever create a trafficking schedule and would be the beginning of a long term annual yearly project. My project was designed to help out the marketing director which was my mentor Tina Medina so she can use the data for her marketing benefits. By me creating a schedule of the trafficking flow of the YMCA my mentor would have an advantage of knowing which days are the busiest and which days need more improvement. This will allow her to start new events for the non-busy days and have the YMCA always having people there. My project will also benefit the staff at the Y because they will be aware of which days and hours they will be most crowded so they know what to expect, and maybe call in more staff so that the reception staff won’t be overwhelmed with a lot of people. People who attend the Y will also be informed with this information too, members and non-members will be able to use these graphs to get an idea of what time they might consider coming in making the Y facility more spread out on the capacity by the hours and days. I feel really proud to say that I have made history at the South Bay Family YMCA and I will be remembered by many staff. My day consisted of coming at different hours of the day, conducting headcounts every hour, and helping almost every single staff in the building. When the day was really busy I would be in charge of managing the front kiosk signing people in and answering any questions they had. It was a pretty cool experience because I got to meet a lot of new people and became really familiar with how the front reception works. One of the best experiences I had was getting to meet this really cool guy named Leo who helped me out sign up for these Lifeguarding classes/ Tryouts for the YMCA, hoping for me to stay with them at their branch. Some days I would be at the teen center collaborating with other students on events that my friend and I were hosting. At one point we were assigned to create and plan out a Father’s day event for family’s and have them all bond together with arts and crafts and fun little games that we came up with. The really cool thing about this event is that we tried contacting Home Depot to partner up with the Y so they can host a children’s workshop, having all the kids build something that was not to complicated but still very cool to be proud of and have a blast. Everything worked out pretty well, we reached out to the main person in charge of the workshops but we never got to meet her because she was too busy, but we wrote her very professional letter with all the information we were going to tell her in person. They never replied back and we even showed up to the Home Depot location a couple times but we never got a reply. Even though it didn’t go as we planned it was the effort that counted and the skills we learned for us to outreach to other professional company’s. I also got to make calls for one of the campaigns we were running that month that was called Hop the Gap. Hop the Gap was basically a campaign of donations so that kids could achieve more this summer by providing them with camp, swim lessons, academics and more. My job was to call member/ nonmembers and ask them if they were interested in donating any amount of money for the cause. It was really scary at first how I explained in my previous posts but I got a hang of it eventually and before I knew it I was marketing over the phone. I was only able to get one person to donate money but it was still a pretty cool learning experience. I would have late shifts also so I got to experience best of both worlds at the Y. One week I would only have a morning schedule so I can collect the data for my project and then have closing hours for the same reason. I really enjoyed the late shifts because I became really close to the staff members and it was the time where the staff would actually teach me things and how they work instead of just giving me tasks to do without me knowing why. This project was really important to me because I will be able to use the skills I learned to create the graphs using spread sheets for multiple purposes in my future life. I was really lost in the beginning when my mentor would just verbally explain things to me, but as the days past I began to get a better understanding of what she wanted and everything would just be lining up for me. I will be able to use this internship experience for any future job references I need because I know they will all put in a good word for me since I was always trying to be an awesome intern! The only advice I can give to whoever is reading this is, whenever you are assigned something you don’t know how to do or feel less than everyone else, don’t be afraid to take a chance and be wrong. We all mistakes but we have to learn from our experiences. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the more you work and put effort towards something you will have really awesome results.
Ive noticed a lot of leadership skills from mostly every single one of the staffs here. I want to develop these leadership skills so that one day I can be the one in charge giving orders to others so the business can run smoothly. I got to see my mentor in action yesterday doing her marketing job. She was baisically given this booklet from one of her co workers and she had to overview it with her marketing eye and make sure everything was correct. I noticed her circling and crossing things out of booklet and rearranging the pages, which was very awesome because before anything could be published it had to be overlooked by her first. This reminded me of a student turning in a test to the teacher and the teacher grading it right in front of their face but explaining what needs to be done differntly. I also got to experience seeing the Vice President of the South Bay Family YMCA take on a serious leadership role. I was inside the Y offices when all of a sudden I just over heard her telling people what to do, when to do it, and how she wanted it. It sounded a bit harsh, but It is her job to address things to her staff in order to get everything good and on time. I really admired these moments because I was able to look up to her so when I have a future project or anything, I will be able to take on those leadership skills.
