Day 1

I arrived at Forest park at 8 am, only to realize I was the only one of my classmates coming in that day.  For the first 3 hours of the day I sat in a room with a guy named Josh, he was Jim the boss's assistant.  We had to stay inside because it was windy and to cold outside to work.  We sat there while he explained what we were going to do through out may.  He kept on repeating the same thing over and over, sitting in the office became extremely awkward.  I soon realized that we were basically going to have to mulch trees everyday for 8 hours, I didn't know what i had gotten myself into.  After lunch it warmed up enough to go outside and spray pesticides on plants and trees for the rest of the day.

Day 2

Again I arrived at 8am, and was relieved to see a familiar face, JC was there as well.  Again Josh explained for the two hundredth time what were were going to do for the month.  Then finally we went outside to mulch trees.  At first it wasn't that bad because at least i had JC to talk to, but after an hour or so we were both so sick of mulching.  It was terrible and the worst part of this was that we both knew we had a whole month left of this torture. 

Day 3

Thank God it was Friday, today was the last day i had to work this week.  Like always we started at 8 am and today Robby was part of our crew.  Today was especially awful because we had to mulch again and it was also freezing outside and worst of all I forgot pants.  In spite of all this I was grateful to have some fellow classmates to work with.  Robby even called us the goon-squad.

Day 4

Its Monday again, there is nothing worse than waking up early on a Monday and going out to mulch trees for eight hours.  There has got to be something else we could do.  Worst of all is that we do all the work, Josh the supervisor has done nothing but sit on his gator while we rake, carry wheel barrels, and dump mulch.  He just sits there on his gator and smokes while we do his job for him.  This is ridiculous.  If he tries to tell me to do one more thing this way or that way I might flip out on him. 

Day 5

Nick Kram, Daniel and Scott all joined us today.  Like Robby, JC, and I already realized this absolutely sucks.  There is nothing worse than doing this all day and knowing that we are doing someone elses job for them.  They are getting paid for our work.  A good thing about today is that i get to leave a little early so that i can catch a flight to New Jersey to throw for some college coaches for the next week.  When I told him i had to leave early today he got mad and told me i was not going to graduate.  Like one hour is going to keep me from graduating, its not like i can't make it up.  I could easily come one hour earlier in the morning to make it up, but no.  i guarantee the only reason he is mad is because he actually has to lift a finger after i leave.  (because i'm always the last person to leave, usually leaving when their done for the day at 3:30) Again i almost went off, but its a very good thing that i composed myself and didn't. 

Day 6

After my week in New Jersey i returned to this hell.  My flight got delayed an hour this morning and again Josh got mad at me, and now he's trying to make me come another full day.  Ive been up since 3 am and i have to hear this from him.  You can't even compensate how pissed off i am right now, it was just an hour is it really a big deal? I'm a volunteer helping you our, doing your job infact and the least you can do is say its ok no big deal i understand you can't control your flight schedule.  But NO i have to come and work a weekend day now.  Is one hour really that big of a deal?!?!?  I really don't know how much longer i can take this job, i didn't know i signed up to mulch trees everyday for 8 hours strait, nor that id have to deal with a lazy jerk and do his job.  Its a really good thing that Nick Kram and some other classmates were there today, at least i was able to talk to them and hang out during lunch. 

Day 7

Mulch, yupp surprise surprise today we mulched.

Day 8

We finally did something different! Today I went with the tree demolishers Matt and Mike.  They took down a tree that had a massive whole in it.  I stayed with them for most of the day while they cut the tree down then cut it into pieces. I got to know Mike and Matt pretty well, Matt lived in Hawaii for 8 years sailing boats and living the dream before he went to Colorado State.  After college he began to work in forestry and lived in Los Angeles for many years, he even had a managerial job there.  Then two years ago his mother became ill and he moved back out to St. Louis, she has since past and he is currently looking for a bigger and better job in LA, like he had before he moved to St Louis.  Mike is a little different, but he is from North Carolina and went to a small college in Indiana, where he played basketball and golf.  He told me all about his crossfit adventure and how he is planning on attending a competition soon.  He said he needed a hobby so he wouldn't end up coming home and just eating and drinking beer.  He said he chose crossfit so that he would stay in shape and still be challenged physically and mentally.  It was really great to get to know these guys and do something else besides mulch.

Day 9

Today is a Saturday and i still have to work.  On a positive note its not with the forestry department, its with a nice lady named Mary Lou.  I was able to plant flowers all day at the soldiers memorial, with many other volunteers.  I even met a kid named Nick who is a grad student at SLU.  He was great to talk to because he was a business and Econ major like i intend on being.  He told me all about the experience, we even got to talking about one of his friends who was an Investment Banker in New York, this was great to hear because that in a career i would like to pursue.

