Web Portfolio Submission

I am really excited about my final product of my web portfolio for English 491A. I hope that I tackled all of the things I could generically since nothing that I work on can be viewed outside of my office computer.

To see my web portfolio click this link or type in the following web address:

http://web.me.com/j.thrasher/ThrasherPortfolio

It's important to capitalize the T and P in "ThrasherPortfolio" in order for it to work.

Meetings

I've always wondered what people meant when they would say things like, "Sorry I've been in a meeting all day" or "Sorry, I am going to have to work over late today, go to dinner without me."

After last week, I have come to realize these expressions more than I ever thought that I would.

Last week we had to run Reviewer meetings which consisted of my team of employees running the computer, technology, documetns and Excel files for Reviewers at the Department of Energy building. Though my shift was never that rigorous (4 hours at a time), some people would start the day at 8a.m. with the Reviewers, and not leave until 10:30p.m. with only 1 lunch break. These are true, dedicated professionals who are working hard to get the President Obama's stimulus package out in to the American job force, and I commend them.

I am sure that over the course of the next couple of weeks there will be plenty more days and weeks similar to this, but I am hoping they will go over a little easier on everyone now that we have some experience with them.

Doing It For the Prez

Another obligatory posting here.

Turns out that a lot of the documents that I am working on are going to be looked at by President Obama in the near future! How crazy is that?

I don't know or want to disclose any of the details but basically I'm helping to sort and sift through the stimulus package and the money that was alotted to the Department of Energy as a result. There may even be a very small chance that I get to meet him, or at least be around him. Again, don't want to say anything for sure but this can all just be rumor at the moment.

I think my Capstone blog is turning in to a gossip website!

Work has been interesting since I last updated. I had my first reviewer meeting, which consisted of me clicking through documents on a screen for the reviewers, typing out comments, and changing or creating scores. Again, that is about the extent that I can explain the meetings since they are very sensitive.

After I sat in a meeting for 5 hours, I was supposed to QA (Quality Assure) about 25 documents in less than 2 hours, which was basically impossible. It got done, but not entirely by me.

I've worked here for a while now and I think I am just now getting used to the network folders. There are so many folders and files that I just couldn't even begin to remember where things were. It was frustrating when I would be working on something one day, sit down at my computer the next, and have absolutely no idea where the files are because they sitting about as easy to find as the Titanic.

Well, back to work for now!

What's It Called When I Have to Pay $2,000 to Come to Work!?

So today was a pretty disastrous day from the beginning. Not only am I commuting an hour from home to work, but I looked at my tuition statement for my one 3-credit internship class.

Keep in mind that this internship is a MUST and a REQUIREMENT in order for me to graduate. I thought that I had lucked out and landed an awesome job working for the National Energy Technology Lab, making a great wage and getting internship credit. Boy was I wrong!

Though the job is great, and I love the experience and the people I work with, and the coffee, it turns out that I have to pay $1,979.00 just to be here! That's right, in order for me to get summer internship credit, my one 3-credit class that I have this summer is nearly $2,000. That's a huge chunk of what I would be making this entire summer.

When does it make sense that a student has to PAY to come to work? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Did I mention we're in a recession, and that the unemployment rate is 9.4%? WVU thought it would be a good idea to hike up the tuition 4% over last year. Thanks WVU - always looking out for us.

The "class" which is 100% online, and has no tests, quizes, or lectures, has a text book requirement, one of which is about portfolio keeping. If I'm a senior about to graduate in the PWE program and don't know how to keep a proper web portfolio or a regular portfolio for that matter, then I shouldn't be graduating. I have kept a portfolio and presented it in nearly every English class I have had at WVU. And don't EVEN get me started on the amount of resumes I have made in my undergrad career.

To stretch things beyond worse, I called Admissions & Records today to ask when I had to pay my money so I could have a paying internship was, and the woman replied with "I don't know. Actually, as soon as possible. It's due the moment you sign in to the class." Then she goes on to say that in the event that you don't pay it, $40 per month is added until you do.

So, if anyone reading this has a spare $2,000 laying around for one 3-credit "class" please let me know, as I could definitely make use of it!

Introductory Post!

So, I am a little late with these blog postings because I didn't get in to the class until late, but I am going to be making them up.

