March 12 First Day Of L.I.N.K
Today was the first day of my internship with the train in the marketing department. At first I was very nervous which made me come off as shy, but once I was greeted warmly by my mentor Andrea, my nerverousness wore off quickly and I was able to relax and be myself. My mentor introduced me to everyone in our office, Jamie who is the event coordinator also happens to be the only guy in the office, shook my hand and gave me a warm welcoming smile which helped me feel more comfortable. Carrie is the sales woman, she has to attend meetings and she negotiates all the big sales for the advertisements. Yvonne is the marketing specialist she specializes in pretty much everything there is to do with marketing such as how the advertisements are arranged. Yvonne also, like me, has a passion for photography she takes beautiful pictures of the train in different positions and seasons and she puts her photographs on the train’s website as well on the train’s facebook page. Andrea, my mentor, is the marketing manager she is kind of like the boss of the office she is very friendly and helpful. One thing I found that was helpful for me is the connection I have with Andrea for the first half hour we sat and got to know each other by talking over a nice cup of tea, we talked about school and life and I feel like that really gave me a chance to connect with my mentor and get to know her more as well as she getting to know me. After our talk I met about 20 more people around the train Scotty the tech guy helped me get my computer connected to the server and also to the group hard drive. On the group hard drive its kind of a place similar to facebook or edmodo, where my fellow employees and I can email one another tasks and ideas and different meetings that is separate from our daily email accounts. This new email account that I now have is strictly for business, which is very helpful because now I can keep updated on what my colleagues are working on and what I can do to help them. My first task today was to meet as many people as I can and get an idea on all the things that they do and how their individual job connects to the overall process of the train. My second task was to organize last year’s advertisements in a binder in alphabetical order, I found out that we keep our advertisements from the previous years so that we can reference them for our new advertisements. On the side bar you will see a link for pictures of my experience, in this link there is a visual of what exactly I mean please feel free to click the link to get a better idea. Thank You.
March 13th Second Day of L.I.N.K
Today was my second day of L.I.N.K
My tasks today was to sit in on a meeting with my mentor to get a feel for how meetings are runned and also get a chance to meet the other heads of the different departments at the train. From the meeting i found out that there are around 12 other departments in the train station and there is one guy Paul Schranck, who is the general manager of all the departments and he is kind of the reporter for his boss,who i havent met yet, who then reports everything to my Uncle Al Harper. So its sort of like a chain series with the head of everything Al Harper, then the second in comand would be the boss of Schrank who i have yet to meet, and then its Schrank who is the boss of all the other heads of the departments, and then its the head of the departments, my mentor Andrea, who is then the boss of the different divisions of the department, which would be I and my other employees. and i believe the other employees have the right to be the boss of each other, It sounds complicated i know, but it makes more sense as you go along in the work force. I also would like to note that Al harper, Paul Schrank, Andrea, and all the other employees here at the train are all very nice people and it really doesnt feel like anyone is really the boss because the meetings are runned more like a seminar and well no one really acts like a dictator. I really like the way the train is runned, i had a conversation with my grandmother the other day and she mentioned that the qualitity of a company really relies on how that company is managed. And just from the two days i've been here I can honestly say that i believe this company is managed very well and it has outstanding quality to it. Thank You.
My tasks today was to sit in on a meeting with my mentor to get a feel for how meetings are runned and also get a chance to meet the other heads of the different departments at the train. From the meeting i found out that there are around 12 other departments in the train station and there is one guy Paul Schranck, who is the general manager of all the departments and he is kind of the reporter for his boss,who i havent met yet, who then reports everything to my Uncle Al Harper. So its sort of like a chain series with the head of everything Al Harper, then the second in comand would be the boss of Schrank who i have yet to meet, and then its Schrank who is the boss of all the other heads of the departments, and then its the head of the departments, my mentor Andrea, who is then the boss of the different divisions of the department, which would be I and my other employees. and i believe the other employees have the right to be the boss of each other, It sounds complicated i know, but it makes more sense as you go along in the work force. I also would like to note that Al harper, Paul Schrank, Andrea, and all the other employees here at the train are all very nice people and it really doesnt feel like anyone is really the boss because the meetings are runned more like a seminar and well no one really acts like a dictator. I really like the way the train is runned, i had a conversation with my grandmother the other day and she mentioned that the qualitity of a company really relies on how that company is managed. And just from the two days i've been here I can honestly say that i believe this company is managed very well and it has outstanding quality to it. Thank You.
