My First 73 Hour Week

This was by far the longest week of my life, but also the fastest. Here's a recap!

Monday: The kick off. We started in the office at 9AM, as we had been doing everyday for prep. I started my day off with walking to the office, as usual, but this time it was much colder outside. Needless to say, the walk really woke me up.
We had a team meeting at 9:30AM to discuss the upcoming week and updates on SEPTA. We are going forth with prepping one mural this week and having some corps members paint them on Saturday. It's going to be tricky to get it all prepped and sketched by Saturday, but I think it might work out.
When the meeting was over, a few of us headed to Dunkin'. I grabbed a hot chocolate and enjoyed the walk with my service partner, discussing our weekends. It's always nice to not talk about work with her.
The morning pretty much flew by and before I knew it, it was time for lunch.
After lunch, I helped my service partner set up tracing stations for some of our teammates and then cut some parachute cloth for various projects. While setting up one of the projectors, I had a minor altercation with it, causing the projector to launch across the room. I am so clumsy!
After this minor setback, I had to measure out and cut cloth for the SEPTA project so the cloths could be primed at prep. Each section of the cloth was cut 5' x 6'. I was only able to cut four of the eight cloths because it hurt my knees too much to be crawling around on the floor (yes, I am actually an old lady).
At 3PM, we headed to the service site to set up prep. It went pretty smooth, but we had to end early since the school needed us out by 6:15PM at the latest. We almost finished everything we needed to and appeared to be in good shape for Saturday.

Tuesday: Apparently we were supposed to start the rest of the week at 8:15AM in the office. Myself  and two of my other teammates did not get the memo. I felt like such a moron when I realized I was going to be an hour late. My PM was fairly understanding, but I was not going to let that ever happen again.
We spent all day prepping. ALL DAY. I traced out a few murals during the day in the office, cut the rest of the cloth for the SEPTA mural, and then we headed to the service site to prep.
I finished tracing out the state abbreviations that I had started with a PSA on Monday. We had a great time tracing.
While tracing, we were informed that we were going back to the office to work after prep at the service site. I was furious. I was exhausted and hadn't prepared to stay late. AND we didn't have a plan for things to do in the office. It really put a damper on the rest of my evening.
After prep with the PSAs, we headed back to the office. We had Domino's pizza, which made things slightly better, but I was still upset about being in the office without a plan.

Night time tracing

It was about 7:20PM when we finally started doing something and it was only because I initiated it. I was tired of sitting around not doing anything so I figured I would trace another mural.
My service partner and I met with our PL to discuss what still needed to be done. Basically, we have a lot of printing to do, but everything needs to be looked over by her before we can do that. We also had about five projects left to trace, four of which are on the outside of the school. (This was going to make things very difficult, especially because it was going to rain for the next few days.)
After our meeting and final circle, we were finally free. It was after 8PM and I was just ecstatic to be leaving the office.

Fire drill selfie

Wednesday-Thursday: The days pretty much start to blend together after Tuesday. The days were long and crazy, but very productive. We spent the first half of our days working on paperwork in the office and tracing parachute cloths. In the afternoon, we either headed to the service site to get everything squared away or stayed in the office tracing with PSAs. One of the days we had a fire drill in the pouring rain, but I honestly can't remember which day it was. It took about a half hour away from us, but we still managed to get done what we needed to by the end of the day.
On Thursday, we stood outside of the service site until 7:30PM, tracing the murals on the outside of the school. It was cold and windy and most of us were miserable, but when we saw it come together,
it made us feel a bit better about it all.

Friday: We spent all day prepping and getting ready for Saturday. We headed to the school at 1PM to get ready for the volunteers who were coming to help with prep at 3PM. Everyone was rushing around, pouring paint, taping and tarping, and just pretty much moving a mile a minute. It was so hectic, but everything was pretty much set for Satruday morning by the time we left. Our day was not over yet, though. We headed back to the office to finish tracing a few things and to make sure all of the paper work was completed. I was exhausted at this point and just wanted to go home. We were dismissed at 10PM, six hours before I needed to wake up for the event. I was pissed. I missed my train by about five minutes and had to wait forty for the next one. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper going into our first event.

My brother and I

Entrance to cyServes!

Saturday: After about five hours of sleep, I headed to E.M. Stanton K-8 school with my little brother, who was coming to help out. It was 5:45AM when we arrived and was still pretty dark outside. Hot Chocolate in hand, I was ready as I would ever be for the day.
The morning was a lot of running around, checking in with corps members to make sure their projects were ready, setting up SEPTA cloths for corps members (and my brother) to paint, and problem solving the few little issues that were coming up. The morning flew by and before I knew it the volunteers were arriving.