So far I have really enjoyed my experience here at Technology & Management Services (TMS), which is a contracting company for the National Energy Technology Lab (NETL). I got the job hearing about it from a friend (Andrea Ware) who went through the PWE program at WVU as well, and is a current employee.

I am in my third week now, and I think I am finally getting settled in. The first week was extremely stressful, but only because I didn't know anyone and didn't know exactly what I was doing. That kind of anxiety is the worst for me. The second week went by very smoothly. I had Monday off because of Memorial Day, so the rest of the week just seemed so much easier.

The question I get asked all the time is, "What exactly are you doing at NETL?" Though I get sick of answering it, it at least beats the question I was getting from the blissfully unknown which was usually, "So, like, are you just going to be a teacher? What can you really do with an English degree these days besides teach?"

Well, I get paid a nicely, get internship credit, and have secured a job for when I graduate, in the worst economical crisis in history. :)

At TMS, I do a ton of different things. Right now we are working on preparing documents for reviewers and NETL regarding the stimulus money that President Obama passed and sorted towards the Department of Energy. On any given day I am summarizing projects, inputting reviewer scores, writing meeting agendas, or QA'ing (Quality Assuring) documents to make sure they are fully prepared for whoever's eyes on which they may land. My job is something different every day, but mainly pertains to working in Microsoft Word and Excel.

I am worried about the internship class because all of the documents I am working on require me to sign multiple non-disclosure and conflict of interest forms. For my portfolio, which apparently needs to be 20 pages of material, I am not sure what I will be able to represent, as all of the information I am working on and detailing is sensitive information. Hopefully, that will all get sorted out and I won't have to worry about it. Surely, there has to be a way around that.

I'm not sure what I can and can not say about the process that these documents go through as I work on them, but I can say that at the end of the process, there is a conference call with very important people. One of us here at TMS has to sign on to a website with all of these people and screen share so that everyone that is in the call can see the same document. They go through the document making decicions about proposals and changes to important information. I listened in on one of these calls today and it was extremely boring. Extremely important, but boring nonetheless. Some of these calls take hours upon hours. Today's call was scheduled for 9:30 - 6pm. One call...all the way through, with one 15 minute break. Luckily for Rachael, my cubicle-neighbor, it ended much earlier than that. I am dreading having to do one of these on my own, but I know that's why they hired me so I can't complain.

If I had to complain about one aspect of the job it is the commute. I wasn't able to find an apartment in time when I got hired, so I decided that I would just commute from home, which is Cumberland, Maryland - an hour away.

Here is my daily schedule:

6a.m. - Wake up on the dot.
6:15a.m. - Wake back up...on the dot.
6:30a.m. - Sleep in the shower.

6:45a.m. - Get ready and try to leave by 7.

7:00a.m. - Stop working on my hair, and put my shoes on.
7:15a.m. - Leave my house to get to Morgantown which is exactly 1 hour away.

8:15a.m. - Get off the exit in Morgantown
8:30a.m. - Arrive at work
9-12p.m - Do whatever my direct boss asks. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes not.
12-12:30p.m. - Lunch, which usually consists of Chick Fil A, if I'm being honest.
12:30 - 4:30p.m. - Work like a bee, or not at all.

4:30p.m. - Leave work on the dot so I can make it home as quickly as possible.

5:15p.m. - 45 minutes later I make it to the interstate (which is only 2 miles away, but the traffic is so bad)

6:15p.m. - Arrive home, and pass out on the bed

9p.m. - Wake up from my evening nap, watch some television
11:30p.m. - Watch The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

12a.m.-3a.m. - Try to go back to sleep and do it all over agian.

I am not sure if it is coming across in the writing here, but I definitely am exhausted every single day of the week. But, I am very excited to have a year of experience under my belt before I graduate next May. I am trying to just stick to my guns and remember that I have a lot of great things coming out of this experience and I shouldn't worry about being exhausted of all things. Knowing me, I think I am going to spend my whole life just being exhausted, no matter what it is that I do.

Hopefully this post makes up a lot of what I should have been writing about for the last couple of weeks. Getting in to the class later than expected, and then working pretty much non-stop the last 3 weeks, I just hadn't found the time to sit down and actually crank out yet another blog post.

I will be writing more as the work progresses and as my challenges increase.