True Blue, Through and Through

Who said college graduates can't still show school spirit and have some fun?!

Spelunking!

Spelunking is cave exploring. Me and seven of my friends went to the Nutty Putty caves last Saturday. It was my first time ever spelunking and I loved it! We were in the caves for about five hours. We came out sore and badly bruised, but it was worth it!

 

  

 All the dust nearly destroyed my camera, but I still managed to take over 100 pictures and have it functioning.

 

 This is the entrance to the cave after you go down a hole surrounded by rocks in the middle of no where. The gate to the cave opening is on the over end of this tiny opening. 

 

 Coming out of what is called the Birth Canal. It is a really tiny space, kind of like... a birth canal.

From College to Preschool

Yep, that's right! The job search is over and I am going back to Preschool!! I am now officially a Teaching Assistant at the Mountainland Headstart Preschool in Provo. I feel very lucky to have this job. I know that it is a result of my hard work all summer, faith, and the recommendation of a friend who worked there already.

Way back in May I went on a hike with this friend that worked for Headstart and she highly recommended that I apply for a job there. She warned me that they take forever to hire people and the interview is intense. She was very accurate about both!! After I gave them my application, I called Headstart every week asking about the status of the process. My friend made one phone call and recommended me when she knew they were beginning to look at the applications at the end of the summer. Then they finally called me in for an interview. I am grateful I was forewarned of what it all involved because it gave me greater peace of mind going into it. The interview involved being asked questions by a panel, filling out an intense test-like packet, and reading a children's book to stuffed dolls while being recorded. I didn't think I did well on the packet, but a week later they called me and offered me a part-time teaching assistant position in the morning. Even though I would rather have full time and I had some other options that would make a part time afternoon position better, I took it. I am lucky that this position was at the Provo center, too, because there are 8 centers all over, including in Heber. This center is about 5-8 miles from my apartment, so I am not complaining.

Although the position is called Teaching Assistant, I usually tell people I am a preschool teacher because I WILL be teaching 4 days in a row every 4 days, excluding Fridays and weekends. Pretty much I'm a teacher without being responsible for filling out all the paper work like the teachers have to do. There are other things they do, too, but that is the main difference. When I teach I am responsible for deciding which activities are available to the kids to do. I really wish I new more about what that involved, but I don't yet. When I am not teaching, I am responsible for getting the snack ready and observing the kids and writing down how they are meeting our developmental goals that we have for them. I am really excited for this experience. The funny thing is that I still don't know exactly what I will be required to do because I haven't been given a job description yet. They are a bit slow with paperwork stuff at Headstart... I should get it next week during pre-service training, hopefully.

This class is a full day preschool, meaning the 4 year old kids stay from 9:30am-3:30pm. In the middle they are put down for naps. :) I work from 8 am- 1 pm  and then another part time teaching assistant comes in. We also have a classroom aide who is responsible for developmental activities with the kids and not teaching. The way the schedule is set up, I will be doing the most stuff with the kids and the other assistant mostly helps at lunch and puts them down for their naps. It's a little sad because she has been a teaching assistant and teacher before, but it's okay. She has a baby of her own and that is why she chose to be only part time now and she is why I am not full time.

The best thing so far as been running across toys that I remember loving to play with when I was a child. Colored shapes, Lincoln Logs, colored bears, a brown Fisher Price house, rubber band board, etc. I have to be honest, I am pretty excited to play with those toys again.  :)

My first week was full of boring meetings and starting the set up of the class. This week we went on "home visits" where we meet the kids and their guardians and get an idea of where the children our developmentally. The kids I've met so far are really good and so I am really excited to play with them and teach them. We have a few kids who will be turning 5 years old this fall so they are much more advanced than the others, so it will be interesting... and fun! We are still working on setting up the room. We have to have it done by next Tuesday when we have an open house for parents. School won't start until Sept. 15th. Next week we have MORE meetings where I hope to be given more instruction so I know what I am doing. :) I am just really grateful to have a job and a car to get me there.