Love these ladies!

The event kicked off with a few speakers, one of which was the C.O.O. of Chickie and Pete's (who I met!), and also some good ol' fashion PT to get the volunteers pumped for their day of service. My brother was intrigued by the City Year culture, but did not want to participate in the call and responses or the CY Stomp PT activity (which is one of my favorites). Maybe he will participate at the next service event, MLK Day.

Painting Edwin M. Stanton on the school

Painting kids in the schoolyard

My SEPTA design coming together!

After the opening event, everyone started their day of service. It went so well! I spent most of my day checking in with everyone, problem solving, and moving projects to dry. At 11:30AM, everyone was able to get Chickie and Pete's Crab Fries. I was so happy to eat something. (And they were free so they tasted even better!)
At 2PM, the volunteers left, but there was still a lot to finish. The corps members helped finish painting murals and adhering multiplication tables to the risers on the stairs. Those who were not doing this were cleaning up tarp and paint.

Around 5PM, the corps was dismissed, but a few people stayed behind to finish helping us. They were lifesavers!
When everyone was dismissed an hour later and we had the van packed to head to storage, the sun was going down. I couldn't believe that the day was over.
Half of the team headed to storage to unload and the other half headed to the office to unload a few things there. I was part of the half that went to storage. My brother helped us unload everything there and we were finished by 6:30PM. It was great.

Multiplication Risers

Overall, the event was a success. The volunteers were great and the corps members were amazing. I am so thankful for all of the help and support we received from everyone all week and on the day of. We couldn't have made it through the event without the PSAs and the other corps members who helped out. I'm looking forward to our next event and making it even more of a success than cyServes.

Cheers,
Allee

Parallel Parking is Not Everyone's Forte

This week was another dedicated to prepping for cyServes. Instead of going to the service site everyday, we spent a few days tracing parachute cloths in the office. Here's a recap of the week:

Monday: We started our week bright and early at 8:15AM on Monday morning. Since it was National Take Over a Foreign Country and Kick Out Everyone Who Lives There Day (also known as Columbus Day),the schools were closed. I had trekked home with three projects and two levels on Friday to make sure we would have things to work on in the office.
I spent my morning working on editing a few things on the PC and AC guides that my PL needed corrected. There's still more work to be done on them, but there is some information we are missing from our PM. Until we get that information passed along to us, the guides will remain unfinished.
Aside from working on the guides, I also edited a few project list images. Many of them were appearing pixelated so I worked on making them looking better. It was so simple, but it gave me something to do for a while.
In the midst of this, a few of us decided to head to Dunkin'. Since the Eagles won on Sunday, everyone was able to get free coffee. (Well, aside from me since I don't actually drink coffee.) This was a nice way for us to kill some time on a mundane Monday morning.
We broke for lunch around noon, walked to the usual deli, and then struggled to find a place to eat in the office. Since the schools were closed, the school-based service teams were going through sessions all day, rotating in and out of the office. It was nice to see everyone, but it also sucked because they kept coming into our space and taking over.
After lunch, I tried to keep myself busy until 2:30PM when we started setting up to trace on parachute cloth. I spent this time editing some photos from the wedding I shot a little over a week ago. (I'm almost done, which is SUPER exciting!)
At 2:30PM, we started setting up the projectors and parachute cloth to trace. We spent the rest of the afternoon tracing out an entire project (about four sheets of parachute cloth) and half of another project (one of two parachute cloths). It was a nice, relaxing afternoon in the office.

Tuesday: We started our day at 9AM in the office. As usual, I walked from the stop before mine to try to wake up a bit before starting my day. It works until I sit in my chair and start staring at a screen, but at least I was awake from 8:30-9:15AM, right?
I was voluntold that I would be going to storage with one of the PLs at 11:30AM. I didn't mind. In fact, I was excited to get out of the office for a while.

Fabulous parking job

We headed to our SEPTA storage unit, which I had never been to before. My PL drove and had to find a parking spot. Since we are in Philly, mostly everything is parallel parking, which is not necessarily his forte. We found a spot and parallel parked. He didn't like how far he was from the curb so he tried it again. And again. And again. And then finally gave up, drove around, and found another spot that was only slightly bigger. So he tried to parallel park. Again. And again. And then finally, after the third time, he had parked pretty damn perfectly. He even asked me if I would put it in my blog because he was so proud, so here ya go! 

SEPTA Station

When we reached the storage locker area at 46th, the door we needed to get into was locked and we didn't have a key. My PL found a SEPTA worker who was able to track down someone with the key. Fifteen minutes later, we were in our weird closet storage unit in a creepy hallway at the SEPTA station. We grabbed the few things we needed and then headed back to the car and onto our next stop.