Day 10

We cut down small trees today and raked leaves, it was better than mulching, but still not a fun job in the slightest.  We managed to finish this whole job by 2pm, so i guess that means tomorrow we have to go back to mulching.

Day 11

Today we mainly watered trees and sprayed pesticides, which i managed to spray all over my clothes.  It was very awkward and boring today because i was the only one working out of the whole group.  I am just glad to finally be done with my may project. 

Finally my may project is complete and overall i would say it was not what i wanted it to be.  It was not fun in the slightest, i wish i would have chose something else, anything else.  It was great to talk to the two tree demolators and Nick the SLU grad, but other than that i feel i didn't really gain much from mulching all day everyday.  I learned that mulching sucks and that i should stay in school and keep on getting good grades so that i dont have to end up like one of these guys doing boring, mindless, tedious tasks everyday.  For my last month of Burroughs i would have rather been in school, that way i could be with all of my friends and classmates until the end.  This May Project also drifted me away from my friends, because i wasn't doing the same project as them and i just didn't have time to see them with all the hours i was working.  I haven't seen most of my friends in two to three weeks as of today, and i wish Burroughs would have organized a project for most of the class to do together.  Overall i had a pretty bad time through out this project, there were some good parts to it but not as many as i would have liked.  If i were to redo my whole project again i would have definitely done some more research on what other projects i would have been able to do.  In the end I do blame myself for picking this project.

Leaving the nursery

I just left the nursery for the last time! It was bittersweet saying goodbye to all the staff and the volunteers I got to know so well over the past couple of weeks. After we hugged and I left I felt a huge sense of accomplishment for completing such a long project and making such a difference!! I cannot wait to come back to the nursery again! 

Last Day

Today is my last day at the crisis nursery!! I spent the morning playing with the kids as usual, as well as feeding a caring for the 2 youngest babies. During play time we added to the nursery board, which is a collection of kids artwork based around that month's theme (which currently is "splash into summer time") After I made lunch, we put the kids down for a nap and cleaned the majority of the play area and the toys. Overall, an average day. 

I have loved my time at the crisis nursery and will take away a rich experience. Unlike some other students, I feel as though the work I was completing
- playing with kids or doing chores- was fully appreciated and made an impact in the lives of the children I was working with, as well as the nursery as a whole. The staff, volunteers and I became good friends over these past few weeks. I baked everyone brownies to show my appreciation for the work they put on everyday, but I'm looking forward to coming back and volunteering this summer as a way to truly express my gratitude for the goals and efforts of the crisis nursery! 

Day One:

I arrived at the Animal House Fund on the Hill for my first day on Thursday, May 8^th, my first day of summer after my last AP the day before.  Woohoo no more thinking/studying/academics until late August!  It’s really weird to think that the next class I will take will be in college and that I’m completely done with academics at Burroughs.  Anyways I came into the Animal House and was immediately put into a room to “socialize” with 11 cats, which was slightly nerve-wracking because the only cats I had ever interacted with in the past were Sarah and Haley’s two cats, and some of these cats were not very friendly.  I sometimes was a little startled/scared when they would hiss or swipe at me, but overall it was fun being with the cats!  Then I had to clean some of the cat rooms, which was pretty gross but except for scooping out the litter boxes it wasn’t too bad.  Then Tessa, Margaret (Kogos) and I cleaned crates for awhile until they left.  Then a woman came in and asked me if I wanted to play with kittens!  So her and I socialized a little 2 month old kitten in a room for about 45 minutes, it was adorable but had some kind of neurological problem where its head shakes and its back legs don’t work very well, so whenever it would try to run somewhere it would kind of slide and not be able to be in control of its limbs/where it was going.  But they said that there was a nurse who was looking at adopting him and who also said she was always attracted to adopting animals with some kind of disability, which is amazing and incredibly nice of her. 

Day Two:

The next day I came in and Margaret, Tessa, and I first cleaned some rooms for a little while, then we got to bathe some kittens!  They were about 5 or 6 weeks old I think, and they were absolutely adorable.  We had to bathe them and they had to be bottle fed when they first came in because they don’t have a mom.  They have a lot of motherless kittens in there for various reasons, sometimes the moms abandon their kittens, the moms die, or even people abandon kittens.  Apparently recently someone left a box of 35 kittens on the side of the highway and they distributed the kittens among the animal shelters in St. Louis, and the Animal House got 7 of those kittens but one of them already died L.  Kittens are really fragile and apparently die a lot, enough so that they don’t name the kittens until they’re between 10 and 12 weeks old because they don’t want people to get too attached to the kittens in case they end up dying.  But luckily the Animal House has a lower kitten mortality rate than anywhere else in St. Louis!  But anyways, Tessa, Margaret and I bathed the kittens in the sink, which they weren’t big fans of, they spent the whole time meowing angrily (but cutely!).  Afterwards we had to wrap them up in towels and cuddle them and rub them until they were completely dry so they wouldn’t get cold.  They are so cute and cuddly and energetic and just try to climb all over us while we’re drying them!  Then after that we socialized 3 4-month-old kittens in a room, they were all black but some had some white patches on different parts of their bodies and they were adorable and had so much energy! They ran and climbed all over/up the walls (we had to pull one off the ceiling) and they’re called the pasta kittens because they’re named Rigatoni, Rotini, and Rose Marie.  Then Tessa and Margaret left again around 1:30 and I spent some more time socializing more cats and doing various cleaning/feeding jobs that need doing around Animal House.  Keeping that place clean is a huge, never-ending, and really important job, because if the place isn’t clean it can lead to the cats getting sick, and with 200 cats and 70 kittens in one building, if one gets sick they all do!  It’s interesting seeing how sanitary all the rooms are and how strict they are with cleanliness, like each room has all of its own cleaning supplies, its own bucket of food, and you have to wash your hands before entering and after leaving every room.  You can’t bring anything into a room that’s from another room and that hasn’t been sanitized directly beforehand.  It’s a huge job to keep all of these animals safe and healthy.

First Day Shadowing:

On Monday, May 12^th, I shadowed a primary care physician at Boonslick Medical Group.  During the day, I went to all of his appointments with his patients and saw a huge amount of patient interaction.  I saw the doctor deal with a large amount of elderly patients with patience, kindness, and a level of familiarity and comfort that put the patients at ease and made them trust him.  Most of the patients were really nice and receptive to his care, but there were also a couple who were hard to deal with.  One had a lot of anxiety and stress about all of her health issues and seemed like she was causing a lot of her problems and self-diagnosing excessively, but he did his best to hear her concerns and not trivialize her worries.  It showed me that you can’t just dismiss people as a doctor because you think that they are making a big deal out of nothing, and keeping the patient comfortable and calm should be your top priority and you will be unable to treat them or allay their concerns if you dismiss them and put the person down.  He also had to deal with some rude patients, including a patient who was calling in repeatedly about a rash and threatening to call his superiors and wanting to be admitted to the hospital over a rash, which is excessive and it is very unlikely that they would ever admit a patient to the hospital over a rash.  But, he had them come in and was nice to them and never raised his voice and overall dealt with them maturely and calmly and was able to keep the situation from escalating.  Overall the day was a great experience, and even though I thought primary care would be somewhat boring I liked it a surprising amount, as it was nice to see the almost deductive skills necessary to find out what is wrong with someone and prescribe them whatever medicine will help whatever is ailing them.

Second Day Shadowing:

On Tuesday, May 13^th, I shadowed a gastroenterologist at Boonslick Medical Group/Barnes Jewish Hospital.  I started the day around 9 am and I spent the first part of the day at Boonslick shadowing consults that the doctor did with various patients.  He saw several people who had esophagitis (spelling?) where their esophagus was constricted which made it very difficult to eat and swallow food.  One woman he scheduled an appointment to stretch out her esophagus after other medication treatments failed, another woman was one whom he was seeing for the first time and he put on medicine to hopefully treat it, and the third was a man whom he had already stretched his esophagus before and he was going to restretch it because it constricted again.  This man was particularly frustrating because he was a smoker who expressed no desire to quit and who admitted he was not taking the medicine he was prescribed in the past, and he probably would not take it in the future because it was unlikely he would suddenly turn around his unhealthy lifestyle.  In this situation, the doctor could only tell the man to quit smoking and to take the medicine he was prescribed, but he could not force the man to do anything, which is extremely frustrating.  With this, I could see how helpless people in the medical profession often are, because even though they know how to help people they can’t force these people to help themselves.  Then, later in the afternoon, I saw several colonoscopies and endoscopies, which were really interesting.  Probably the best was the colonoscopy they performed on a middle-aged woman who had been having a variety of symptoms that all pointed strongly to late-stage colon cancer, but luckily just ended up being something treatable!  It was really happy to see the relief on all the doctor’s faces, especially after seeing the intense worry on the face of the woman before she was put under anesthesia.  After seeing the helplessness doctor’s can sometimes experience, it was nice to see something where the woman was able to get very lucky and evade cancer in a very unusual case.