Reality

I can't believe how fast this summer has gone by. It feels like just yesterday I was stressing out about how to take the technician calls at APX and here I am training someone on how to take those very same calls. It has been a great summer for me. At the end of last summer I decided that I needed to move on from being an EFY counselor and finally get a "big girl" job. APX isn't what I call a "big girl" job, but it was a start. I thought that not doing EFY this summer would be really difficult for me, but it turned out to be just the right thing for me. I will never regret my decision. The experiences I've had this summer have given me the opportunity to make new friends and learn more about myself in ways and places I wouldn't have if I had worked EFY. Don't get me wrong, I love EFY, but I see now why I needed to move on. I have made many great memories from this summer that I am so grateful to have.

In the next couple of weeks my roommates will return and start school again. I am incredibly excited about this because I've really missed having them around. Right now I still feel like I am just on summer break, but then reality hits and I realize that I now have to make my way in the real world. Yeah, now that I am graduated the world is open to so many possibilities... but this is hard to see when faced with reality.

I'm starting from scratch, literally. I know that I can make something of myself and accomplish many great things in my life if I work hard, trust the Lord, and do my best. I can dream big and do anything I set my mind to. Yet, here I am, in a situation where I feel like everything is out of my control and about to crash at any moment. Deep down I know everything is going to work out and things will be fine, but in the mean time it is scary and, at times, even depressing. The long and short of it is that I need a job. I was blessed throughout my college career to be completely supported by my parents, and I will be forever grateful for that. However, I want to begin being financially independent from them; I can do that if I have a job. The problem is that I don't have a job after the summer and my parents are in a situation now where they cannot help me even though they want to.

I KNOW that everything is going to be okay and it will all work out for my good. I KNOW that I will still meet my goals and do great things in my life. Starting from scratch isn't a completely negative idea. This is just a rough spot and it's a time to prove to Heavenly Father that I can endure things well. I still have so many things in my life to be happy and smile about. For one, I am surrounded by such great friends who I know love me and will help me through this difficult transition into the adult world.

So, my focus right now is applying for secretarial and preschool jobs in the Provo/Orem area. I'm still not sure what I ultimately want to do, but I am hoping these could help me get the experience I need for whatever job I do figure out I want. In reality though, at this point, any job would do.

I currently have some really cool friends in the ward right now. On July 9th a bunch of my friends rode Razor scooters 40 miles to Mona from Provo. I was the Minister of Magic who drove ahead of them and provided water, food, and hope along the way. I had a blast! It took them 9 hours to get to Mona. This is the slide show I made of all the pictures that were taken on the trip.

All Work and No Play

Fortunately, that is not true. Even though I'm working, I still have a lot of time to play and do my own thing.

Here is a glimpse of what I've been doing this past month:

Winning Olympic Gold at FHE Olympics with my FHE family. I got 41 grapes into my mouth all at once. Definitely gold medal worthy, don't you think?

Hiking to Stewart Falls (my favorite), the Y, and Mt. Timpanogoes Caves

Driving home to California to:

Get a speeding ticket

Get Cronked

See Amanda get her girls' camp name, Flare

Do some drag racing
(I'm in the white car. The point of this was to see who, me or my best friend, could get the manual transmission car going into first gear the quickest)

And to see my Daddy on Father's Day

APX For LIFE!!

Now that I am graduated, I have to somehow start becoming on my own, which means I have to make more than $2.30/hr as I have for the past three summers working EFY. I LOVE EFY, so the decision to not work it again this summer was difficult, but necessary. So what am I doing now?

APX, data entry.... First off, A-P-X doesn't actually stand for anything. It is a friendly atmosphere where fun and making friends with others in the company is encouraged. We are divided into teams of about 16 with a team leader. Our team lead meets with us all together for trainings and for doing fun things, like watching random funny ads or playing games like tag outside. He also helps us track our individual progress and helps us to make goals of how we can do better on the calls. Everyone is really friendly and in between calls people talk to each other and/or send and play games on the computer. They have weekly contests for employees to win cool stuff. On Fridays they have a crazy dress up day where they take pictures and reward those who win. They also have challenges and opportunities to do service in the community.When we are not busy, our team lead takes us aside and we all just chat or are "trained" in some way until it gets busy so we are not sent home early. Being trained in a flexible term in my team leads point of view. We just play games or chat most of the time in the trainings or "coaching" as they are called. However, now that it is getting busier, we are not playing around so much. APX has big parties at the beginning and end of the summer and they form teams of dodgeball, basketball, and volleyball. Some people got a free helicopter ride at the party they had a couple weeks ago. The food was amazing, too. I got a free amazing backpack from them, too.