March 14 3rd Day of L.I.N.K
Today I used excel to organize a contact sheet for all the major businesses the train associates with. I had to organize the contacts from name of the person or persons to contact, the name of their company, a email to reach them by, and possibly a phone number. This is going to help the marketing department a ton because when things are organized its easier to get what you want and need when you want and need it. I also was given the task today to help Carrie Whitley with some ads for an event that will be happening April 5th and 6th, my task was to call two newspaper companies Telluride Planet, and Montrose Daily Press and negotiate some ad space in their business sections that will run from March 18th to March 28th, i was given a $600.00 budget and i had to figure out a equal way to split the budget between the two papers. I've learned that ad space is not cheap and there are certain deals for example one ad in Telluride Planet costs $126.00 and for 6 ads (which was the amount i wanted) costs $736.00 But there was a deal for a by two adds and get three adds free if we did the deal we would only pay $252.00 and the total amount of 5 ads will have to run consecutively for one week. Meaning run one ad every single day of the week. I being the awesome negotiator I am got the lady Maureen to lower the cost so we only had to pay $200.00 which was pretty great.
March 15 4th Day of L.I.N.K
Today I was working on trying to get a hold of Montrose Press who still hasn't returned any of my phone calls I need to talk to man named Denis Anderson about the cost of one ad space in his paper, and if there are any deals and if i can negotiate some deals because the event is non profiting, and it has been very frustrating and my boss Carrie has been on my back and asking me to call him which by now i've probably left 10 different voice mails Im hoping he will contact me before I get off of work. On the upside though, I got my own company phone so I dont have to use my regular cell phone for business calls. I love having my own company phone it makes me feel super professional and business like. I also found out that if I had my license I would get my own company car! :D but sadly I dont get my license until October. Oh well being a intern at the train is fun at least. (:
March 16 5th day of L.I.N.K
This morning i got to experience the mandatory orientation for new employees, I got to learn some history of the train such as at Baker's Bridge the old workers would put explosives in the rocks and they would blow the rocks up to make more room for the railroad and to do this they litterally hung from rope off the bridge and they had to measure how much rope they needed because when they lit the explosives they had to climb the rope in time before the explosives went off otherwise they would die. Luckily no one died during the exploding rocks period but still that would be a pretty sketchy job to do. After I learned about the historical facts I got a tour of the whole company as well as some safety rules such as there are certain buldings at the station such as the warehouse where if you enter the building you need to have proper safety equipment on such as a hard helmet, safety glasses and protective gloves because in the warehouse they fix up the trains and theres big power tools everywhere. I also learned from the orientation that when a train blows its whistle 2 times the train is going to move forward on the tracks, and if it blows its whistle 3 times the train is moving backwards and 1 whistle blow means its either stopping or proceeding to do what it said it was going to do, this is particularly important to me because i regularly cross the tracks so knowing if the train is moving or not moving is important so i dont get hit on the job. There are so many other lessons in orientation i could go on forever about them but i should probably also cover the fact that the Montrose daily press guy did finally get back in touch with me and I did make my final deal with him which is a buy two adds and get four free which means we paid $334.00 for the add space and we got 6 adds to run so that was really good and i was happy to finally get it done. My Other task was so much more fun, after lunch I got to help Jamie Ryan, the male in the office who is not much older than me, decorate some of the train cars for st. Patricks day(: I got to hang green and orange streamers in a very authentic, artsy manner, I also got the oppertunity to blow up for cool balloons as well as hear about the other fun features that will be on the train such as green ale(: and i suggested we also do some green sprite for the kids but it was a lot more fun to get out of the office and do some decorating, although it took 1 hour to decorate one train and we had to decorate 3 of them so after the first train it wasnt very much fun but still better then being in the office.