Last Days at the Animal House:

For my last few days I did much of the same I did my first few days, luckily getting to bathe and play with a  lot of kittens!  But the high mortality of kittens was shown to me sadly, when Tessa, Margaret, and I noticed that 2 of 4 kittens we were bathing one day had infected eyes, then by the next day 1 of them had died and the other one was close to death.  I’m not sure how the others ended up because I didn’t want to ask L But I ended my time at the Animal House with the best job of cuddling two 4 week old kittens! I’m going to miss all the kittens and I hope I have time to go back this summer!

Reflections

The experiences I had during my May Project taught me a lot. Starting out at Children's hospital I learned a lot about fundraising and office work and how it is difficult and sometimes not very fun. Fundraising is a very difficult job and a lot more goes into it than you would think. I was assigned to a bunch of little itty bitty tasks which seemed mindless and useless but try actually do help. I was stuck making copies, cutting things out, stuffing envelopes and mailing invitations. Although these weren't that fun they were very important. I learned a lot about the network that St. Louis Children's Hospital helps to maintain. They have a huge range of providers who donate and it really shows how contributions and donations are a huge part of St. Louis Children's Hospital. One of the tasks I was given to do was to call people who had made a donation and thank them for their donation and tell them where the money they donated was going. It was nice to see that Children's hospital thanks everyone for their donation no matter what the amount. There were people who donated $5 and people who donate thousands of dollars but it really shows how every dollar makes a difference in some way or another. Some of the other tasks such as stuffing envelopes and mailing invites out showed me the importance of maintaining the network of donators. Children's hospital sends invites, info, and thank you notes to tons of people. It shows how important it is to keep the donators that you have and to make sure they know how much their donations are appreciated. I really did enjoy hearing about all the projects that were being planned for fundraising. The first one was a golf tournament that The St. Louis Children's Hospital Foundation was hosting. There was just so much time and effort put into it but the outcome was amazing and the hospital raised lots of money. The other one was Six Flags night hosted by St. Louis Children's Hospital. Having grown up attending this event it was interesting to see how much money is raised from tickets. I was given the task of organizing the names of people who had purchased tickets and then adding up what they owed and the total amount of tickets sold. Even by early may they had already raised $300,000 just from ticket sales. You don't really think about how far this money really goes and how amazing the event is. Reflecting back on teaching cheers to the 8^th graders I’m glad I was able to have this experience as well. Although the girls could be so difficult and never listen when we tried to talk to them or explain something to them, but the end of our time with them they had learned all of the cheers almost perfectly. I’m glad I was able to contribute the Burroughs tradition of Burroughs from me (and Kay) and I am very proud of that. The tradition of cheerleading at Burroughs has been one of my favorite activities I have done at this wonderful school. I have so many great memories of pep rally’s and MICDS games and I hope these girls get the chance to enjoy this “sport” as much as I did! I hope they go on to cheer all 4 years at Burroughs and enjoy every minute of it.

Last Days of Ceer

Yesterday was my last day of teaching cheers to the 8th graders. They have come such a long way since we the first day last week! They know all the C-Team cheers now and can mostly do them perfectly. Some of them have a little trouble stomping and clapping at the same time which I don't really understand because it's the most simple thing ever but hopefully they'll get it soon. The only flaw they have is that they're not loud enough! They're all so timid an shy and scared to say the cheers loudly because they think they'll say the wrong thing. They also voted for captains yesterday and were very excited about that. I think 6 of them ran and they basically all said the same thing in their speeches. They are excited to cheer next year but very conserned that no one will come to their games except for parnets which is pretty accurate considering it's C Cheerleading. Kay and I tried to explain to them that it's still really fun and that it's really fun to stick with cheer for all 4 years. It's a great bonding experience, a great tradition that Burroughs has, and it's a ton of fun! They are SO excited to get their uniforms which tey are getting fitted for today. Although these girls were difficult they were fun to work with! It made me a little sad realizing that I'll never be down on the track again cheering on Bomber Football but I felt good knowing I was helping to carry on a tradition and pass on the legacy of Cheerleaidng and John Burroughs School. I hope they will always keep the same great cheer a that I have spent the past 4 years cheering! 

Day 12

Today there are 5 kids and 2 babies at the nursery. When I first arrived, I did some organizing. I did an inventory on the clothes, restocked the food, cleaned up some rooms, and did some laundry. There are a few more volunteers today, so they were playing with the kids. When I was done we went outside and played with bubbles and chalk. It's always nice to go outside with the kids because the play room is a little bit small and can get boring for them. After that, I prepared lunch, cleaned up the kids, and put them down for quiet time. During quiet time I eat and finish up some jobs. Although each day seems very similar, I like seeing new kids and I've been trying to offer up my help for extra jobs around the nursery.

Tomorrow is my last day! I'm excited to be finished with May project soon, but I'm looking forward to coming back to the crisis nursery when my summer schedule isn't too busy!