Crunch Time

So this week I am trying something new. I am going to add to the post everyday, but not post it until the end of the week. This way I won't forget what I am doing all week and hopefully not overwhelm myself with a ginormous post on Sunday night again.... Here goes nothing!

Monday: We kicked off the week with a team meeting. Everyone talked about what we were working on, how we were progressing, and what we needed assistance with. It was nice to be in the loop about everyone's tasks.
After the meeting, my PM asked to see my designs for the East Falls station. He really liked most of them and encouraged me to keep working. The next designs will be due at the end of the day on Tuesday. Fingers crossed he likes how the designs are progressing and that SEPTA approves of them as well....
I spent most of the day reworking old designs for the murals and trying to come up with new ideas. Hopefully I will get some good feedback tomorrow.
After about seven hours of sitting in front of my laptop, a team member and I worked on sketching the word LIBRARY on parachute cloth for our mini service event on Friday. We need to do as much prep as we can during the work day to avoid staying after hours this week.

Tuesday: Myself and three other teammates traveled to South Philadelphia to view the space we would be working in on Friday. We needed to scope out a few things before heading back in the afternoon for prep. We went back to the office, had lunch, and gathered supplies for prepping. My teammate and I chatted about briefing the team on their assignments. I then realized that I needed to submit my designs for the SEPTA murals to my PM before the end of the day. I had to compile thirteen designs into a Word document for him with titles/descriptions of each. It wasn't hard to do, but it took a decent amount of time since I had to re-save each layer as a separate JPG and then put them together on a different computer that had Word on it.
While I was doing this, the rest of the team headed to the school to start prep. We had to sketch a mural on a hallway wall and start making paper mache branches for a tree we are making in the library. I didn't want to hold everyone up so they went ahead without me.
By the time I got to the school, everyone was hard at work. Most of the mural was sketched and there were two branches already made out of chicken wire. I came in and helped make three more branches, stuff them with newspapers, and then paper mache them. We were only able to do one layer, but hopefully tomorrow we will be able to do more. (It was taking a while to dry, but hopefully the process will speed up now that the first layer is on....)
Tomorrow, we are getting PT certified. Basically, we have to run through PT with little to no mistakes and hope they pass us. It's nerve-wracking, but we should be alright.

Wednesday: We started the day with practicing PT to make sure we would pass the certification later in the morning. It went well so hopefully it's a sign!
And we passed! Woo! There were only seven of us so we weren't as loud as we could've been, but other than that, we did well. Go CE!
For the rest of the morning, we worked on signs for CY Opening Day on Friday. (Yes, City Year has an Opening Day that is different from AmeriCorps Opening Day and yes it is the same day as our first service event. The good news is that the service event and opening day are both at the same place.) There were three signs: "Thank you, Comcast", "#CYODay", and a longer phrase I can't quite remember. Whoops....
Around 12:30PM, our team (minus the team leaders) headed to the service site to continue prepping. (The paper mache branches weren't going to finish themselves!) We spent the rest of the day working with the branches. Sadly, we had to cut one down. It was our largest branch and it wasn't working out the way we needed it to. It was so droopy that we just decided to cut it in half and scrap the half that was collapsing. Hopefully when we head back tomorrow the branches will be ready to prime!
While we were waiting for a layer to dry on the branches, we primed the column that the tree is going to be painted on. We had to move some furniture around so it worked out that by the time we were done with the first coat, we could do another layer on the branches. They were looking pretty good before we left for the day so hopefully that means we can prime and adhere them to the column tomorrow.

Thursday:My teammate and I headed to the service site in my car to pick up the purchasing card from our other teammate. We needed to get a few last minute things to make sure the branches would adhere to the column. After we grabbed the card, we headed to our storage unit to grab everything we would need for the service event tomorrow.
It took us pretty much all morning to get everything we needed. We didn't have a few things in storage that we needed so we headed to Home Depot and Walmart for the last things.
When we got back to the service site, my teammates and I grabbed lunch since it was noon. At 12:30, we got down to business with the tree.
It took us all day (and then some), but three branches were finally adhered to the ceiling and the column. I drew extra branches and an outline to contain the leaves that the volunteers were going to sponge paint. There's no paint on the tree right now, just primer, so it looks a bit weird. I'm not going to lie.... I'm extremely nervous about how this is going to turn out.
The rest of the team spent most of their day at the office, finishing last minute things for the event. When they came to the service site, they helped set up the stations with paint and supplies for tomorrow. By the time we left the site (at about 6:45PM), I felt like we were in good shape. I hope tomorrow runs smoothly!

Friday: Today was the big day! We all met at the site at 7:30AM to finish any last minute prep before the volunteers arrived. We set up the paint stations for the different projects close to them so the volunteers could easily access the supplies. There was a lot of poor communication happening between the various levels of 'authority' causing a bit of stress and tension during the final set up, but we all let it go and put our best face forward for the volunteers.
It was about 9AM when twelve of the eighteen volunteers arrived. We decided to move forward with the program and hope for the best.

First stages of the tree

Super excited to lead volunteers

I helped oversee a group of four volunteers to fix-up the logo outside of the school. They were very excited to fix it up because it was in bad shape. They were excited that it was going to be the first thing that the students saw when they walked into school on Monday morning.

Old Logo

At 9:45AM, I had to leave my group until 11:30AM because it was Opening Day for City Year. Luckily, this was happening at the same location as the service event so it was an easy transition.
My teammates and I walked into the auditorium, extremely confused about what we were supposed to do. We sat down in a row and hoped for the best.
Around 10AM, we all rushed through the gym doors and started doing PT for eleventh and twelfth graders as well as some corporate sponsors and the Lincoln University band. It was a lot of fun, but could've been better if we weren't so damn confused....
The band was awesome. They did a little show after all of the speeches were given and we were sworn into service. They played traditional campy band songs but also played some modern songs including Katy Perry's Birthday and the Electric Slide. It was really cool to see this since my university didn't have a band. (We didn't really need one since we didn't have a football team...)
After the Opening Day ceremony, the CE team headed back to our projects. I was super impressed with the amount of progress my group had made in the time we were gone. A few people walked by and said "Wow, I didn't even realize this was here until you started working on it." I think it really helped boost the morale of the volunteers.

Repainted Logo

Finished tree

We broke for lunch around 12:30PM. It was nice to chat with the other volunteers and to see the progress everyone was making on their projects. After lunch, everyone continued working until about 1:50PM, when we gathered to debrief about their day.

The volunteers departed a little after 2PM. The CE Team spent the rest of the day cleaning up and touching up small areas of the projects. It wasn't a lot of touching up, which shows how well the volunteers followed directions. I was very proud of our team for being so clear.

Mural (sorry no before picture!)

The day came to an end at 4:15PM when we had our final circle and did a little debriefing. We are saving the big debrief for Monday.
It was definitely an interesting experience overall. It was very hard to take the back seat and not get my hands dirty, but it all worked out. I'm excited to work through the issues we had with our first event to make the next event even more successful.

I'm not sure what is in store for this upcoming week, but I am excited nonetheless. Hopefully I will hear back from SEPTA about the mural designs!
Have an amazing week!
Cheers,
Allee