06-04-14, Bittersweet

I woke up both excited and sad that it was my last day of project. I wrote cards to Hrishue, Kate and Erin, and then picked up three macaroons for each of them from a bakery in university circle on my way to Jumpstart. Today they wanted me to present what I found from the Cleveland report. I spent the morning turning my report into a power point. Then I presented what I found to Hrishue, Kate, Erin, Kevin and Matt. I presented them all my findings and got some good feedback, they said the only thing I could improve on was including a stronger “so what?” some of my statistics. Overall from my Cleveland report, the main takeaway that I had was that Cleveland is a city losing its younger population, but is also a city that has a lot of resources to take advantage of. This could be a good thing, because someone here really can make themselves a big fish in a small pond. At the same time it is a bad thing because the pond here might be too small. All the people that listened to my presentation are young themselves, so after we had almost an hour long discussion of why young people are leaving Cleveland, and my young coworkers shared what  brought them back to the city. 

05-30-14, Reflections

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting as my project is coming to an end. Something I didn’t really think about before was the routine I would find myself doing every day and how much I enjoyed it. Every day I would walk into Jumpstart and say hi to the receptionist, and then run to the fridge to see what food and drinks were available. After that I would walk to my cubical through all the offices and say good morning to all the coworkers I knew. I would sit at my desk and dive right into work, and then after about 2 hours grab lunch at a different place every day. I’d return and hang out with my coworkers and we would have little meetings to update each other on what we were doing, and joke around. I got so used to this daily schedule and I’m realizing now how weird it will be in two days when everyday isn’t like this. It reminds me of my school days, how I would always take the same way to class and say hi to the same friends and acquaintances. I’m upset that this routine will be broken soon because I just started getting used to it!

05-28-14, New friends

On my first day at Jumpstart I had met another intern from Case named Kevin. He is working with Jumpstart all summer, but after my first day went back to Georgia to visit his family. He came back today and works at the cubical next to me. We started talking and instantly connected; I thought he looked shy but is actually very social. Even though he’s from Georgia, when I said I went to Hawken he recognized the name because he knows nearly all the Hawken kids that go to Case. As I said in a previous blog post, it’s crazy how small of a world it is! Throughout the day if I got bored, I would go over to Kevin’s cubical and we would find something entertaining to do, like raid the companies fridge of its food. Since he is working here all summer, he wanted to decorate his cubical so we printed out extremely corny quotes and stupid pictures and put them along his wall. At one point we started throwing messages to each other over the cubical walls. While I have enjoyed my time at Jumpstart, if Kevin had been here the whole time it would have been a lot more entertaining. 

05-26-14, Hawken connections everywhere

Today an email was sent out to all the Jumpstart employees about someone new joining the company. He had just recently graduated Dartmouth and today was his first day at the office. At one point throughout the day I walked past his cubical but was shy about introducing myself. As an intern, I didn’t really think it would mean anything to introduce myself since I would be gone in a week.  Later on that day, he was in Hrishue’s office and I was called in to meet him. His name is Matt and it turns out he graduated from Hawken just a few years ago! He was very nice and it was exciting to have someone I could easily relate with. It’s crazy how small of a world it is. I felt stupid for being hesitant about introducing myself. I’ve begun to realize that the more coworkers I get to know, the more fun I’m having. During my first week when I didn’t know anybody I was extremely bored, but now that I’m beginning to know everyone the days are a lot more enjoyable. It’s starting to feel like school when I walk in the hallway and say hi to acquaintances I pass by. 

05-23-14, Cleveland Research

Over the past few days I have been finalizing my list of resources. It has been hard because there aren’t many resources out there that can provide you with data on any city/county. I finally feel that I have a solid list, and informed Hrishue. He told me that he wanted me to use the resources I organized to run a report on the city of Cleveland. I spent the next day or so going through all my sources and collecting data about a variety of things from Cleveland’s economy, to entrepreneurial activity.  I showed Hrishue an overview of what data I collected so far, and he responded to my findings with an interesting point. He explained how I can’t just show a bunch of data, but I actually need to write a statement about whether this data is good or bad and what it means. I went back and worked on the report, and used the data to make arguments and points about the city of Cleveland. It was interesting to collect all this data from the city I live in. I found myself getting distracted, and exploring random statistics that were extremely interesting but not necessarily relevant to the report. 

Final Post

It might be a little bit more boring a little bit more big picture but I did want to take at least one post to give an overview of everything I did, everything I experienced, and everything I gained. My internship with Westlake Reed Leskosky firm turned out unbelievably. I came in wanting to jump right in and dive deep and that is exactly what I did. I learned a lot due to a couple circumstances like this and I'm happy that they created a full immersion environment for me the gain and learn a lot from.

