Career day 10th grade
For career day this year, I wanted to shadow someone involving design or creative work. I was interested in doing design for a while so I want to work with someone to find out if I actually do like it and want to pursue it as a career or eliminate it from my perspective fields. Right now I have multiple contacts that I am waiting to hear back from. The first one in Compact Management group based out of Oceanside. The specialize in entry level designing jobs and marketing without boundaries. On their website they also talk about doing a lot of workshops and getting employees ready to handle the real world of product and web design. Another marketing firm was Short Fuse marketing run by Bridget Palitz based out of San Diego. She focuses on public relations and press releases. Short Fuse involves a lot of client interaction. I also researched Olive PRsolutions which focuses on marketing and client to public relations as well. I also was interested in interning at a magazine firm. After completing the Periodical project I really became interested with the idea of magazine design and page layouts. Tim Wrisley is the editor of the local Carlsbad Magazine and may be looking for interns. And last but not least, I found CoaStyle Events which is an event planning company that specializes in weddings and mitzvahs. Ashley Noack is the lead planner, designer, and coordinator of the events and Jillian Ziska is the creative director. My goal for this career day is to really decide if creative design is something I want to continue or focus more on STEM in the future.
REFLECTION
REFLECTION
I was actually unable to shadow one of the people I tried to contact so I ended up shadowing one of my friend's mom's coworkers. Her mom is the senior supervisor of engineering for all three water treatment plants in San Diego County. Myself and three other students shadowed Michael Simmons who was the manger of the La Mesa plant. On the actual career day we went to the plant and got a tour of the grounds. I found it very interesting to learn where the water that magically comes out of our faucet comes from. He lead the tour following the path of the water starting where the water first comes in and ending where it is distributed to all the citizens of San Diego. There were a lot of big cement pools filled with water and orange bubbles. It looks very simple but once he started explaining the whole process, I realized how complex it really was. Basically the water is brought in from the lake right next to the plant or imported from the Colorado river or other lakes in Northern California. The water is brought in through large underground pipes then they are flash mixed with 2 chemicals, iodine and a polymer which both have positive charges that stick to all the bacteria and "gunk" in the water that are negativily charged. So they clump together creating bigger molecules which are easier to filter out later. Once the chemicals are added they mixed in a large concrete basin. Then the water is moved to another basin for flocking which allows the particles to stick together and start the filtration process. Then the water enters the settling basin where the water is pushed in very slowly and moves across passing a series of filters collecting the impurities. Through flocking and settling 80% of the impurities in the water is removed. Then the water goes through an ozone process and one more filtration system before Floride, ammonia and chlorine are added then sent out for distribution. Throughout the tour he also explained how they used to filter the water compared to what the do now and why. For example, in the past they had always pumped chlorine into the water as it entered the treatment plant but they now use ozone for the same purpose and it is a much healthier alternative. After we went toured the treatment plant we went to the laboratories which were on the same site. We toured different rooms and met some of the scientists working there. Almost all of the people in the lab we met were conducting tests or taking samples of the water there. They tested samples to solidify specific compounds in the water and many other things. They used very advanced and complex machines. One of the scientists was even testing the chemical shipment they received to make sure it had the concentration they claimed. It was very interested to see how much time, money, and people went in to assuring the safety of our water. However, there was less employees than I thought there would be in the treatment plant but many more scientists than I anticipated. There are only 16 technicians that work actually on the treatment plant.
I really liked how there were an abundance of different things to study and do within one job site. It seemed like everyday you would be solving problems and trying to create a better product to give to the consumers. There was definitely a lot of innovative thinking and growth within the business. Although, I did not like how isolated the lab felt. There was usually 1 person conducting a test or series of tests in room. It was not very social and I would feel very lonely working there. I would definitely not pursue this career in the future. I like the idea of progress and problem solving in a job but I did not like the overall feel of the working environment. I learned I benefit from interaction and communication and would most certainly need to have that in my career. As of now, I am not sure what I do what to pursue in the future. I do know I really like to study history of the world and global issues or international relations. After this career day, I have become very less interested in a science/engineering based career.
I really liked how there were an abundance of different things to study and do within one job site. It seemed like everyday you would be solving problems and trying to create a better product to give to the consumers. There was definitely a lot of innovative thinking and growth within the business. Although, I did not like how isolated the lab felt. There was usually 1 person conducting a test or series of tests in room. It was not very social and I would feel very lonely working there. I would definitely not pursue this career in the future. I like the idea of progress and problem solving in a job but I did not like the overall feel of the working environment. I learned I benefit from interaction and communication and would most certainly need to have that in my career. As of now, I am not sure what I do what to pursue in the future. I do know I really like to study history of the world and global issues or international relations. After this career day, I have become very less interested in a science/engineering based career.