As much as it is kind of a relaxed atmosphere, they are strict about everything else. I have to go to a shift briefing at the beginning of each of my shifts to be updated on things we have to be doing because things are always changing. They are strict about being on time from breaks and lunches and for bad attendance or forgetting to do something on a call, or doing something I shouldn't on a call. I can get what are called occurrences for any of these things. If I get 10 for attendance or 10 for the calls, I am terminated.

APX is an alarm company. Most people only work for APX during the summer, but it is a year round thing. They sell alarm systems (duh). So what I do is I receive three different calls. Two are from the salesman and one is from the tech who installs the system. APX installs the systems all on the same day as the sale, which is kind of neat. The first phone call is called the qualify call. Basically, I get the potential customers basic information and I run a credit check for the saleman who decides if they can have a system and what they will charge. That call is the shortest of all of them at about 2 mins or less. And no, I can't just run anyone's credit... someone already asked that.

The second call is called Rep Set Up. This is the rep calling in to tell me how much they are charging the customer, how the custumer will be paying, and how many points they approved for the customer's system. Each part of the alarm system is worth a number of points. At the end of this call, I do a survey with the customer confirming the info from the last call and the terms of their agreement. I've heard some really funny things on this phone call. The reps are usually in the same room as the customer when they call so they use all the flowery salesman language to make it sound like they are getting a good deal when really it is the same, or maybe even more expensive than others might get. I've had some funny things happen during the survey, too. It's fun hearing the accents of different customers. The southern customers are the best!

The next call is called the tech call. This can be the longest and hardest call. Now that I've been working for a couple of weeks, I look forward to these calls because they are always different and it breaks the monotony of taking calls. One part of this call is techs calling in to link a cell unit, which is a part of the system that either serves as an alternate number for the home for apx to contact, or just as the main number that is used. Normally tech's call to give the information about where the main panel is, what type it is, and all the parts of the system. I have to put all the different parts of the system in and say what their zones and functions are. This is also hard to explain in writing, so I will go on. Then I check to see if all the signals from the system are being sent clearly and correctly to the main hub of apx. This is the most important part of the call becaues this is how APX is contacted when there is an emergency. If something doesn't work when there is a break in, it's because a signal was either not sent or it was wrong. Very, very, very bad if I mess up here. I have only missed one signal so far, so that is really good. After that we just get other emergency contacts and do a final survey. Then we get their payment information so we can charge them.

Before a call comes in I hear a beep, then what type of call, then another beep. That is nice so I can at least know what to expect and so I have time to think about it before talking to anyone. When I was volunteering in the mtc referral center my freshman year, I would just hear them say hello and have to just start talking because by then they had already said hello two or three times. It's not like that fortunately.

The last couple of days I haven't had much down time at all between phone calls. Last week though, I would have numerous minutes between phone calls I receive. Luckily the time goes by really fast and it has gotten easier for me to do everything. I thought I would never get to be so comfortable and as good as I am already. I took calls for 3 hours straight without a break and had not problem. I then only took a ten minute break and started again because time goes faster when I just work and not stand around on my break. But it does get pretty tiring. By the end of the shift, I just want to go home and not talk on the phone or really be on a computer, although I still do it as you can see.

So really, it's not bad. Yesterday they changed everyone's schedules so they can meet the call demands better, so I am now working in the mornings during the week and the evening on Saturdays. This schedule works better for me because then I can pick up others' shifts when they want off in the afternoon. I am really sad that I won't be on the same team anymore, but we will still see each other and I will make more friends. :)