My view of life beyond high school has changed a lot throughout my internship. I have noticed that most of the friendships in highschool are baisically a joke. As bad as that sounds its the truth, in my perspective that is. Here at work I was able to create actual friendships with people who accept you for who you are, not for how you dress or look like. This has really given me a big motivation to not worry about highschiool in the sense of friends and trying to be popular because lets face it, after highschool everyone goes their own path and starts over again. My internship has really inspired me to want to go to college even more now since I have an Idea of what a college degree can lead to and where you will work. I am really excited for what my life beyond high school will look like. I sort of have an Idea, but I know it will be way better than what I am already dreaming of. I have learned that you are basically the pilot of your own life. We live in a time where almost anything is possible, you just have to put the work and effort in for it. I can honestly say that because of this experience it has made me really want to work more and dream bigger for what I will one day accomplish. I am really thankful I got experience this and learn some lessons out of it and I can only prepare myself physically and mentally for what will one day be an obstacle to overcome for me. I believe that my internship has inspired me to just keep looking forward and not let the past define me for who I am now. I look at others around me and see how much they affect the community and it really motivates me. I want to be able to be someone who people look up to and say "wow, look at what he has become!' I am very confident that I will hear those words from many people one day, and my confidence will guide me throughout my whole career. So I thank all the staff here at The Y and my mentor for helping me learn these valuable lessons. Some of the skills I brought to the YMCA had to do a lot with communication and cooperation. I have always enjoyed meeting new people and starting conversations with them. I am in the marketing department and that has a lot to do with communication and relationship building skills, something I feel really comfortable with. I have a lot of experience working with all types of people and I feel like I have been able to incorporate those skills and experience to my workplace. This has been really useful when it came to the events I attended to to promote the YMCA and try to get people to sign up. I also am always working in the front and I get to meet a lot of new people which is really cool because I am always seeing new faces. When I am not doing my head counts I am usually at the membership kiosk welcoming people in and signing them in to get access to the Y. During that time many people come up to me asking questions and I get to use my Sherlock skills to observe them and know how to approach them. It is overall something I am really satisfied in incorporating into the Y. I was assigned to make calls for our Hop the Gap campaign which was basically asking members and non members if they would like to donate any amount of money for the youth to achieve more this summer by providing them with camp, swim lessons and more. This was something pretty new to me because I have always been use to having face to face encounters and having a conversation in person. At first it was pretty scary because I had no idea what to expect since I didn't know them and I was just asking for money but someone told me to pretend as if I was talking to my grandma asking for money. As funny as that advice was it really helped me relieve some stress and made it easier for me to communicate with the person on the line. I became more comfortable the more calls I made and I was able to learn how to speak to others on the phone with much more ease than I use to.
I believe the project I am making with my mentor Tina will impact the Y a lot. We are creating a trafficking schedule so that staff and people who attend the Y are aware of what days and hours are the busiest throughout the whole week. I was told that the South Bay Family YMCA has never had a trafficking schedule but would come in very handy, I am very proud to say that I will be the first one to create a trafficking schedule for the whole facility with my mentor. I have been doing a head count around the whole facility and its buildings every single hour to help staff become ready for those crowded times and let people who attend the YMCA know when it would be best times and days to go for them. On the days and hours that aren't as crowded, my mentor and I plan on presenting a graph to the staff in order for them to come up with ideas on how they can have people come in at every single hour other than just the same hours everyone usually comes in at. It is a work in progress but I am almost done, I haven't even showed people but everyone is always wondering why I am writing in my journal and what I am planning to do. This motivates me a lot because I had never heard of a trafficking schedule or what its for and when my final piece is ready I will be very proud of what I have accomplished with the help of my mentor Tina and her previous experiences at different workplaces in the marketing department. All this work for my internship has really helped me in my education. I have became more experienced on how the real world working field is like and the techniques they use to make their life more easier. Almost everyone tells me "Work smarter not harder." This is a really big thing for me because I am always over working myself focusing on all the little details and it really slows me down. I have learned how to become much more confident in my work and how to take on tasks that the staff members do. I will now be able to apply this to school and my life when ever I am assigned a problem or I encounter something new. My self advocacy has improved also in the sense that I am no longer timid to ask someone I don't know a question I need help with. I have also obtained the responsibility to make up for my own mistakes and any assignments my co workers give me. When I come to work I forget I attend high school and automatically change attitudes into my working mode. I was able to learn these skills by only experiencing a real life working experience at a professional place other than working at a fast food place or retail store. Even though I came in here not having one Idea of what exactly I was going to be doing I got to learn a lot of helpful advice from all my co workers and my daily experiences. I now can really understand the saying, " You learn something new every single day." |