Sad SEPTA storage unit

We got to our regular storage unit and grabbed various supplies to bring to the service site. We were out of trash bags, needed more shop towels and paint brushes, and were almost completely out of tarp so we picked all of these things up. Oh, and we needed lots of Nova Gel to adhere the parachute cloths to the walls on the day of the event, which was part of the reason we had gone to the SEPTA unit in the first place.
After we grabbed everything we needed, we left storage and headed to the service site. We had to drop off mostly everything we grabbed from the storage units and pick up primed parachute cloth to sketch on that afternoon with the PSAs in the office. Instead of trying to sketch at the school, we decided we would sketch in the office on Tuesday and Friday so we could spread out a bit more and have more control over the projectors.
Around 2PM, we made it back to the office, armed with supplies for the afternoon. I took my lunch break as soon as we got back, but cut it short to help get everything together for prep.
From 3:30-4PM, we set up the space we were using for prep. It was a lot of leveling and measuring to get everything just right, but when the PSAs got there, everything was ready.
We almost completely finished a project, but realized we need to re-cut and prime parachute cloth. The PSAs were so great and easygoing that it made the last few hours fly by.
We finished up everything, including clean up around 6:40PM, just in time to circle as a group. Our PM brought to our attention that we will need to alter some images for the events throughout history project because he does not want any volunteers to feel offended or for anything to be taken out of context. It was completely understandable, but that just means more work to be done. Oh well!

Wednesday: Another morning beginning at 9AM meant another brisk walk to the office from Suburban station. It took me a bit longer to get from A to B since there was apparently a fire of some sort and there is a fire station on my way to the office. The truck needed to pull out of the station and there was an EMT preventing pedestrians from crossing until the truck could get on its way. Completely understandable and it took up some time so I wasn't super early getting to the office. I still somehow managed to be the second person on my team to get there, though.
I spent my morning making some adjustments to images we would be working with that afternoon. I also worked on my presentation for my IJ team for the 23rd or 24th. I'm not sure when it is happening, but I know I will be leading a discussion regarding the school district's choice to cut the contract with the teachers' union. I am looking forward to leading a discussion. Hopefully it will go well!
At 11:30AM, we had a meeting to discuss emergency procedures in the office. How exciting! It was pretty boring, but very informative. We also found out that we will be having a fire drill sometime next week where we will get to reinforce the emergency procedure knowledge.
When the meeting was over, it was time for lunch. As I was about to head outside, I noticed that it was practically monsooning and changed my mind. I didn't have a jacket or umbrella so I was going to wait out the weather, but it didn't let up.
My service partner came in late and brought me lunch from her apartment. It was a mini pizza with peppers, mushrooms, and sausage. How did I get so lucky? She's seriously the best and couldn't ask for a better service partner.

Oh how I love Center City!

After lunch, I worked on editing a few more images from the project list before heading to the service site. It started monsooning again, even worse than before, right as we were about to leave. Since we had projectors and I was carrying a table, we decided to rent a car. Sadly, the car was parked about five blocks away. One of the PLs took one for the team and ran to the car and drove it back to us. What a great guy.
When we got to the service site, the PSAs were already starting to arrive. Luckily, many of them were late due to the inclement weather so we had time to get situated.
My task was to project all of the states in order from when they officially became states. Starting with Delaware and ending with Hawaii, myself and one PSA (who is on my IJ team) worked hard to sketch the states. Some of the outlines being projected were very faint so we used the map of the US to get the shapes just right. We finished and cleaned up fairly quickly and helped a few other projects clean up as well.
Since we still had the car, I hopped in with two PLs to bring the table and the projectors back to the office. It was nice to not have to take the bus. I was even able to miss the next dose of torrential downpour, take a picture of my view, and catch an earlier train. It was a nice way to end the day.

Thursday: My morning began with a nice walk from Suburban to the office. It was a bit chillier this morning so it really woke me up and put me in a good mood. When I got to the office, I started working on my LACY plans (leadership after City Year), which basically just meant I searched for nonprofit jobs that might be hiring for next year. Sadly, most jobs were posting for immediate hire, but I was able to find a few AmeriCorps programs for 2015-2016 that I will be applying for in the near future.
Around 11AM, I was informed by my PM that SEPTA has made a decision! They want one mural painted on both walls. Not super exciting, but at least they have finally chosen what they want. I spent the next hour working on a proposal for the project.
At noon, my service partner and I headed out to the food cart outside of the office. She wanted to try something from it since we've started working, but we always forget he's there. We've heard from everyone in the office that the owner is a bit of a crude jerk, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. He dropped the f-bomb every other word and was just plain rude to his customers, but he was nice to my service partner and I. When he asked what I was ordering, I told him I didn't have cash. He laughed and told me I was lazy for not walking to the ATM. Then he followed up by saying "It was a joke. I kidding.". He was pretty funny to listen to and even offered to give me food and have me pay him back on Friday. I decided against that. He gave me a small piece of chicken though before I left, which was really nice.
After lunch, I headed back to my desk to finish up a few things for prep.
Around 1:30PM, my PM and his supervisor came over to me to ask if I had chosen a staff mentor yet. Whoops. I had completely forgotten about getting a mentor/was hoping they would forget about it.
I had to spend the next forty minutes talking about who I would want to ask to mentor me. I couldn't come up with anyone. To be honest, I didn't even want a mentor to begin with, but it is "mandatory" so there wasn't much room for argument. On the plus side, having a mentor means grabbing coffee or lunch once a month aka leaving the office for an extended period of time once a month.
I headed to prep in a bad mood because I was being pestered about the mentoring thing, but quickly snapped out of it when my friend reminded me about seeing Rocky Horror Picture Show at our Alma Mater on Friday night.
Prep went alright. We had to redo sectioning off an area of the wall for a border because it wasn't straight, then it wasn't the right size, and then it wasn't straight again. It was very frustrating. Once it was all taped off, we painted about half of what we needed to. Just more to complete at a later time.
When we left, myself and two other teammates walked to the BSL. It was quicker than taking the bus and it was nice to see a different part of South Philly.

Friday: Deadline day. I came into work anticipating completion of the SEPTA proposal. I started working on it until about 9:30AM when my PM stopped me. He said that SEPTA had changed their mind about what they wanted (for the thousandth time). They wanted the mural I designed on one wall and a completely new one on the other wall. They did not want anything that I had designed before, though. They sent along two logos for East Falls. That was all they wanted on the opposing wall. Unfortunately, it would be extremely disproportional to the other wall so my boss suggested they look at one of the previous designs. Of course, "nothing jumped out" to SEPTA. I was back at square one with them. SEPTA was giving me nothing. The only thing they said was "I don't know, maybe train tracks?" which was pretty much useless. My PM said he wanted four designs by 3PM. I was screwed.
I spent the next hour researching train stations and train tracks to get ideas. I also spoke with my service partner to bounce off some ideas. We came up with the idea to recycle some old designs to make something new. What did I have to lose with trying, right? So that's what I did.
After an hour of frustration, I grabbed lunch. It was nice to step away from the computer for a half hour and not think about SEPTA (which is only partially true because I was still trying to come up with more ideas).

When I got back to my desk, one of my friends from my IJ team surprised me. She was spending the afternoon in the office with her service team so she stopped over to see me at my desk. How sweet!
I spent the remaining two hours working on various things to keep myself busy. I was leaving at 3PM because I was asked to help dispose of paint on Saturday with one of the PLs. I assumed I was going to just get more hours, but my PM wanted to make sure we aren't overworking ourselves. I did not argue with this.

120+ Cans of Paint

Saturday: Paint disposal day. I arrived at 30th Street Station a little after 9:30AM, pretty exhausted after a night of time warping during the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and met up with one of the PLs to head to storage. There was a bit of traffic so it took some time to get there. Once we got to the storage unit, we tarped the back of the van to avoid paint spills and started loading in the cans. After about 20 minutes, we had loaded a little over 120 paint cans and were off to the disposal. My PL was really worried about the paint disposal, thinking that they wouldn't take the paint since it wasn't technically hazardous.
When we got to the site, everyone was really efficient and didn't ask questions about the type of paint. We didn't even have to get out of the car! People is hazmat suits just grabbed the paint, loaded it onto a cart, and took it to be disposed. It was the easiest thing ever! My PL and I were very excited that we didn't even have to lift a finger. Everything was so quick that I was on a train back home at noon. Plenty of time to spare before my first Union game, which they won. (Hallelujah!)

This upcoming week is going to be hell with all of the prep before our event on Saturday. Here's to hoping everything runs smoothly!

Cheers,
Allee

Eagles and Fries and Prep, Oh My!

This week kicked off our prep work for cyServes, which meant we started at the office everyday at 9AM. Hallelujah! We spent almost every afternoon at the service site prepping various projects. Each day we had a variety of Philadelphia Service Ambassadors (PSAs), Corps members who serve on various teams, assisting us with prep. Here's what happened this week:

Monday:  We started our day at 9AM in the office with a prep meeting, discussing what was happening this week. The team was going to be doing a variety of things throughout the day so we wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page for the rest of the week.
At 10AM, a few of us headed over to the school in South Philly that we helped finish up in August and September, McDaniel, for a press conference. Wells Fargo made a bunch of backpacks to be distributed to the students and City Year was ready to help. This wasn't just a standard backpack handout, though. No, this time there was a special guest: Mychal Kendricks, linebacker on the Philadelphia Eagles. We kept the students entertained while they waited for the special guest by doing PT in front of them. It really got the students pumped for their backpacks.
After about 15 minutes of PT, the children started screaming. Mychal Kendricks had arrived. The children were ecstatic to see him there and many of them received autographs. He handed out the backpacks and the students were able to say hi to him. It was so great to see their faces. As he handed out the backpacks, we moved them forward on the stage so M. Kendricks could easily access them.

CE Team with Wells Fargo and M. Kendricks

Once we finished passing out the backpacks, we headed upstairs to the Eagles room (where we had assembled a bunch of the furniture a few weeks ago) for M. Kendricks to cut the ribbon. The students who were in the room had the biggest smiles on their faces when they saw the two 65" flat screen TVs, the Wii Mini, the PS3, and the ping pong table (which was a pain to put together, but it was great to see the reactions). City Year and Wells Fargo took a group picture in the room with M. Kendricks, who I got to stand next to. (Woohoo!)
After the pictures, part of the team headed to the McDaniel Annex to pass out more backpacks to the primary grades. It was right down the road so it wasn't a difficult task.
These students were so thankful for the backpacks and were absolutely adorable. It made me a little sad that I am not serving in a school, but then again, I wouldn't be working with K-3 students...

Free Crab Fries!

Once the backpacks were distributed, we returned to the office for lunch and to get some work done before the team would be split again.
Three people on our team headed to the service site at 2:45PM to begin prep. The rest of us hung out in the office, finishing up some work, until about 3:15PM when we headed to a Chickie's and Pete's press conference.
The conference was pretty cool. We stood there and smiled while a few people talked about the new partnership between CYPhilly and Chickie and Pete's. Everyone who spoke had the greatest things to say about City Year and how much the organization does for the city. It was definitely an awesome thing to witness and be a part of.


After we stood smiling for about a half hour, we were given tons of crab fries (my favorite!). We were so excited because we were originally told we wouldn't be getting any food. It was quite the pleasant surprise.
Around 5PM, we headed to the service site, fries for the rest of the team in hand. They had made a good amount of progress for prep with the PSAs. I walked around the school with my service partner, checking up on the projects that were being prepped. After that, I helped prime a section of the wall for an evolution of the American Flag mural. While we were prepping, one of the guys who works in the office dropped by with his adorable pitbull, Lucy. Obviously we took a break and visited with the puppy, but then headed back to work soon after. By the time we finished priming the flag mural, it was time to clean up.
It was a long day, ending at 6:45PM, but it went by fairly quickly.

Tuesday: I kicked off my day with modifying a few projects for the service event. It didn't take very long, but I tried to stretch it out to keep myself busy. Around 10:15AM, my PM emailed me with more SEPTA feedback. They love the designs, but they had more things to be "fixed". Oh joy. It wasn't a lot, but it was still frustrating. I wish people would just tell you what they want from the get-go to avoid so many issues later when you don't give them what they want.... Womp.
I worked on revising the designs yet again until about 11AM. Fingers crossed these are the last revisions!

Some of the snacks

After lunch, I worked on a few images for different murals at the service site. Around 1:30PM, DEVO and the CE team had a giant snack potluck where we just hung out, got to know each other better, and ate a lot of food. Around 3PM, myself and a project leader headed to storage to grab a few more things for prep. There was a lot of traffic so we didn't get to the service site until about 4:15PM, where we met up with the PSAs and the rest of our team.

There were a few issues with prep including "tiny text" on a mural I had designed. Instead of chatting with myself and my service partner, a few people griped and groaned about the size of text and almost made an executive decision without our input. Needless to say, we were not happy.
At the end of prep, not much progress was made. There was a lot of backtracking on the third floor because the PSAs had primed a small hallway, as they had been told, and then were told to scrape it all off and make the wall smooth. I felt really bad for them, but at least it kept them busy.
Prep seemed to fly by, mostly because I had to pick up extension cords from the storage unit, which took about an hour due to traffic and a slight jam at storage.
When all was said and done, the PSAs parted, I got changed for the Bastille concert (which was AMAZING by the way!), and headed back to center city to drop off one of the PLs.

Wednesday: I got into the city at 8:30AM, hopped off the train the stop before mine, grabbed hot chocolate from Starbucks, and then walked about a mile to work. It was a nice walk, giving me time to wake up and clear my head before arriving at the office at 8:55AM.

I officially have paint pants now

I spent most of the morning arguing with my PLs about the mural with small text. It was nice to finally speak up about something instead of being passive and letting the "experts" make the decisions. It was finally decided that I will be leading the prep on this mural so I can make the decisions on it.
Aside from re-saving the mural, I spent my time listening to Watsky's new album, All You Can Do, which was pretty good. I did this while researching new ideas for MLK day in January, our next service event. I alternated between this and a CPR/First Aid training course online. This took up all of my morning.
After lunch, I made changes to the one pagers that my PL was looking over.
We headed to the service site at 3PM. The first bus we were going to hop on was so crowded that the bus didn't even stop for us. We had to wait another 15 minutes before the next bus arrived.
When we got to the site, we started setting up for prep so we would be ready to start as soon as the PSAs arrived. I was in charge of the mural we had been arguing about in the morning. I set up the projector and still had to make changes.
When the PSAs arrived, a very detailed oriented Corps member worked beside me to make the mural look great. We spent the entire time working on the mural and only had one thing left to complete on Thursday.
The entire team and PSAs made a lot of progress, making our jobs easier for Thursday.

Thursday: Since it was the Flyers home opener, I drove to work so I could make it to the game on time. I left my house around 7:15AM and got into the office by 8:30AM. Yay for not being late!
I spent my morning working on the one pagers and finally completed them. I decided to take a break from it around 10AM and headed to Dunkin' with my service partner for a bagel and a hot chocolate. It was such a nice day that we just wanted to get out of the office for a little bit.
When I returned to the office, I had to complete a survey about my goals for the year. My PM had come up with the goals, but I had to come up with how I would complete them. It wasn't very hard to do, but it took a good amount of thought and time to complete this task.
After I finished this, I decided to input all of the Flyers games for the season into my calendar. This took forever, but I discovered that there is a home game on my birthday against the Sharks. Maybe I will try to go to it....
Once this tedious, voluntary task was completed, my service partner and I headed to the little deli we always go to for lunch. I grabbed a delicious BBQ chicken sandwich and the biggest pickle I've ever seen. It was a great lunch to say the least.
After lunch, I searched for murals and quotes for MLK day. I found a lot of stuff. I'm glad we decided to start looking early because this event is ENORMOUS and I would be ridiculously overwhelmed if we waited too long to get started.
When I was tired of searching, I started working on the PC and AC guides for cyServes. These guides will help the head honcho volunteers (PSAs and City Year employees) understand the projects they are overseeing and how to better explain them to their team of volunteers. While doing this, I celebrated what would have been John Lennon's 74th birthday by listening to the Beatles. It was a lovely afternoon in the office.
At 3PM, we headed to the service site for prep. I drove since I was leaving from there to go to the Flyers game and got there relatively quickly. One of the PLs was already there so we stood outside, talked about life, and waited for the rest of the team to get there since the weather was so nice.
When everyone arrived, we started setting up prep for the PSAs. I had to try to set up a projector, but we forgot to put one of the projects on the jump drive so we had to choose a different project to sketch. We chose to set up a projector to sketch a Dr. Seuss quote on the first floor. It took a while to get it just right, but it gave us something to do.

View from the service site

After this projector was set up, I had to set up another projector to finish the mural we started on Wednesday. There wasn't much left to do, but the set up was a bit tedious. Luckily the PSAs were patient and excited about the project. Their positive attitudes and willingness to help really made my afternoon enjoyable.
Around 5:40PM, I helped my teammate readjust the Dr. Seuss quote, just in time for me to get ready for the Flyers game. I knew he needed help adjusting it so I pushed back my end time for the day to ensure completion (or close to it) of the project.
Around 6PM, I was on my way to one of the greatest Flyers games I ever attended. It might've been the best if we would've won, but seeing as that didn't happen, it will remain the second best game.

Supported a teammate's sister

Friday: I was extremely tired when I woke up after the Flyers game. I decided to get off at the Suburban Station, the stop before my usual 30th Street Station, and walk to the office. It was a bit chilly so it was a nice way to wake up, get my blood pumping, and start my day. I even got to the office about fifteen minutes early so I was able to finish the chapter of Les Mis I started reading on the train. (I just finished Marius' book, so hopefully the story line will pick up again!)
I started my day by creating a prep plan for the day with my service partner. This didn't take very long to do, but it has been helping us stay on track everyday at prep.
At 10AM, the CE team had donuts with the new head honcho of Development. She just started with CYPhilly on Monday and our PM thought it was important for us to get to know her. It was a nice little meeting and I even ate a donut, but I definitely did not like it, which is not unusual since I don't really like donuts anyway....

End of a long week

Hard at work!

I sat at my desk trying to find something to do until lunch, but I pretty much just wound up blogging and listening to music. It's so hard to concentrate on a Friday when you're in a fantastic mood (especially if you have no idea why you're in a fantastic mood).
After lunch, I edited a few more things on the project list and got ready to head to the service site at 3PM.
Prep went extremely well. My group prepped a map of the USA, which we realized did not have Alaska and Hawaii on it. I had an outline of Alaska and Hawaii for another project so we projected them on the wall and fit them in a box. It looked pretty darn good. We cleaned up our prep area around 5:45PM and grabbed pizza with the rest of the PSAs before heading out for the weekend.
Since Monday is Columbus Day, the schools will be closed. I took home a few parachute cloths so we could prep them on Monday in the office. We will be starting at our regular time on Monday which means I will get home before 8:30PM. I can't wait!

Here's to hoping prep runs as smoothly next week as it did this week!

Cheers,
Allee

Online Dating Profile

This week seemed to fly by. Here's a recap of everything that happened:

Monday: We started our week off with our team meeting, catching each other up on the different things we are working on. It was good to hear about what people needed from the rest of the team and to see where they were at in their tasks. One of the team members who is in charge of communications and outreach has started a CE team blog. It will inform people about what we are up to in the office. She has also decided to add team member spotlights to talk about each person on the team. Basically, we had to send her an online dating profile blurb and a few pictures. Hopefully people get a kick out of my little blurb.

'Garden State' looking bathroom

After the meeting, my service partner and I worked on the project list yet again, adding a few more projects. We decided to add a chevron design for the length of the hallway on the second and third floors which would require about 10-15 volunteers. Slowly, but surely we will hit the 200 mark for the ideal number of volunteers.
Around 11AM, we left the office for the Women's Leadership Luncheon at the Union League.
It was really cool to be invited to something like this, especially because it was held in a room that women used to not be allowed in. There were portraits of old, white men all around the room. I presume they were men who held higher positions in the Union League, but I can't be sure.

Fancy schmancy

The keynote speaker was Mika Brzezinski, a female co-host on Morning Joe on MSNBC. She talked a lot about women in the workplace and how we need to stop apologizing all of the time and start asking for what we deserve. It was an interesting way to look at the glass ceiling situation and was awesome to hear it from a successful female. I really enjoyed being there.
Sadly, the food was not something I was excited about. It was a salad with salmon and raspberry vinaigrette. I just ate some bread and cheesecake. Healthy lunch, right? At least the bread and cheesecake were delicious!
The whole point of the luncheon was 1) to show women in leadership roles and 2) to raise money for City Year Philadelphia. The goal was to raise $50,000 from the event and the development office (DEVO) raised over $53,000. WOOHOO! It was an exciting thing in the office when we returned from the event. DEVO was extremely proud of themselves, as they should be, for exceeding their goal. Hopefully this is a good sign for other fundraisers that will be happening throughout the year.

CE team chillin with Mika

Around 4:15PM, I received an email about SEPTA. They've narrowed it down to two designs, one of which needs to be modified. I am ecstatic that they have gotten back to us. Looks like this project will be moving forward pretty soon!

Tuesday: Only a five of us were in the office. It makes quite the difference when you're on a team of eight. I spent my morning updating the SEPTA designs from the feedback we received. It took longer than expected because I was apparently doing everything the hard way.
My teammate showed me an easier way to make lines, which would have been my savior in college, but hey, you live and you learn. I'll just chalk it up to me getting more practice before learning the shortcuts (four years later...).
After half of my morning disappeared due to photoshop, I spent the other half of my morning making 'One Pagers' describing the projects for cyServes. We still don't know if the projects have been approved, but I'd rather have the One Pagers done and make edits to them once the projects are finalized.
After lunch, I finished the first draft of the One Pagers. My service partner and another teammate headed to the service project site around 3PM to meet with the principal and to see the space. And then there were three of us in the office...
Around 3:30PM, the remainder of the CE team was asked to help pack backpacks for students. There was a back to school drive at a few Starbucks, one of City Year's partners, and we needed to help distribute everything.

Just some of the backpacks...