March 19 6th day of L.I.N.K
Today was my 6th day of my L.I.N.K experience and my task today was to send a copy of the ad and all its measurements to the two newspaper companies, my ad is a 5" by 5" black and white ad, that needs to be published in the business section of the paper because it retains to a business matter. And I had to use my own personal company email as well as my company phone to make these arrangments, i felt very business like. My other task was to read the Cinders And Smoke a mile by mile guide for the train, and i had to highlight all the fun narrating things that people would want to know and then i had to type a script which will be used on the train that does the scripting so the people on the train doing the scripting will be reading my script which i find is very neat (:
March 20 7th day of L.I.N.K
Today i finished up some of the script im writing for an event the train does my second mentor Yvonne had me do this for her, I also was asked by Carrie to hand out some flyers for the Tour Summit event that we are doing on April 5th and 6th. Andrea my mentor asked me to look over some notes they took at a meeting and to reorganize them to make sense and put each one in catagories and it was a little difficult because I couldnt read the hand writting very well but nonetheless I persevered and got the job done. Around 12 ish after lunch I got to interview andrea you can watch the video on my link provided in the scroll bar under L.I.N.K titled Mentor Interview. I feel like I asked some really good personal questions and I got some great answers back that has helped me get an better idea about this work force and the necessary steps I should be taking to achieve a future career in this work force so that was great and nice I left early to go to school for a chemisty river watch session, sadly though i had to leave early due to the fact that I am sick.
March 21 8th day of L.I.N.K
I stayed in bed with a 102 degree fever, and a bad cough and head ache today was not a great day for me :/
March 22 9th day of L.I.N.K
I went in to the Ignacio Health Clinic because I wasnt feeling very well I still had a 102 degree fever, and my cough had gotten worse and my nose started to run and I started getting some bad body aches so i went in and got some antibiotics, they are treating me for Strep Throat, so as the doctors orders I will not be able to attend my internship until Monday March 26th.
March 23 10th day of L.I.N.K
I stayed in bed I emailed my mentors and they really dont have any work for me so I havent done anything but read the novel we were assigned in our Humanities class, being sick however I dont think I will really remember what i've read so I may have to re-read the novel again when I am feeling better. I feel really bad and I can not wait til Im well enough to go back to my internship.
March 26 11th day of L.I.N.K
Today I have returned, I am feeling better and Rachel Sands stopped by to say hi taking some embarrasing pictures of me on the job and talk to me about my final project for exhibition, i've taken the day slow, I asked my mother to help me hand out the rest of the flyers around town to some places I couldnt for the Tour Summit event, and i worked on the script some more but mostly I have been spending my time working on my D.P and trying to figure out all my work and what i am going to do for my overall project, i feel that a power point of my work and daily stuff is a little lame I'd rather take an artist approach and maybe do a poem about my experience. I also learned today that I should take more annititative of my interests and I am going to write an article for the trains magazine on my own and see how that goes. I feel a lot better now that i am back at work sort of sad that there is only 4 more days left but if all goes well I want have to say goodbye just yet I may get to stay another week for the Tour Summit and the Easter Beagle the two events that I've been working on while interning at the train. I Just want to take this time and thank everyone in my L.I.N.K program for making this all possible for me I have had so far a life changing amazing experience that has been really educational as well as fun. So thank you Rachel, Andrea, Yvonne, Jammie, Carrie, and Al Harper you all are so awesome!
March 27 12th day of L.I.N.K
Today I was given the task of writing an article that will be published in the train's magazine about the Winter train that runs from late Novemeber to early May. Not very many people know that the train runs during the winter and they are often shocked when people from my job tell them about it. So my job was to write a rhetorical article to inform and encourage people to ride the winter train because it does run and there are a lot of luxurious treatments it has to offer. I was able to use the rhetorical skills i've gained from my humanities class and apply them to the article which really helped me. After i wrote the article i updated my digital portfolio and i went on my lunch break after lunch i got to walk around the train tracks and take multiple photos of the train which i am going to edit and post to my dp under the pictures title located in the L.I.N.K scroll bar so please be sure to check those out. I am getting really sad because i will be soon leaving my Internship to go back to school and just thinking about all the things I will miss is really upsetting but the good news is that i will hopefully get to come back to the train for a summer job which would be absolutely incredible! so thats something i am definitely counting on. I hope to hear from my fellow peers soon and get to know about all they're accomplishments(: