Great experience

...So we got into some hard work. We dug out trenches of concrete. We were digging up dirt, stone, and concrete lined with rebar that had been there for 40 years. Stuff was SOLID. We had to jack hammer it at first and then use crowbars and spud bars to loosen it up. To make it worse, there pipes running all through it that you had to avoid because if we had punctured one the electricity running through would have shocked us unbelievably badly. We were digging about 2-3 feet below the surface and believe it or not it took about a day to uncover one pipe. Along with this we were doing our duty of emptying the dirt and debris into the dumpster which was hard work too because concrete is quite heavy.

Along with doing more work at the restaurant we were working at Brio at legacy again. We worked with Sarah at the front of the house a lot and Eric and I have mastered the art of seating guests, a very tough art to master indeed.

Overall, this was a tremendous experience. Everything being new to us in the restaurant industry really made us take a lot away. Not only about the restaurant business but we learned many lessons and tips that will benefit us in every day life. I am thankful we got the opportunity to learn from the best in a very competitive industry.

Week 3

Over the last 2 weeks Eric and myself have continued to enrich ourselves with the way of business and employment in the restaurant industry. Eric and I were joined by Willie and David so we had some company in working construction among other things. We haven't done much different stuff, just more of the same in different ways from our previous post. We have learned many more things about the restaurant industry over the past few weeks.

For example, last week our sponsor and his colleague had a business trip to Las Vegas which they told us all about. I literally had no idea of this part of business until we became involved with Mr. Doody and BBRG. Basically, they went to a large "shopping center" convention. All of the nation's largest and most prestigious developers such as Simon were in attendance. At the convention Mr. Doody, along with both regional real estate heads (One Western US, one Eastern US) had meetings every 30 minutes with potential sites for a new Brio or Bravo. These sites would be prospective for as late as 2015 or early as late 2013. That is another thing I was amazed by, how far ahead they work. Anyway, when they came back we went over the entire list of who went to what meetings and such. Mr. Doody would go to the big developer because he had personal relationships and makes stuff happen. 

A point that also came up that is important is in these meetings, you must be as professional as possible. Cheesecake Factory and Brio/Bravo are two of the best restaurants in the industry and are the best run. This means that instead of Mr. Doody selling themselves to a new site, developer WANT them to be in their site, essentially they get to pick between 10-15 sites that they think will be best out of 50-100 offers they receive. 

On the professional note, Mr. Doody for example may walk around with a little "swagger" because he can. He'll throw on a white linen suit for the convention so he looks good. 

We learned this lesson that you must be professional, act professional, and dress the part to be successful first hand in a previous meeting that week.

We got to sit in on a meeting with Mr. Doody and the owner's of Paladar. Many up and coming founders and presidents look to Mr. Doody and the BBRG organization and way of business for guidance when working on their own projects. Anyway, they came off as a bit too confident and one of them was walking around wearing a t-shirt and jeans. We learned that was the same outfit he wore to the shopping center convention the year before and it he simply looked ridiculous and unprofessional. 

Sitting in on meetings like that one we learned a lot as we just stood by and listened to them talk about projections, site prospects, things like that. Another great lesson was learned in the process. We learned to always expect less and be surprised by more rather than expect more and be disappointed by less, if that makes sense. For example you would rather expect 3.8 and get 4.2, than expect 4.8 and be disappointed with 4.2.  

Another meeting we sat in on that week was with the founder and president of Melt. That was especially interesting because he was doing a lot of things right and Mr. Doody let him know that. We went through almost everything that he was doing right and the stuff that Mr. Doody was questioning he took note of. The owner of Melt really learned from Mr. Doody because he knew that he could, the guys from Paladar weren't trying to learn as much I thought. 

Along with working in the office during the afternoon, many times during the week we were working construction in the morning. We really got into the dirty work during week 3 because the plumbers began to come in. To be continued. 

Final Reports

If you are having any concerns or problems with your final reports, please contact your advisor or me. These are to be submitted electronically to me, your overseer.

Tragedy hits farm: Chickens attacked

Here is a link to the remaining photos on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150974402704715.484076.566364714&type=1
Theres around 85 pictures.

Last week:
On Wensday, Thursday, and Friday we worked on planting many plants for the garden as well as laying down cardboard paths for the garden. This took a while because we had to cover the entire perimeter of the garden as well as all the paths along with it. We did this so that the weeds would have a harder time growing through the wood chips and it would keep the garden looking ascetically pleasing! On friday a group of 12 eighth graders from the lower school came in the morning to help us out! They were extremely helpful because it gave us a lot of extra hands. With them there, we were able to wood chip the entire garden as well as weed the garden. On thursday, Liam's bee's arrived in the mail! There was about 9000 bees in a small box that was designed for bee transport. In the morning, Liam's sponsor, Stan Hockey helped Liam install the bees into the hive that was donated to us. This experience was very unique and interesting to see!

On friday night, Liam put away the chickens in the chicken coup. Somehow that night, a Raccoon climbed up the hawk-net fencing and went through the side window into the coop. When we got there on saturday morning, there were no remains  of the chickens besides an abundance of feathers. This was a very sad day for our project but it just goes to show that in nature if theres a will then theres a way.

Friday was the day in which I gave my 4th grade class their pizza party for completing their math worksheet and each of them getting it mostly correct. The children were so excited when they saw that I had pizza and Sunny D set up for them when they came in after recess for lunch. They all thanked me for my generosity and gave me big hugs. Each child was able to have 3 pieces of pizza and were well satisfied. After their pizza party I got a very different experience but it was also a notible one, because I was able to work with the entire 4th grade class. This was different because though I work with the 4th graders all day I don't spend much time with their general classrooms. I was able to meet more of the children and though they were introduced to me a couple weeks ago they really got to work with me one on one and see who I really am and what I was about. They worked on a project for the trip that they are going on this week to Stone Lab. It is a science based trip where the children will be able to take multiple Ferry Rides across Lake Erie and stay in cabins on one of the many Lake Erie Islands. The project for this day was for the children to find a fish, animal, or wild flower that they were studying and create a name from it for their group as well as a catchey saying. Above is a video of a group of boys who mad their group from the Bald Eagle and they were willing enough to perform it though they didn't practice it much.

Flying

Over the last few days I have been able to get up in the air three times. It was amazing, a bit nerve wracking, but amazing nonetheless. The first day I had to make a special schedule in order to fly, but the weather was absolutely perfect on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, a few days this week we were simply unable to fly at all because of lack of VFR safe weather. My instructor firmly believes that it is much more important to be safe when flying than to rush things and take unnecessary risks. Anyway, Tuesday was more of an introductory session, I was able to do a takeoff and landing though because there was barely any wind. My instructor demonstrated stalls and a few other maneuvers. We flew from Cleveland to Perry and on our way back we made a touch-and-go landing at Cuyahoga County Airport. It is very easy to fly from Burke since you can follow the shoreline to get just about anywhere, except south. On Wednesday it was all up to me - I was required to taxi and takeoff by myself. Then we went up in the air to practice stalls. We did both power on and power off stalls, this is to prepare you in case you stall during take off or landing and how to recover safely. After that we practiced slow flight maneuvers where you fly without descending at about 40KIAS (knots indicated airspeed). You want to be able to hear the stall warners, but avoid stalling by using the throttle, rudder and yoke. It is very tough since you are in the region of reverse command so your yoke controls the speed and the throttle controls the pitch. We did most of our maneuvers over Chardon high school and the square. Thursday I was unable to fly due to scheduling issues, but today was perfect for flying. Although very hazy in the morning, our two hour flight included a lot of pure instruction time. My instructor was thrilled with my performance on the stalls. We also did steep turns with a 45º bank angle (which puts about 4Gs of force on your body). We also practiced maneuvers around the SPIRE institute in Geneva; turns about a point and rectangular course were the covered maneuvers today. On Monday I will have the opportunity to do some more stalls, learn how to do S-turns on a road and some other interesting maneuvers. Overall, it has been a very exciting time for the last week and I cannot wait to get my license in the near future, even though I may not solo by the end of project due to issues with the plane, scheduling and weather.

General Nutrition

I have decided to roughly go through my nutrition, as it has been a large part of my project. One of the most important rules is to eat every three hours to keep the body from storing food as fat ('starvation mode'). Waiting four hours before the next meal is acceptable if the meal cannot be had after three hours for some reason. The meals should contain a protein source, and, depending on the time, a source of carbohydrates. The carbohydrate should be one that digests slowly; whole-wheat and brown rice fit this category. Slow digesting carbohydrates are important because they do not cause the spikes in blood sugar (which causes fat to be stored) which fast digesting carbohydrates do. Different protein sources also have different absorption rates, but these are far less important; red meats (e.g. beef) have a slower absorption rate, and can be beneficial in the last meal before sleep for this reason. Having some fat in meals is important as well, and a small portion of almonds can be helpful if the rest of the meal is pretty lean.

Vegetables are also very important for their higher pH and for filling you up. As the day goes on, and you get into the afternoon, unless you have some activity planned, most people become more sedentary, and subsequently need less carbohydrates (energy). As this happens I start to cut carbohydrates and replace them with vegetables. I also use Barlean's Greens (http://www.barleans.com/greens.asp) twice a day with the morning meals where I am not eating vegetables.

You can get more technical with exactly how much you eat (here's a good article for that http://www.musculardevelopment.com/articles/nutrition/3709-anabolic-eating-for-your-age.html), but using a clenched fist for judging protein and a flat hand for carbohydrates is a way to judge how much you eat in a manner which is more practical than weighing everything out.

May 24,2012

Today the children were focused a lot on science and reading. In my classroom the children read a book named Number The Stars a book about the Holocaust and the rough times that they have been through. The teacher read to them three chapters of this book and together each child read one page in every chapter. Throughout the chapters the teacher would tell them different vocabulary words to explain or visually describe to her. The interesting thing that I found out about this activity is that the children were able to verbally explain their responses to the teacher about the book, but they struggled with writing them out of how they interpreted the book and the plot. The little girl that I usually work with was surprisingly not "up" from her A.D.H.D and with her being settled down she could actively and constructively participate in the conversations. It was surprising through all the complaining that she normally does, on this particular day she did not and all of her answers that she replied to from the questions of the book were correct.

May 22, 2012
 This day was had to do a lot with the 4th graders taking responsibilty for their actions and self-discipline. I learned on this day that though it is good to connect with the kids on a personal level that there are times when you have to crack down and be serious. I noticed that the little girl I worked with everyday had been asking me everyday to go to the bathroom and when I would allow her to go she would stay in the bathroom for long drawn out periods of time. On this day I went behind her into the bathroom without her knowing just because I knew something wasn't right about her staying in the bathroom for so long. I learned that day that she had just being going into the bathroom to talk to friends for a long period of time. When she came out she noticed that I was standing in the hallway and I explained to her that I trusted her to go to the bathroom and come right back and she didn't do as she was told. I also let her know that I wasn't happy with her just playing around in the bathroom and that she needs to follow directions and she replied to me, "Ms. Pronty you're getting mean your acting like a teacher." Though that kind of hurt me inside and I wanted her to like me, I understood at this moment that it wasn't about her liking me it was about her respecting me.

overview of the week

A couple of my coworkers took me to different places to see different sides of social work.  The first place I went to was a nursing home.  At the nursing home I learned about the different services that are out there for the elderly.  I also learned that social work for older people is just as challenging as any other sector of social work.  Making sure the elderly is taken care of and safe is a challenge when there are nursing homes who do not take care of their tenants.  I also learned that working with older people will not be apart of my furture plans.  I say that because of a personal interest I am more into children and helping the youth of cleveland.  When I visisted the family and child services I saw alot of the families and children who need help.  When I met with a friend of my Coworker Yolanda we talked about the issues deaing with teenagers in this day and age.  We also talked about how there are many children who have to grow up very quickly and get into to things that a child should not, just to survive.  For example a young boy has been a drug dealer since he was 12 because his mom left him and his sister due a drug addiction.  His older sister took care of the kids and he sold drugs to bring money to the house hold. I know children have to go through tis just because of my experience in East Cleveland.  It makes you look at situations different, a child selling drugs is not selling because he wants to or is a bad child.  He is selling drugs to provide for his family, since there is no parent to bring in income he had no choice at 12 years old.  As a social worker you have to leave your personal biases and expectations at the door.  When dealing with people and different situations anything can happen and anything is possible.  I learned that there are alot of sectors of social work, some lighter than others.  I know that i want to wor in the family and children services and help children.  I know that it will be hard but worth it.

Working With my Sponsor and Sugar Alcohols

Last Monday I went with Jeremy to do his workout with him at the gym, and we talked about different machines for weightlifting. One of the most sought after qualities of a good machine is having individually moving parts for each arm (this is not as prevalent or necessary with leg exercises). Such a set up allows the paired muscles to work independently, which helps to force a weaker muscle to work on its own and not be coddled by the stronger of the pair. Hammer Strength equipment (a division under Life Fitness) does a good job at this, as well as produce overall quality equipment.

I have also been doing research on sugar alcohols, which are used as sweeteners in protein bars and often times in sugar free products. They have no more than 4.32 calories per gram, but are noted for having virtually no affect on glucose and insulin concentrations; meaning that blood sugar levels are not notably affected, and that there is no sugar spike. These properties keep sugar alcohols from triggering the storage of fat. This property is further shown by no notable affects to respiratory quotient from mannitol or sorbitol (two alcohol sugars), which shows no affect on metabolic rate as measured by carbon dioxide production. However, sugar alcohols are slight laxatives, and in excessive amounts can have ill effects. Despite this fact, alcohol sugars are not toxic.

Sugar alcohols are listed under carbohydrates on nutrition tables, as mandated by the FDA, but are not exactly carbohydrates. Sugar alcohols have a much lower caloric value than fats and have no nitrogen in their molecular structure like proteins, and have more similarities to carbohydrates than the fat and protein groups. Due to this they are categorized with carbohydrates, but are not carbohydrates in a more technical sense. The value to knowing this comes when selecting products (mostly protein bars) with minimal carbohydrate levels; the sugar alcohols should be largely factored out when determining the amount of carbohydrates in the product.

Speed Reading Class 3

      Friday May 18^th was my last lesson with Mr. Ulsenheimer. We started again with the eye focus chart exercise to warm up our eyes to maintain only three focuses on each line. We then quickly read through “Choosing a Career” at about 750 words per minute. This was an exercise to get comfortable with 750 wpm. Mr. Ulsenheimer was timing us as we read and would tell us to move to the next column if we fell behind the 750 wpm. There was no quiz for this exercise so we moved on to the next article, "Why Learn to Speed Read?" This article was 1734 words and I finished in 2:20 so my wpm was 743. Then, we followed with a quiz and I got a 10/10. My speed was more than twice as fast as the first day and I was able to answer four more questions than the first day. 

     Next, we went to another single column reading. These were tough when first started them the previous class so I tried to work on them between classes. I finished this one with 600 wpm and got 7/10 questions correct. It was much better than I expected and I got both of the fill in the blank questions. The next reading was a long scientific article with pictures and graphs. Because there were pictures and graphs we spent a couple minutes to survey and scan the article. During these first few minutes we were supposed to just study the pictures and graphs and any captions that might go with them. Then, after the couple minutes were up, we read through the article with a hi-lighter to make note of anything that stands out or what you might want to come back to if it was too complicated to pick up on. I read through it with 625 wpm and answered 9/10 questions correctly. We read a couple more articles and finally we finished with "Easier Public Speaking," which I read in 3:30 at 660 wpm. I got 8/10 questions correct. So overall, I saw significant improvement from the first class of only 308 wpm and 6/10 questions to easily twice the speed with better comprehension in nearly every case.

     After taking my last class I started reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Mr. Daly let me borrow it Friday and I read almost all of it, but I had to return it this morning. I spent in total about 6 hours reading it, and I got to page 376 of about 420. This book was unique because it included a lot of examples and exercises to try throughout the book so I started off slow, getting comfortable with this writing style. The first half I read between 326 wpm and 501 wpm. I tried reading one chapter at my normal reading speed without using by hand or focusing on just three parts on each line and I only read 239 wpm. The second half I picked up my speed and read between 490 wpm and 860 wpm. There were about 485 words per page so I was reading under a minute per page. As Mr. Ulsenheimer said, the types of books you read have big impacts on your reading speed, and so does the purpose you read each book or article. 

      I find I want to slow down, but when I slow down I get distracted easily and I have to reread to feel I understood the topic. When I speed up I somehow pick up everything better than when I went slower. The practice improves my focus, which improves comprehension, which makes it easier to read faster. Being able to focus is one of the most important aspects of speed reading. Practice also helps get used to using your hand to guide you down each line and it also increases eye movement speed. Hopefully, I will continue improving my speed as my practice increases.

     

Tuesday

 Today was spend mostly editing a photo. Yesterday, Bernadette, my sponsor, told us to take a picture of ourselves and we thought she said it would be going to be printed in a newspaper, so to make life easier for ourselves, we decided to take the picture in black in white. As it turns out, she was going to print for a poster, so she wanted it in color. I spent most of today making a black and white photo a color photo. This is incredibly difficult to do well. Skin-tone in particular is quite hard to match, but in the end, I think it turned out quite well. Attached to this blog post is a comparison of the black and white vs. color. Keep in mind that I added in all of the colors. None of them are true.

Week 3 Video

Hi all! Last week Aaron and I did a lot of working out and playing basketball at both Hawken and SPIRE and it was by far our most physically exhausting week. However, we had a lot of fun and we were even joined at Hawken a few times by Randy Keller, our close friend from Gilmour, since he is done with his project. His help made our drills a little more intense, fun, and entertaining and we thank him for that. This week we have some interviews planned with some pro athletes, sports trainers, and a sports psychologist so the week 4 video should be a real treat. So as promised here is the week 3 video. Enjoy!


http://youtu.be/CZWlSagMWcs

I PASSED!

Sorry I haven't had much of a chance to blog for the past week or so, but here's a bit of a recap of my last few days.

On Thursday, I spent all day with my sponsor, Frank. We basically did a crash course in everything flight related and went through the entire study book for review before I had to take my test on Friday. It was a lot of studying. I spent a lot of my time taking practice tests online and going through the practice questions in my text book. I'm a bit tired of multiple choice questions at this point, but nevertheless I pressed on question after question as I received diagrams and explanations to my questions about the questions, yikes, that's a lot of questions. Thursday night I wasn't really sure what to do, I was a bit "studied out" so I just took one more practice test before a good night's rest.

Friday morning I drove down to Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland to take my flight exam. I'm glad I was slightly early though because I had to do a few circles in my car and a few walks around the airport to figure out where I was going, as well as a few maneuvers around a 1st grade field trip to the Women in Aviation museum. Eventually I figured out where I was going. As I walked into the flight academy, all eyes were on me when I asked where to go to take my exam. Flying is still a very sexist profession and I'm pretty sure all of the older men in the flight academy thought I was joking when I asked for my exam. Soon I was taken to a very small, over heated room with three computers set up for FAA testing. In the room adjacent to mine, I could hear air force trainees preparing for an exam. After 60 multiple choice questions, a little over an hour of my time, and plenty of calculations, I passed my exam with 88% correct! I'm pretty sure when the receptionist announced my score to me, all of the men in the room dropped what they were doing in awe of the situation. After it was over, I spent a few minutes conversing with one of the flight examiners at the academy and I set up my appointment to go flying on Monday morning with my instructor.

Today I arrived at the county airport where Kevin and I spent all day running around trying to figure out how to fly the Cessna 152. We were both told that the radio was replaced after the incident last week, but it still did not seem to work. After plenty of time trying and mechanic failure, we decided that the safer option would just be to wait and fly a different plane. I have a special appointment set up for tomorrow night in a Cessna 172, which is just the bigger version of the 152. Hopefully all should go well tomorrow and I will start flying two-a-days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in order to solo by next Wednesday. It will be very tough to solo with all of these delays, but still possible as long as we don't have any more speed bumps along the way and the weather stays pristine!

Link to Hawken Farm photos

I uploaded all the photos I had from my phone into a Facebook Album. The album is public so anyone should be able to see it. 

Here is the link: 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150974402704715.484076.566364714&type=1

On wensday morning, I assembled the bench trellis with Liam. We used his car to make three trips to the wood shop to transfer the 3 pieces of the bench trellis. We then propped up the sides onto the fence posts and set the top piece and attached them with wood brackets so that it would be a free forming structure. This took up the entire morning. After we assembled it, we took measurements for the gate so that we could finish that later. On wensday afternoon, I took an AP Stat exam. On thursday morning, I finished the gate and then attached it. Then we went and visited the Case Western Reserve Farm on Fairmont road. This was a really cool experience because their farm is on a much bigger scale and they have a lot more resources than we do. It was cool to see all the stuff they did with the greenhouses, the bee hives and the irrigation systems in the land plots. On friday, I called various garden centers about quotes for wood chips and I designed an irrigation system for the garden so that we can start planting next week. 

Friday was a very personal day to me, I took more in through the one on one conversation I had with the 4th graders and I sat in on. The day started off with one of the boys who most of the time is more lively coming into the classroom with a blank expression on his face saying nothing. Thursday afternoon he had left school early complaining of chest pain that he was undergoing after a game of basketball during recess. I later found out that morning that he was taken to the hospital where he was checked out and the doctors told him that he could no longer participate in sports which he loved. The doctors told him that he would have to go see the heart doctor this week to make sure everything was okay. He was afraid because one of his brothers died from a hole in his heart and his aunt is currently going through heart complications. Knowing this and seeing the expressions on his face I decided to call him over to sit down and talk to me. Throughout the past week he has been one of the 4th graders who warmed up to me the fastest and has been closest to me. I asked him his fears of what was going on and how he felt about it and then I explained to him my encounter with a similar problem last year. Many people may know that last year I was on a heart monitor during the musical and afterwards as well. I told him don't be scared because I thought that I wouldn't be able to participate in the musical just like he thinks that he may not be able to play basketball any more. Through my previous health history I let him know that it could possibly just be that he has asthma, which is the reason why after he plays sports he is experiencing chest pain. I also informed him if this is the case that it is also treatable. He then told me that one of his brothers does have asthma as well that didnt show up until a little later in his life. I instantly saw his face light up and instead of being down about his problem not wanting to participate in anything including their trip in two weeks to Stone Lab, he started looking at the brighter side. Though he could not participate a recess he had just as much fun sitting on the sideline watching and rooting for his friends while they played basketball.

Week of the 14th: I Edited

I edited. Thats what I did this week. I edited. All week. Thats all I did. Editing.

At least thats what it feels like all I did was. In fact, I really got a lot accomplished. Editing two videos in one week (at least at my level) is quite impressive. Something I didn't expect when I was editing was the amount of research I had to do about the use of music. At first I thought that we would have to pay for royalty free music, but delving into some of the loopholes of music legality, I thought that I came to the conclusion that I could use Creative Commons music, as long as I wasn't getting payed in any way for it, I released the video as Creative Commons, and I credit the author of the song.

Then I did a little more research into Creative Commons licensing. There are several different types of CC licensing. There are six main types of CC licences. Theres Attribution (CC BY), Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND), Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA), and finally Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-SA). CC BY is the simplest: you must credit the author. CC BY-SA means you must credit the author and release the work in CC. CC BY-ND means you may not change the work. CC BY-NC means you cannot use it in commercial work. The other two are CC BY-NC in combination with the earlier CC licences.

This means that as long as the song isn't released in any version of CC BY-NC, we can use the song as we please, so long as we follow the copyright. CC things are always free, and since there are non-non-commercial licences available, finding free music to use is quite easy.

So I guess I didn't just edit.

Sodium and Potassium

Like most things it is possible to have too much and too little sodium and potassium in your diet. With too little sodium comes lower blood pressure, and also causes the body to retain sodium and water. The body will restrict the water allowed into the vascular system, and muscles will be striped of the water normally pumped in through the vascular system. Excessive amounts of sodium will also causes the body to retain water throughout the body in order to balance out the raised levels of sodium. Depending who you ask sodium intake should be about .5-3.3 grams per day. Those who have a greater metabolism will lose sodium and water fast, and should consume greater quantities to avoid having too little sodium (Hyponatremia).

Potassium intake should always be less than sodium intake, and too much potassium will increase Aldosterone levels. Aldosterone will increase sodium and water retention in the body. Potassium intake should be around 1.6-3 grams a day. Having sodium displace the potassium released in muscles during use aids optimal muscle function.

try this link instead

physicsofgolf.blogspot.com

Week 2 Video

This is our video from week 2. We had a very exciting and fun week. Stay tuned for the upcoming week 3 video!

http://youtu.be/vB8-XadUZTQ

Hawken Farm: Monday and tuesday (pictures)

On Monday we put cardboard on all the paths in the garden. We added more cardboard than we originally had because it hadn't suppressed any of the grass and plants under them so that we can wood chip all the paths of the garden. This took long time because we had to pat down the cardboard. While liam and I were doing this, Stuart and Allie bought some new higher fencing for the chicken coup and also put in an gate which makes it much easier to get in and out of the fenced in area because before we would just have to step over the top of the fencing. In the afternoon, we put up the "Hawknet". We did this by zip tying  four 4 by 25 foot netting pieces together and then digging four 1 1/2 foot posts into the holes in the ground and then put the posts up and draped the netting over the top of the chicken coup and the four posts.

On tuesday, I spent the morning getting the seed label packets printed out so that we can begin selling them. At around 10 am, Mr Wilson and I took a trip to Carter Lumber in Chardon to pick up wood for my trellis bench entrance. We did not return to hawken until around 1 pm and then I ate lunch and began working on the trellis. I finished the frame for the trellis in the afternoon.

Today the day began with the children having an assembly that was given by the orchestra of Heights High School. Each student within the orchestra introduced what instrument they played the importance of the instrument and then played a selection. At the end of the assembly before the orchestra left they played 5 different songs from the sound of music, a musical that the high school put on earlier during the . year that many children participated in. They then gave the children afterwards the opportunity to name the different songs that they recognized within the whole selection, this was and exercise that they really enjoyed. After this my children, the 4th graders got a breakfast and we went up to the classroom. While the children worked in their math workbooks my teacher instructed me to create a sample pamphlet of one of the islands of Lake Erie that she would show to the children as a prompt for the one that they would later as groups create. After the children finished their math they went out for recess and later came back for reading. During reading time my teacher read to them a book that reflected the historical topic that they were studying, the holocaust. Within this reading session my teacher would stop to give the children synonyms of words they may not have known and concepts and themes that they might not understand. She would often ask them to act out some of the words such as awe and whaling. It was amazing to see how many kids understood and how many had previous knowledge of what happened in the holocaust or the people who contributed to it.

collaborative meeting on the west side

Today I participted in the collaborative meeeting on the west side of all the community services' representatives. I learned alot from the meeting, about the services in cleveland for the youth. The meeting helped me alot with connections to diferent organizations to partner with for the children in the summer. Alot of the organizations provides free services to the youth of cleveland ohio. For children who are hungry most of the programs provide after scool meals and free lunch durng the summer. The recreational centers in cleveland provides art classes, sport teams which provdes all equipment, as well swim classes for free. This has made my search for programs on the West side, that are free alittle easier. But I stll need to find grant money for transportation to the camps and a staff member to take on the responsibilty to watch the chldren at the camps.

First day back

After having a great trip to Denmark where I filmed my experience both on and off the field. Now that I am home, I am planning on editing and creating a video for people to see my experience. On Monday, I went into my first day with my sponsor back home. We didn't do anything with my videos except upload them off of the camera onto my computer. Along with uploading the videos from the camera, I also uploaded the pictures which I took of mostly the areas we toured. After we did that, which took almost an hour because of how slow my computer was, Andrew took me to his office and showed me some of the works that they are working on and explained to me a little bit about what they do. When the videos and pictures were uploaded, we then went on to a meeting which I sat in on. This meeting was kind of weird to sit in, as the meeting they had was with my dad, but I enjoyed learning how creative the field of advertisement is and I also realized how much work really goes in to a project. All in all, I'm really excited to be home and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the video turns out.

March 16, 2012

Yesterday I helped out once again in the Ms. Lorbers 4th grade classroom. We started off the day once again with math. Ms.Lorber marked multiple pages inside each of the childrens books and they were to work individually in order to finish them. The questions consist of working with money using addition and subtraction, as well as story problems. I circulated throughout the room and helped the children if they had questions while Ms. Lorber did reading and comprehension testing in the back of the room. One thing that surprised me yesterday was that there is one girl in particular who I always work with during every activity, because her A.D.H.D makes her extremely dependent on others. Yesterday however, she asked if she could work by herself and to my surprise she finished her work before all the other children with little distractions and her work was done well. During lunch time my teacher gave me the opportunity to look at some work that the children did earlier this year in order for me to see their improvement. One boy in particular who she has been working with for two years now tested 50% last year on a beginners first grade reading passage with much frustration and dependency. She then showed me his reading level today and he recently test 98% independent in his own grade level reading.

My senior project for me takes place at Lauree P. Gearity Elementary School. On Monday I was in Mrs. Golenburg’s first grade classroom, whom was formally my kindergarten teacher. In the classroom there are about 20 children and a student teacher from John Carroll who was on his final week of his internship. We started off the day with the children handing in their homework from the previous night that consisted of some reading, writing, and math. Then the children would go check themselves in with the attendance on the smart boards and take their seats at their respected tables. At each table there was a worksheet that they finished and then split into their reading groups. At this point one third of the class went into a different first grade room, another third of the class went to another first grade class, and the last third stayed in Mrs. Golenburg’s classroom. I was instructed to one by one sit down with the each first grader in that classroom and read the same book with them. During this time I realized how smart these children really are and how broad their vocabulary is. Throughout the day I got acquainted with some more of the children and during their snack time I got the chance to read them the book If You Take a Mouse to School.   During the second half of the day the children started their math work to which they did addition, subtraction, working with money, and multiplication. I was also able to give them different word problems with the addition and subtraction problem. At the end of the day I was also granted the opportunity to award one of the students with the Tiger Pin, which is awarded to the student who shows amazing leadership, great class work, a good friend, and is an all-around ‘superstar’.

May 11, 2012

               Today during the morning portion of my senior project I started a game that I plan to present to the class early next week. I created a math worksheet consisting of graphing, problem solving, multiple choice questions and some logical thinking problems. Each student will receive a worksheet that contains 9 questions and possibly a bonus question. I plan to hand out these worksheets to the students and explain to them the rules as followed: they are not allowed to ask any teachers questions on how to do the problems, because they are based off of problems that they have previously done. However, the children may seek help from their peers if they are stuck on a problem. As a group they are allowed to miss 12 point’s altogether, which means about two mistakes per worksheet. The only assistance that the children are allowed to be given is with reading. I am allowed to read to them the questions and answer any reassuring reading questions that they may have. If all the children complete the worksheet without breaking any of the rules they will receive a pizza party at the end of the process. I also plan to do this same activity with the first grade class that I started off working with, however, it will be at their level of math and reading.

May 10, 2012

            Today I worked once again with the 4^th grade class. We only got to work on math today and some science which also incorporated some reading. Today was the day that I could easily distinguish the children who were up to their academic level as 4^th graders moving on to 5^th grade and those who weren’t as distinguished in these areas. Ms. Lorber was working with a different group of children with reading testing so she instructed me to work on math with her class. We studied time by playing time Bingo. I go a chance to see those who understood the correct way to read time and those who didn’t have a clue. There were points in time where I couldn’t even get some of the children to just sit and study their bored and use logic to find times as simple as 3:30. During these moments, however, was when I would have to pause the game and break down the idea of reading time. This not only gave me insight on how each child learned, but it also allowed me to connect with them on a personal level. After making sure each student understood the basics of how to tell time we played three rounds of Bingo in which I informed them that whoever won the game of Bingo would get a special prize; the candy of their choice.

May 9, 2012

Today at Gearity I was in the 4^th grade classroom with my previous 2^nd grade teacher Ms. Lorber. I was working with the children with learning disabilities with their math and their reading. During the beginning of the day we started with the math portion of our day in which I got a chance to really dive back into fourth grade math. My teacher told me to work on with one little girl who had A.D.H.D and struggled a lot with paying attention to her work if someone wasn’t sitting right next to her helping her through every single step. There were many points during this lesson where she would moan and groan saying that it was too hard and she did not want to complete her work because she, “didn’t know how to read”. I also started to notice a pattern where she would get ask to go to the bathroom several times during the day, or to go and get water and she would take a long period of time doing so. At one point I found her in the bathroom crying saying that her head her, when I asked her if she would like me to ask her teacher if she could go to the nurse she said yes. When I was leaving the bathroom her friend walked in after me and I overheard her saying that she just didn’t want to be in school so she was going to go home “sick”.

Study, study, study...

I'm finally done! Yay! I have officially covered the entire FAA Private Pilot's textbook for 2012. My sponsor also got me my own E6B and plotter. An E6B is basically a trip computer for flight planning and enroute issues. It can compute any question that you might have about wind, ground speed, weather, timing, etc with the click of a few buttons. The cool thing is that my sponsor actually helped design Sporty's Pilot Shop's first electronic E6B when he was a weekend flight instructor about twenty years ago. Back then they were about the size of a laptop, now just the size of a typical calculator. Even before that, they had manual E6B's that you could use the different spinning parts to determine the answers to your questions about a flight. My plotter is designed to work with sectional charts (maps for airplanes) to calculate headings, courses and distances. The main difference between a heading and a course is that your course is the straight line from takeoff to landing and the heading is what you are doing at that moment, typically the course adjusted for wind. I also received my own pilot's logbook where I can record all of my flight time and record all of my endorsements from flight instructors.

Speaking of endorsements, I received my first endorsement from my flight instructor to take the FAA Private Pilot's Aeronautical Knowledge Exam. I am currently scheduled to take it on Friday at the Burke Lakefront Airport. In order to receive my endorsement, I had to take a full length practice exam at home, which I completed in 35 minutes (you get 2.5 hours) and received an 80% without even using my E6B. My instructor was extremely proud and signed me off to take the exam! I am glad to be on track to solo by Wednesday, May 30. Today I finally received a phone call from the third doctor I called to get my 3rd Class Medical certificate, and I have an appointment for next Thursday. If all goes well, I should have no problem receiving my Student Pilot Certificate.

Family Promise

For the past two days i have been working hard with trying to make partnerships with different summer programs for the children of family promise. SO far i have made connections with Zelma George, programs in East Cleveland, as well as he Karamu house. My goal is to try and find different types of camps that different children can participate in. Im finding it very hard to find places that are free or affordable. For someone who has no money 75 a week or just to start the program is hard. Im learning just the basic things that we do like go to summer camp can be hard for those who has no income. Transportation is also a huge problem with these programs because most summer program does not provide transportation. For the families at family promise especially the ones at the Kinsman location, they do not have transportation for their children to go to the summer camps. I am slowly but surely trying to make a stable partnership with a program for the children at family promise. My next step will be to find funding for the children so we can help the parents send their children off to the summer camps.

Today So Far, and What I Will Be Doing

Today Mr. Daly visited and met with my sponsor and I to talk about the project. We talked about experiences we have had involving physical fitness, as well as a little on acidity and endocannabinoids.

For the rest of the day I plan to start the process of writing up the notes taken from my time spent with Jeremy into a more fluid and accessible form. To be more specific the information generally has to do with weightlifting mechanics and nutrition. That being said, there is still research I would like to get done in the next few days; mostly information on protein absorption rates for different foods and the benefits of specific supplements like adenosine triphosphate (which helps with oxidative phosphorylation).

I would like to take this time to express that I have really been enjoying myself. I've really felt good over the last few weeks, and time has been moving fast. I have attributed this to a variety of things: I have been getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night, good nutrition, the endocannabinoids I've been producing from aerobic work, and the freedom of thought not attending school has allowed.

Christian Internship! week two // part two

May 9, 2012 This week is all about gospel preaching. We’ve been talking to people on the streets for about 6 to 10 hours a day. I’ve been meeting all sorts of people – from the drug-addicted and the homeless to self-proclaimed hipsters who hang out on Coventry. It’s kind of amazing to realize that I don’t know people that well and that it’s so hard for me to get out of my comfort zone talk to people that don’t look like you and seem so many worlds apart from you on so many levels. One of the places we visited was what might be considered an “inner city” neighborhood – I had no idea how to talk to most people there. In the three-person team I was on, only one of the interns felt comfortable talking to most of the people we encountered. I soon learned that as long as I was friendly and open about what I wanted to talk about, a lot of people didn’t seem as wary of me as they might otherwise be. Interestingly, a lot of the people we stopped to talk to were Muslim, and we had a few rather long debates about our different beliefs. After an exhausting few hours in the neighborhood, we drove downtown and stopped and talked to people for a few more hours. There’s just been a lot of talking to people, listening to people, and talking some more…

Christian Internship! week two // part one

May 7, 2012 Once every month or so, our church or one of its sister churches holds a young people conference for junior high and high school-aged Christians to spend time together in activities and learning more about Jesus, God, and the Bible. After a 3-hour long drive to Pittsburgh, we spent the night at the manor where their church meetings are held – it was basically a giant sleepover with many, many younger kids. Since I was one of the older “serving ones,” I was responsible for a few middle-school girls, many for whom this was their first time spending the night away from home; I could hear whispering and laughing all night long. In the morning, we started the day off after breakfast with a short, half-hour singing session, accompanied with an acoustic guitar. Afterwards, we piled everyone into cars to an indoor carpet-skating park nearby; it was the most ridiculously fun outdoor activity I’d ever done. We had plastic rectangular “skates” attached to the bottom of our shoes, and it felt like you were sliding on a polished floor in socks, except you were doing that in an indoor skate park with ramps and other crazy things. The rest of the day consisted of activities in the park – Ultimate Frisbee was by far the most popular – and an evening meeting, where the band led the worship time and a message was shared on a portion of the Bible directed to young people. It was a crazy day, but I was so moved by the young people’s positive response to the message. You could just tell that so many of the young people were touched by the songs and the message that was shared – it was written all over their faces. Even one of the younger girls, whose parents were worried would be homesick, wanted to pray with me in our small-group time; it was one of those really sweet moments that I just can’t forget.

Christian Internship! week one // part two

May 4, 2012 Yesterday, we spent the day helping to work on and clean some of the church’s property used for retreats and conferences. It’s about an hour away, in the middle of the countryside, where you can see Amish people in their buggies and horses on the road if you look hard enough. The day was incredibly hot. I alternated between weeding and doing laundry for all the blankets in one of the cabins – we must have washed about 60 or 70 blankets altogether. Laundry sounds like a really easy and lame job to do, but it actually felt like one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever had to do – there was the tediousness, the sorting, the inspecting, the precise measuring out of detergent every time… Actually, the worst thing about it was probably the lack of a sense of accomplishment, since well, it was laundry. I mean, I had to carry heavy things too; I tried carrying a large, weighty basket of thickly stacked blankets across the half-mile path to the other house by balancing it on my head, just to make it a little more interesting, but I gave up pretty quickly. Other interns did all sorts of jobs, like clearing certain parts of the woods, building wooden platforms, gardening. It was a long day, from about 9 to 6 – the iced coffee I gulped down on the way back had never tasted so good before.

Christian Internship! - week one // part one

May 2, 2012 Group bible study starts at 8:00 in the morning…actually, 7:55, since that’s when everyone is expected to arrive. Those five minutes leave just enough time for pouring a cup of coffee or tea before situating yourself in a seat around the table. The Bible study’s a lot more intense and brainpower-consuming than you’d think it would be. Every intern prepares a presentation on one or more assigned chapters in the Bible that’s supposed to last an hour, but they end up being much longer than an hour because of all the discussion and questions to get to what it actually says. One of the coaches will ask all sorts of thought-provoking questions that catch people off-guard and help them discover what the Bible really means. It’s really a group-discovery though, with no one really quite understanding all of what’s going on until we get through every verse, the Hebrew (original language) meanings of some of the words, commentaries by renowned Bible scholars, and questions and thoughts from the rest of the group. The presentations last till around noon, with one 5-minute break in the middle – so it’s basically 4 hours straight of reading and studying the Bible. It’s amazingly interesting and stimulates all sorts of inspirations – I find myself needing to write down so many of the thoughts just tossed out there to save for further reflection.

Speed Reading Class 2

      Last Wednesday, May 9th, I met with Dean Ulsenheimer for the second time, but this time it was a one on one lesson. Although, I didn't have any competition, Mr. Ulsenheimer was able to motivate me to read much faster than the previous lesson. We began with another eye focus chart exercise so he could see  my eye movements across a page. In the first lesson, I had some trouble moving my eyes from each black box to the next, but this time I had no problems. Right after warming up my eyes, we started our first article, "Suicide Mission." It was 2,860 words and I got through them in 4:20 which is a words per minute of 660. That was more than double my beginning speed. Then, I took the comprehension quiz of ten questions and I got all but one. 9/10. Three points higher and 352 wpm faster than my first class.
      Next, we moved on to single column reading. The first example was no problem, only one or two words on each line. The goal was to keep my hand moving smoothly down each column without stopping. The first article was a tough one. It started out with only a couple words on each line but as the story progressed, the number of words increased to three or four words with multiple syllables in each word. It was only 750 words but it was tough to get used to the single columns. At the end of this reading there were twenty questions. Mr. Ulsenheimer said that under these conditions a ten out of twenty was pretty good, about 70%. I managed to just get over that goal with a twelve out of twenty. Although I felt like I was reading slower, I actually read 750 wpm.
     We then moved on to a hi-lighting exercise to take a break form the single column reading. The title of the article was "Magnetism in Electricity for Technicians." I had to hi-light every word that used "magnet." For example: magnets, magnetism, magnetic, unmagnetized. He told me I had to find 107 of these words as fast as I could. In 709 wpm I hi-lighted 106 of the words. I missed one in the first paragraph.
      Before going to back to more single column reading, I tried to free read one of the fiction novels he gave me. On each page we figured out there was about 310 words. I had to read through this as fast as I could while still trying to pick up on main ideas. I started off at a fast speed, but still going through every line. Then as I got an idea of the characters I sped up, focusing mainly on the first sentences of the paragraphs to get the idea of what was going on in the story. Mr. Ulsenheimer just wanted me to get through each page as quickly as I could practicing the techniques. At this point, it was more skimming than reading for me, and at the end of five minutes we counted the pages. There were 17.5 pages so I read at 1,085 words per minute.
     Finally we went back to the other single column readings. The first one I read at 857 wpm and answered 6 out of 10 questions correctly. Maybe 7 out of 10 because I think my last fill in the black was still correct even though it wasn't what he was looking for. The second reading was much more difficult with four or five words per line, but I still got through it with 667 wpm and six out of ten questions correct.
      To prepare for week three, I have reread the single column articles many time to practice maintaining a single focus on each line as I move down the page, and I have practiced with other single column articles that I found in the News Herald and The New York Times. I also practiced with varied material to see how my reading rates compared. In text books my reading rate was noticeably slower than in newspapers and magazines. I tend to read much faster through non-fiction books than fictions books as well. I read Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer that Mr. Daly let me borrow in just two days. It took about three hours and forty five minutes total to read 271 pages. I started off at my regular speed of 307 wpm then from there my rates ranged from 361wpm to 556 wpm. And just for about three minutes I read near 900 wpm, 897 wpm. Tomorrow is my next lesson and my last lesson.

Hawken farm: Friday

On friday, Stuart took the morning to do research on how he wants to plant the seeds in the beds in the garden. He did this by reading a book on plant companionship in order to better understand how different types of plants react with each other as well as the best way to place them in the beds. He took a lot of notes in order to document his thinking for future members of the hawken farm to be able to replicate his thoughts into the garden. I spent the whole morning rototilling the entire garden. This process took about two and a half hours. We did this in order to get the soil ready to plant seeds in. We first put down where we wanted the cardboard paths so that later we could place wood chips on top to suppress the weeds and mark out the paths. We rototilled the entire garden except for the 28 foot by 12 foot grazing area for the chickens, the cardboard paths, and already planted peas and onions. Some difficulties I had while rototilling was rototilling through the heavy grass and hay because it would get stuck in the rototiller. I had to clean the dirt and grass out of the rototiller multiple times throughout the morning. This was the tedious part of the morning. In the afternoon, Liam and I tried to construct a net that would cover the entire 28 foot by 12 foot grazing area. We put eyeholes into 10 foot pvc pipes and then ran a wire through all of them as well as weave the wire through the netting. We made the netting by taking two 4 foot by 50 foot plastic netting and cutting them into 25 foot strips and then zip tied them together. When we finished doing this, we moved the four posts to the four corners of the chicken coup grazing area but it was unsuccessful because there was no efficient way to connect the poles to the ground and the netting draped down into the chicken coup and was ineffective. The reason for attempting to do this netting was to try and protect the chickens from hawks on campus but we do not have the resources to accomplish that goal during our project.

Finally home!

On Thursday, my last training day in Denmark, I had two practices just like the first week. Yet this time not only was the weather terrible both practices were very hard. In the morning, we had to do a fitness drill and go straight into a shooting drill. This drill really allowed me and the rest of the players to realize the difficulty of being able to do routine things when we’re tired. That being said, I enjoyed the challenge that the coaches presented us with. In the afternoon, the team had a fitness test, which took up most of practice in a very windy and cold afternoon. After training, I said goodbye to all the guys and talked for a few minutes with the head coach Jens, he told me that he was happy with the way I performed and that I would be welcomed to come train again with the possibility of even training with the professional team, or as they call it in Denmark "the A team". I was really happy with the invitation and the feedback that I got. Later that day, I got together with most of family to say goodbye before I would be heading home on a 8 hour flight. Friday was a long and stressful day and I didn't get home until around 11. Although it was a long day I'm happy to be home and now I'm excited to take a look at the footage I have and edit it to create a movie! 

Flight School (May 10, 11)

Thursday and Friday were spent learning about weather. Weather patterns really affect how planes fly in the atmosphere. Even a perfectly clear day can make it difficult for a pilot to navigate the skies. Thursday I spent all day studying the different weather patterns, clouds, storms and other hazardous types of weather like freezing rain. High and low pressure systems can roll through the United States and pilots must be aware or else suffer the consequences of being higher or lower than the altimeter indicates. A "standard" flight atmosphere is 15ºC or 59ºF with a barometric reading of 29.92 Hg at sea level. But, especially in the Cleveland area, no day is a standard day. Pressure systems can cause major changes that affect the flight instruments and how they function; basically, a prepared pilot needs to be aware of the weather around him/her. In order to do this, pilots must check the official weather before every flight by calling 1-800-WX-BRIEF, which will give you the official weather. You can also go online to get the same reading at www.aviationweather.gov/adds , but this does not count as "official" by the FAA. Either way, every pilot should call the weather service as well as check online to get the METARs, TAFs and NOTAMs for the flight and airports and check the radar and cloud coverage. Coming to the end of my lesson on Friday, we headed over to the hangar to take my first flight. My instructor had to do three touch-and-go's before we could fly together. Unfortunately, my instructor came back much later than intended and informed me that the plane would have to undergo maintenance before I could fly it. Hopefully I will be able to fly come Monday!

Day 8 of Week 2

This video is of Day 8 of our second week at SPIRE. This was the Wednesday after finals so since they had the day off, Warren, Zach, and Miles came down to work out with us and experience what we're doing on our project. As you'll see at times they struggled to keep up but nonetheless had fun and got a good hard workout in. Enjoy and stay tuned..

http://youtu.be/NdzrpUdozVE

Friday

Today was our second shoot. Andrew was originally going to help out today, but something came up and he wasn't able to make it. Shawn, who came on Thursday volunteered to help. Another freelancer who I met before, Tyler, has been coming in Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (I missed him this week because of APs), who also volunteered to come. Since both Tyler and Shawn (who as it turns out went to school together) have their own cameras, and I took the studio cameras, we had three total cameras to shoot with which made shooting much easier. I knew from before that the Sampler where we were shooting had a lot of stuff in it, and that with only one camera it would have taken hours to shoot. Thankfully we had three cameras, so that wasn't a problem. Overall I think that this shoot went much more smoothly. I was in front of the camera again, but this time I felt much more comfortable. Also the owners, Mike and Sally, had much more to talk about than on Thursday. To be fair, there was more to talk about in the Sampler than in Pro-Tec. Furthermore, I think the quality of the images we were getting was much better (or at least more consistant) than at Pro-Tec and we got more footage, so while editing it all may take longer, I think the end product will be much better.

Shadowing Jeremy Train Clients

Yesterday I went with Jeremy to two clients' houses to shadow Jeremy as the trained them. I got up, and among other things, ate and packed my second meal. Jeremy picked me up, and we headed down to the first client, a older man named Ron, who's focus was on functional fitness.

The goal of this training was to help maintain muscle mass and general health to help reduce health issues that generally come with age. Dialog between the three of us carried throughout the workout, which is important because it keeps a client like Ron enjoying the workouts. The lifts were done with relatively light weight, and perfect form was not enforced so long as the practiced form would not result in injury (the largest problem with form that I saw was not having the full range of motion). Ron was not looking for extraordinary results, and so the intensity of the session is scaled to what he wants to accomplish; if you push people farther than what they want they will end up just quitting.

The second client, Lesley, was using Jeremy's training to help improve her tennis game. Her program had a sport specific focus to accommodate her goals, and her lifts often focused on building stabilization and muscle coordination. Her intensity was greater than Ron's; the time between sets was shorter, and more free-weight work was done. Lesley's was far more focused on the workout than Ron, and this was evident from the fact that the dialog between us pertained to the workout; Ron mostly joked around about topics not about what he was doing.

While her form was not ideal, and things such as proper breathing were not always demonstrated, Jeremy did not hound her about it. The social aspect of training others is what Jeremy stressed me to during our discussions about the sessions. Clients have to want to workout, and if you push them to hard they will give up. You also have to work with people who take their problems out on you, or blame you for lack of results when they do not follow through with aspects of training, like nutrition, which Jeremy cannot regulate for them. Jeremy has the knowledge to help people reach their goals, but much of what he does is helping people help themselves; rarely and easy task.

A link to my blog

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5362803452950922365#overview

Speed Reading Class One

      Tuesday May 1st I met with Dean Ulsenheimer, a power reading instructor, to learn about his program and when we could meet to learn the techniques of power reading. The program is only three classes, two hours each class. He expected some lessons to be shorter because there is just Mrs. Davis, Nick Crisalli, and me instead of the twenty to thirty students he has had in the past. Mr. Ulsenheimer has been teaching for the last twenty-nine years and has condensed those years into just six hours. He narrowed what he taught to a very specific set of techniques that he says works every time. This from a college student, for years plagued with dyslexia: "It's been great to finally read something and understand it the first time." Visit his website to find more information about his endorsements, average results, benefits, and how to contact him. 
      
      The next day, Wednesday May 2nd, we had our first lesson. We started off with a timed reading and comprehension test to get our base level words per minute and comprehension score. He had his stopwatch out and gave us our time when we finished. I started off with a time of 3:50 in a reading of 1180 words. My words per minute was 308 and my comprehension score was 6 out of 10. Once we each got our basic reading speed and comprehension level we started going over how to improve. He noticed that some of us were mouthing the words as we read. It's called sub-vocalization, and most of us do it without thinking. When you read each word one by one, you might as well be reading out loud. 
      Then, we started going over eye movements across a page. We have peripheral vision so we should use and expand it while reading instead of focusing on every word in a sentence. Mr. Ulsenheimer wanted us to practice going through sentences by only looking at three points on a line then just two points on a line as quickly as we can. In addition to just looking at a couple points, we have to read in word clusters, four, five words at a time. We already know what each word means so we don't need to really spend time looking at each word. We practiced reading a couple short paragraphs with this technique to get a feel for it.
      Next, we briefly went over surveying. Mr. Ulsenheimer wants us to survey anything over three pages in length, especially textbooks and other books with pictures and graphs. Surveying is used to get the general idea of a book to decide whether it will be worth your time reading it. The goal is to scan the entire book in only about four to five minutes. The basic sections to pay attention to are the author, details about the author, copyright date, table of contents, tables, charts, graphs, pictures, and appendices. If you make it through all of that then try looking at the first few sentences of the opening paragraphs of several chapters. 
      Finally, Mr. Ulsenheimer taught us the importance of using your hand as a guide through the article or passage. There is no specific way to use your hand, as long as it guides you through the paper. Everyone has his or her own style. Using our hand, we were tested again on another passage later in the booklet that we each received. He took out his stopwatch and on his command we started. This passage was 1410 words and I got through it in 2:20. My wpm was 604. My comprehension, however, was considerably worse with only a 3 out of 10. I felt I was concentrating too much on using correct technique, and I wasn't picking up as much of the article as I should have. Mr. Ulsenheimer expected that and said we would get used to using our hand with more practice.
      To end the day, we did a hi-lighting exercise. At the end of the booklet was one more article with 1611 words. All Mr. Ulsenheimer wanted us to do was hi-light every statistic. This was not a coloring exercise. We just had to quickly knick every statistic. For example: "8 years" or "eight years." I managed to mark 45 of the 51 statistics in 805 wpm.  
      

Hawken farm week two: Wensday-Thursday

The weather was nice enough on wensday to start working outside again. First thing in the morning, I helped Mr. Wilson unload the rototiller from his truck so we can cultivate the garden soil when the chicken coup is finished. After this, I went inside and worked on cutting the rafters for the chicken coup roof and a plywood ceiling for the nesting boxes in the chicken coup. The nesting box ceiling is important because it keeps the chickens from pooping in the nesting boxes. If they did, the chickens would be reluctant to lay eggs. I then installed the rafters and then placed the ceiling of the nesting boxes in the coup. I screwed in the rafters to keep them from moving but I just set the nesting box ceiling on the top so that it could be removed in the future for cleaning. Next, I brought out a circular saw to cut windows in the chicken coup. Windows are needed to let in light and also increase ventilation. I then stapled the mesh we bought to cover the window.

On thursday, our only goal as a group was to finish the chicken coup! We got started right away. Stuart went and worked on attaching the corrugated plastic roofing the the rafters, as well as cut a large rectangle in the ceiling board to create more light and ventilation. Allie and Liam went the home depot to pick up the remaining hardware and stain we needed to finish the coup. I worked on the roust for the chickens to stand on and also the ramp for them to walk up into the elevated chicken coup. Stuart found a 10 foot branch that we cut down to about 8 feet to use as the roust. I screwed in ply wood on the ends to more easily attach the roust. I then used the left over ply wood from the walls to create a ramp for the chickens to walk up. After lunch, Stuart finished the top window and cut down the roof so that it wouldn't have any over hang. Allie finished staining all the chicken coup. I cut trim for the windows and installed those. I also installed door latches and handles on the coup. The last thing we did before finishing the chicken coup was make a 12 by 25 foot inclosed area for the chickens to roam and also put chicken wire on the space between the coup ceiling and roof to keep out predators. While we are not completely finished with the Chick coup, we have done the majority and thursday night is the first night that the Chickens will stay over night at Hawken.

We also started to rototill the garden but only finished about a quarter of it. Here are some pictures of the almost finished chicken coup!

 

Thursday

Today was our first shoot. I came in early to get ready for the 11:00 shoot. Everything seemed to be in working order, the camera was all charged, the mics had new batteries put in to them. Everything was in shape. This meant that I was stuck not doing much for a while. While waiting for Andrew to show up, another freelancer, Shawn, came in to do his paperwork. We told him about the shoot we were doing, and since he was done with school, he asked if he could come along. We could always use extra people, so we told him sure. He had a camera, but it was at home and 11:00 was approaching fast, so we told him to meet us there. In the mean time, Andrew arrived and we headed over to Bernadette's brother's electronics repair shop, Pro-Tec Electronics. We had already agreed that I would be the spokesperson and Andrew would be camera guy, but Shawn didn't really know what we were doing, so we told him to be the B camera (the camera that shoots extra footage). While we were waiting for Shawn to arrive, I went over the contracts and releases with the owners, posting signs to let the public know that we were filming, and generally getting ready. I showed the shooting outline to the owners and let them decide what to say. Once we actually started shooting, Jim, one of the owners, pretty much covered everything I was going to ask without me asking, so I had some trouble coming up with extra questions. Also it was my first time in front of the camera, so I was a bit nervous. I think it went pretty well, but we'll have to see when I edit it all together.

Hawken Farm week two: monday/tuesday

The weather on monday and tuesday was very wet and stormy, because of this we were not able to get a lot done in the garden outside or on the chicken coup. Allie, Stuart and Liam all had AP tests in one of the sessions during monday and tuesday. From this, I had to do a lot on my own. On monday i spent the morning designing a plan for a bench trellis that will also serve as an entrance for the garden when it is completed. I looked up designs of it but I couldn't find one I liked. I searched for images to give me a range of ideas for a design and then I took a little from each of the pictures in order to create my own design. I then carefully went through the design in order to make a detailed materials list. The total expenses for the bench trellis came out to be around $138. In the afternoon, I went and talked to Ms. Wiggens about the seed labels for the Hawken farm seed packets. This turned out to be a very long and tedious process. I had to transfer an image from a pdf file into a word template and then copy and center the image 10 times on one sheet. Then i repeated this process for 51 other seed labels. After I was finished, I sent all the templates to Mrs. Wiggens so she could print them out in color. These labels will allow us to sell seeds and raise money for the Hawken Farm.

"The Walk In Smells Rancid"

Eric and I have been working together the last week or two. We have been to a number of different places including the building site of a new restaurant, the corporate offices of Brio/Bravo!, Bravo! At Eton Collection, and Brio at Legacy Village. We started our project last Monday at a torn up place that used to be a restaurant in La Place. After meeting the contractor, Tim we were put to work. We started the day by cleaning out the back of the kitchen of the existing restaurant and taking all the trash and torn up debris out to a monstrous dumpster in the front outside. The smell in two of the walk in coolers could be described as "rancid" and something must have died in there... The guys working in the demolition and building process are great guys, Ed was the first one we met. Great guy. The first day (and days to follow) we were literally doing manual labor. Doing jobs like this has really made us appreciate the opportunities we are given in life and by Hawken. Another great guy is Matt, some great comments came out of this guy’s mouth. Hilarious. Throughout Monday we did a lot of heavy lifting, taking existing concrete and brick out to the dumpster periodically and empting the smaller trash cans into it. It's hard work. We were both sore the next couple days from lifting so much.

Throughout Monday-Wednesday about we were working in the restaurant doing demolition and organizing things. The work crew has a spot in the parking garage a little ways down the "street" that we are storing all the appliances and chairs/tables and what not in. We actual spent a lot of time moving the existing appliances/chefs tables/everything out of the old kitchen to make room for the new one to this space down in the parking garage. This stuff is heave and expensive so we had to be careful moving it all the way down there. The fridge which was about 8 feet tall was especially hard because it could tip easily, as well as the stoves and other things because they were so heavy. After doing all this we continued cleaning the area up and filling up dumpster after dumpster. You wouldn't believe how many dumpsters you go through gutting out an existing restaurant. In the days we have been there we have gone through at least 2 huge dumpsters a day. And some days the crew would begin work at 4a.m. and be done with one before we even got there at 8:30.

Later in the week we were meeting our sponsor, Rick Doody, the owner/president of Brio/Bravo! Restaurant Group at the new restaurant and talked there for a little with him. Then we would work for a few hours while Rick went into a meeting or interview. For example while we were working, Rick went over to Caribou for a nice coffee and interview with a prospective executive chef for the new restaurant project. The chef was a real nice guy. What we did later in the week also was go back to the corporate office and meet Rick there.

Wednesday we went to the office for the first time and met part of the team that runs BBRG (Brio/Bravo! Restaurant group). On the first day we had a long talk with Rick about the restaurant business in general and how he got his start. It was really interesting. He told us the story of how his mom and dad started a restaurant called Lindy's in Columbus, a very successful restaurant that has now been thriving for 30 years. Anyway, after graduating from OWU he went on to live in Italy for a year. This is where he was inspired to go into the restaurant industry. After being given amazing food and wine every night while being there and realizing that in Italy, it's all about the food. So he brought that idea back and 10 years later after perfecting the business out came BBRG. To Be Continued...

More Blogs!!

I'm enjoying your posts and the activities described in them! As we near the end of the second week, some of you have not met your blog requirements. By this weekend, you should have posted the equivalent of six blogs. If you are not near that, consider reflecting daily updates until you get caught up. I'm sure there's enough to share!

Week 2, Days 6&7

So far in week 2 we have gotten good workouts in at SPIRE and have also gotten a very good shooting workout done at Hawken. On Monday we traveled out to SPIRE, meet with Mr. Orloff and scheduled future meetings with some pro atheltes (who will remain anonymous until the video is released), we worked on our video footage, and Will did the basketball weight room workout with at MJP. Tuesday, we meet up at Hawken to conduct our shooting workout along with ball handling drills that Mr. Bossman (Directer of Basketball at SPIRE) taught us and we then finished the video you are about to see. The video recaps day 6 and 7 of our project and we'll be adding on and posting the rest of the days this week as the week progresses. Enjoy and stay tuned!

... also we haven't forgotten the week 1 video, it will be done by Thursday, stay tuned for that also!

...Oh, and please excuse Aaron's language in the morning, he can be a bit cranky so there's some PG-13 material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZWdnRzl-Dc&feature=youtu.be

Monday & Wednesday (May 7-9)

This week has been a week full of AP cramming and aviation cramming (seems like much too much test prep for me). Unfortunately, my project has not been too eventful due to the fact that I've had only 2 half day sessions due to my extraordinary number of AP exams; at least they're almost over, only one more left! I figured I would just make this post much longer than normal to account for the missed blog post on Monday. The weekend and the beginning of my week were pretty brutal - especially when it comes to flight school. I spent most of my time doing self study of the FAR AIM (in short, the US Federal Aviation Administration's law book). It has been keeping me extremely busy, there are way too many technical laws and regulations that need to be memorized before I take my written exam, hopefully next week. This book includes everything from seatbelts to airspace to medical certificates and everything in between. I've also spent my week trying to hunt down an FAA certified physician to get my Class C medical certificate, which will give me my official Student Pilot Certificate so I can solo later this month.

Tuesday, since my exams went as late as 1pm, and my flight instructor's wife just had a baby over the weekend, we decided to call it a self-study day where I began reviewing for my FAA exam, mixing in a little calculus review along the way. There is so much information you need to know for a test that is only 60 questions long. Today, we finally are done with the main part of regulations that I need to know for the exam, so I was able to progress into Airport Procedures and A/FD information; needless to say, it was much less boring than the regulations. I learned about airplane right-of-ways, avoiding collisions, how to fly in day, dark and haze, typical flight patterns...the list goes on and on. We spent so much time discussing all of these things today. Towards the end, we talked about the A/FD and different airport signs and lights, what to look for when you land and other important information pertinent to takeoff, taxiing and landing. Good news! - As long as the weather is good on Friday (currently it says 66 and sunny, which would be perfect) I will have my first in-air flight lesson :) I will keep you all posted to what happened on Friday after flight school.

Occlusion Training and Runners High

Occlusion training entails cutting blood flow off from muscles in order to target fast twitch muscle fibers (which have the greatest potential for hypertrophy). Without adequate blood flow the muscles rely on lactic acid fermentation to produce energy (ATP). Fast twitch muscle fibers (mainly Type 2b as opposed to Type 2a) function almost exclusively on this method for energy production, while other muscle fibers (slow twitch or Type 1 and Type 2a) are oxidative, meaning they use oxygen for ATP synthesis. The lack of blood flow also drastically reduces the body's ability to remove the products and chemicals which build up with muscle function.

The lactate that builds up in these muscles increases the concentration of growth hormones in these muscles. With occlusion training these growth hormones are not removed from the muscle through the blood stream until after the training is done (for that muscle, then the instruments used to restrict blood flow would be removed). The results are greater muscle protein synthesis, and greater nitric oxide synthase-1. As a result greater gains are made.

Occlusion training uses weight that is as low as 20% of a 1 rep max, and no more than 50% of that max. This weight range would be considered low intensity, and consequently put very little wear on joints. Despite this occlusion training has been shown to produce greater hypertrophy than moderate-intensity training (between 60% and 85% of a one rep max).

The occlusion training method shows to be useful for those who are injured for frail, and is useful when supplemented into a normal training regimen. The main downsides are that only muscles on extremities can really be targeted with occlusion training, and it is noted to be a very painful way to train.

I have also done a little research on 'runner's high'; the remarked 'high' is caused by the production of cannabinoids during aerobic work. Things get more complicated when you look at the exact mico-biology behind this, but some account this phenomenon as a product of evolution; the motive of which would be to make humans more inclined to run long distances (many anthropologists believe humans were long distance runners, and used persistence hunting to run down game till it would become exhausted). Studies have shown that other animals that are consisted distance runners, like dogs, produce cannabinoids from aerobic work like humans, and animals that are not long distance runners do not.

In trying to find a large benefit to cannabinoid production I found that cannabinoids are beneficial as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. Unfortunately my research did not conclude that the cannabinoids produced in the body (endocannabinoids) have these properties. It should be noted, however, that extensive research was not done on this subject.

I will finish today by watching and taking notes on the movie FST-7 Defined which Jeremy has lent me, and tomorrow I will be going with Jeremy to shadow him as he trains two of his clients (in addition to the normal work I do).