First we organized everything by item: Notebooks, binders, folders, pens, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, glue, tape, scissors, backpacks, and miscellaneous. This took a good chunk of time since there were at least fifteen boxes of stuff. There were four of us working on this. (We gained another corps member who was in the office.) This took about an hour. Once everything was organized by item, we started packing backpacks. It was an easy task, but it required a lot of bending. There were over 100 backpacks to stuff and only four people to do so. (Technically five because one of the Program Director's daughters was helping us as well.) Regardless, we had to complete this task by 5:45PM, which was seemingly impossible.
We stuffed more than half of the bags in our remaining time. We straightened up the room as much as possible to prepare to finish the backpacks on Wednesday. We were told that the bags needed to be completed by 8:45AM since there was a meeting for all of the Program Managers in the same space we were working in. We had faith we would be able to complete it on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday: I usually get to the office around 7:50AM every morning. It was helpful this morning so I could finish the backpacks. We worked efficiently this morning and packed the remaining backpacks and made boxes for the four high schools we serve in. Everything was cleaned up by 8:45AM. Go CE Team!
After an exciting hour, we made our way to our desks. I spent the remainder of my morning working on editing projects since my service partner met with the principal on Tuesday. It was nice to just hammer out a bunch of stuff while rocking out to some good music. (Check out KONGOS, Bleachers, HAIM, Twin Atlantic, and The Hunts if you're looking for some new music...)
When I came back from lunch, my PM said there was a surprise on my desk. I was ecstatic when I saw it was my official City Year name tag! It's the little things in life.

Feelin' official

I spent the afternoon listening to music while editing and modifying more projects for cyServes.
While sitting at our desks, we heard a noise at the vending machine. It was the snack machine spitting out a dollar and no one was there. Naturally, two people on the team called the dollar to be theirs, but one person actually ran over and snatched it. It was probably the highlight of my day, aside from getting my name tag.
Around 5PM, myself and two other team members met to discuss the projects for cyServes.
It was nice to get people on the same page and talk through any concerns they might have had about the different projects. It was definitely a good way to end the day.

Thursday: Our projects leaders forgot that they had a meeting, so we were on our own for most of the day. One of our teammates was running late so the four of us who were in the office headed to the service site to finish measuring and planning out project placements. Our fifth teammate met us at the school and helped us nail out some details.
We spent the entire morning at the school and headed back to the office around 12:30PM. We decided to stop and grab lunch at Primo's before getting back to the office, which ate up another half hour. By the time we got back to our desks, it was about 1PM. Quite the productive first half of the day if you ask me!
After lunch, our PLs returned from their meeting. We caught them up on everything we did at the school and then got to work.
I spent the rest of my afternoon putting together two documents of individual states with their names, capitals, and year each became part of the USA for a mural in one of the stairwells of the school.
I was sitting between two PLs who were working on their first aid online certification and kept getting distracted by them. It was pretty funny to listen to them rant about the training.
The day pretty much flew by because of our field trip in the morning and the chill afternoon at the office, and for that I am thankful.

Friday: The day started off pretty slow. My service partner and I needed our PL to read over the project list materials and make changes she saw fit before we could proceed with anything else. I decided to research the Peace Corps a bit while I waited. I'm trying to figure out my plans after City Year and the Peace Corps is definitely something I've been thinking about, much to my mother's dismay. (Sorry, mom!) I've decided that I want to do something more meaningful with my life. I want to help others in some way. I think that the Peace Corps would be a great way to do this. I would be able to explore my love for other cultures and languages while making a difference. If the Peace Corps doesn't work out though, I would definitely love to stay with City Year for at least another year, working to make a difference in the lives of others within the community I serve.
Around 10:45AM, my PM approached me about SEPTA. They liked the revised designs, but (there's always a but....) the community wants the bridge's lattice design incorporated somehow. Here I was thinking the' K' shape of the bridge was what they were talking about, but apparently there is a smaller floral type design running along the inside of the bridge. Who knew!
This task took much longer than I anticipated, working me right until lunch.
After lunch, I started researching ideas for our next event, MLK day, which could have over 900 people at it. My service partner and I have found that we work better when we research potential project ideas before even visiting the space so we have a general idea of things to do. It helps speed up the process of creating a project list if we have some things laid out in the beginning.

Our lovely unit

Around 1:30PM, the PLs had a meeting with our PM. They decided that we would have a meeting with everyone to discuss the project list, what we need from storage for prep on Monday and for the rest of the week, and then head to storage.
At 3:15PM, we had our long awaited meeting. It took about a half hour for us to go through each and every project for October 25th. At the end of the meeting, everyone was on the same page and was excited to start prepping next week.
After the meeting, myself and a PL headed to storage to get everything for prep next week. When all was said and done, we were back at the office around 5:35PM.
At the end of the day, we found out that we will be starting our day at 9AM all next week since we will be prepping past 5:45PM. I cannot tell you how excited I am to sleep in next week. We also found out that we will be at two press conferences on Monday, which I will disclose next week after they happen.

Next week is going to be a busy one, but I am really excited to see everything come together.

Have an amazing weekend!

Cheers,
Allee

PS: Click here for the CE Blog if you are interested in reading it!