week of 7/30-8/3

Monday: 10-4
Tuesday: 10-4:15
Wednesday: Doctor’s appointment; out of the office
Thursday: 10-4
Friday: 10-4:15

Total: 24.5 hours


Monday:
As I expected, everyone chose to wait until the last minute to send in their registration packets, and we were swamped for all of Monday, and most of the other days of the week as well. Most of my work on Monday involved going through all of the registration packets and taking out the player bio information and faxing it to the lady in charge of putting them together for the tournament. Also, faxing information on housing to the management company in charge of the villas. I began to make separate files for medical forms and family registration forms as well. I have begun separating them to be put into the tournament notebook that I am in charge of making. Also, I began making confirmation emails to the delegations who sent in their online information. I also made another email to the gentleman we are using to print up our gifts to our sponsors about whether or not he knew of any companies who could frame these gifts for us. Also, I began inputting more information in the registration spreadsheet for the delegations who sent in their information.

Tuesday:
My Tuesday was spent in much the same way I spent my Monday: faxing, copying, and sending confirmation emails to delegations who sent in their online information. I am to keep a record of everyone who has confirmed their information, so as to know who we need to contact in the days to come. I spoke with the gentleman from the management company we are working with to rent condos for the tournament to make sure that he had received the same information we had, and to make sure that we had everything that he did. He told me what he didn’t have, and faxed me copies of what I needed.

Thursday:
My Thursday was especially busy because I was not in the office on Wednesday due to a doctor’s appointment. However, most of it was still very much the same as Monday and Tuesday. A lot of faxing, copying, phone calls, etc. The gentleman from Microwgraphics who is printing our gifts for us called me back on Wednesday when I was out of the office, so I called him again on Thursday. However, he was out of the office, and I could not reach him at all during the day. I spoke again with Russ from the management company we are working with to rent condos for the tournament, and he got some contact information he needed for some of the delegations. Also, I began making copies of all the player bio sheets sent in so as to mail them to a lady in charge of media relations at the tournament. This took quite a while, as there are upwards of 200 participants, and we have only one small copier. While searching through the stacks I began to pull out other information such as volunteer forms and partner and coach registration pages, also the doctor’s form request for permission to use a cart during the tournament. I placed all of these in separate piles, organized by state, as they will all go in separate dividers in the registration notebook.

Friday:
Friday, just like every other day, I spent a lot of time faxing, copying, and making phone calls. I especially spent a lot of time finishing copying all of the player bio forms, and separating the registration forms into stacks. I finally got in touch with the gentleman from Microwgraphics about whether or not he had any suggestions as to companies who could make some custom-made frames for the tournament. He made a few phone calls and found two numbers for me. One was called Easel Art, and the other M&M studios. When I called Easel Art, I was slightly put off by a very rude gentleman who I can only assume was the owner/manager of the store. He refused to do business over the phone, he assumed that I had no idea what size frame I would need, and basically no idea what I was doing, and when I assured him that someone would in fact be coming to the store to look at his product before we just told him to put it together, it made no difference. Needless to say, we will not be using Easel Art for the tournament. However, a very nice lady named June was very helpful to me at M&M studios. She sent me pictures of our choices of wood, in addition to invoices with what each type of wood would cost for the number of frames we needed. A major bonus to this studio is that they can provide one-day turnover for us, which will be a major thing because we will be having the gifts signed by the athletes, and taking them to the store the next day to be framed. There was a little confusion as to whether or not I will need to order a matte for the picture frame, or if that will be printed elsewhere, which I hope to clear up on Monday. And lastly, I spent two and a half hours in a conference call to discuss the volunteer handbook that I have spent so much time putting together. This was a very frustrating experience for me, because the two gentlemen in Florida working with volunteers basically tore it apart. They thought it was too long, they didn’t like the way things were worded, they didn’t think the volunteers needed to know all of the information I put in it. While they told me a very good job, they felt that it would be more appropriate as an event handbook, and that in general there was too much information and the volunteers didn’t need to know all of it. This mostly frustrated me because they took out a lot of things in the handbook that my supervisor told me to put into the handbook, but for arguments sake we chose to just let them do it their way.

Feelings:
Frustration; complete and total frustration. I am frustrated with the flood of work that came in because no one sent in their information on time, and I am frustrated at the fact that some people still haven’t sent in their information. I am frustrated that I spent so much time and effort on the volunteer handbook that basically got cut in half throughout the course of the conference call. Again, I’m pretty much just frustrated with this week.

I feel as though I was very effective with my work this week. I made a lot of progress and got a lot of things done. However, I do feel as though I could do a better job of sorting out the registration packets, the way I have done seems to require me to go back through the handbooks two and three times, after I have already put them back together. I could save a lot of time if I just pulled everything out at once.

This week, my computer use was minimal, other than to send out a lot of emails and input information into Excel, I did not spend a lot of time working at my computer, most of it was spent sorting out registration packets.

Next week I will start off by sorting through all of the checks that have been sent in, and making sure they match all of the check numbers that the delegations cited. I will have to keep track of who has paid and who has not, most likely in an excel worksheet. I will also begin contacting the delegations who have not yet confirmed their online information to me. I assume a lot of next week will also involve making the corrections to the volunteer handbook that were mentioned during the conference call, and working more on straightening out the event handbook.

Internship: Wild Dunes Resort, Charleston, SC

Pool cleaning: Everyday of the week, two interns were responsible for cleaning the pools at both the Boardwalk Inn and the Grand Pavilion; three pools total. We began by vaccuming the pools, then skimming the pools, then we emptied the pool filters. When we were done, we were responsible for cleaning out the vaccum to ensure that it worked the way it should every day.

Hooking up the vaccum could be tricky, as it did not always want to work, there were times when we couldn't get the hoses to stay on the vaccum, or it wouldn't pick up the sand in the bottom of the pool.

Often, people did not think about the type of things they brought into the pool, and we would often have to pull cups, or deteriorating napkins out of the pool. One time, I even pulled out a really dirty t-shirt from the bottom of the pool. Also, we sometimes we had to check the chlorine levels in the pool, and if they were too high or too low, we either had to add more chlorine, or close the pool while we waited for some of the chlorine to evaporate.

This was hands-down everyone's least favorite job during the summer, partially because you never knew if it would work properly, so sometimes it took a really long time, other times you might be done really early. We mostly dislike it because it was the dirtiest job we had to do as well, and we also had to get up the earliest to do it, because guests were waiting to get in the pools.