Like I said, at the beginning, my choice was to just jump right into architecture. I truly believe that the best way anyone can learn quickly is if they just jump right in, make mistakes fast, and learn from them fast. That's the ideology I followed and it pulled me through in an unbelievable way. Of course this created a bit of an awkward start for me as it would for anyone, but jumping right in made things a little bit easier for my sponsor and broke the ice a little bit as far as getting started and getting the ball rolling.

Another circumstance that made my experience all the better is that my sponsor was willing to let me do an independent project and let me have some independence. I did see him every day. I got to hear his input, his advice, his methods. I also got to hear similar things from other architects and employees at the firm. These things helped me learn and grow, but what was more important to my learning and growth was having that independence where I learned how to do things on my own, take advantage of resources on my own, and make mistakes on my own. As a result, I was able to do a lot of iterating under these circumstances which really made my experience that much better.

Overall, I'm really thankful that this program was able to follow through for me. I used what I new about jumping right in and full immersion and really applied it here. I'm happy I did because my sponsor created an environment that really supported that. As a result, I learned a lot and did a lot. There's more to come in my presentation on Friday, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Final Day

As Brandon and I near the end of the project, we are discussing whether or not it would be a good idea to make a PowerPoint, along with show our documentary. The answer to that is: We will make a VERY short PowerPoint that states our essential question along with a background of how we thought of the idea and our challenges/what went well. Keep in mind, the PowerPoint will only be a couple minutes and that will leave plenty of time to sit back, relax and watch the film. Other than that, Brandon and I have completely finished the editing and are putting the movie on a flash drive, instead of YouTube. We are doing this because sometimes when videos are uploaded to YouTube, the quality can be compromised, along with timing. It is simply a much safer rout, and if we are in the Fish Bowl, Brandon can connect his computer to the Apple TV and project is that way, which is much higher quality (and what we prefer). Today is the day to practice our presentation and finish up our final reports. Can’t wait to see you all on Friday for our presentation! 

We Can See the Finish Line!

Brandon and I walked into school today knowing there wasn’t too much to do, but as the day progressed, we realized that while it may seem that way, there is a lot of preparation to be done. Knowing this, Brandon and I got to preparing for our presentation, but running through how much time we just spend on each topic and how far we should go without spoiling anything in the documentary. We also wanted to write our final reflections for the project and that took up a lot of time surprisingly. Also, our beloved room (the fish bowl) has been overtaken by another random class and that was a major blow for Brandon and me. We are still getting over it, but the show must go on. 

All in all, it was a pretty lazy day, but a lot got accomplished and I am proud to say that Brandon and I are basically done. All we need to do is make a nice PowerPoint and run through it. After that, there isn’t much left to be said… We would have finished our senior project. Tomorrow is our last day of project, and Brandon and I hope to make it a good one!  

The Devil is in the Details.

           Our last couple days will be filled with finalizing elements for our presentation. The majority of our work is finished. I'm not surprised we finished a little early. The last six days of editing Joey and I have been working very hard to get it done. That way in case something went horribly wrong, like a technology issue or something, we still have a couple days to fix it. Now is the time to sit around, get these little things done, and relax a little. The things I learned, just over these last few days of editing, have been that getting into a flow of work, where you are in the zone, is key. If I ever lost focus it would take a few minutes to boot myself back up. You have to be fully entrenched in the 30 second or so section you are working on. It requires your full attention or you will miss a detail and it could come back to haunt you. The worst thing an editor can do is tell himself that “no one will notice if I don’t do this” because all the little things you left out will add up and make the film boring or even just plain bad. You have to do all the little details that no one notices for a successful film. 

The Final Product

We have just finished up editing. I have exported the final edit so that I stop messing around with it. Otherwise I would stay up each night and never be satisfied. Joey told me to just export and save it and to stop editing it. It is done and we have our final documentary. It is a solid 10 minutes. I believe during that time our film successfully educates and entertains very well. You wont get bored. Our information is cut down to the basics and ended up very interesting. I am extremely happy that we finished successfully. I believe on Friday, when you guys get to see it, it should be very fun to watch. We used elements that we learned, we incorporated them throughout and hopefully they flow smoothly and work well with what their goals are: holding your attention and being very educational about how documentaries work. Focusing on only four or five documentaries was essential to keep everything simple and easy to follow. One issue I have was that we did not have a great microphone. This is a problem because it makes the narration scratchy and inconsistent, which is not ideal, we made the best with what we had and I am not too upset with that happening.

Hurdles to Overcome!

Although editing is good fun and everything, we are running into some problems. The majority of these are that we find predetermined sections for our film to be boring and struggle to captivate anyone. They do not fit with the model our film has developed into and so we have had to let go of these ideas for the better. It is difficult to let something that you worked hard for go. There are elements, like documentaries and statistics, which we wanted to include, but that just would not fit well. What our viewers will be missing is some interesting information that might bore most people. The ultimate goal, once again, is to captivate and hold audience’s attention. Unfortunately, this day and age, entertainment is more important than education so we had to figure out how to fit that model of filming and editing. Your happiness comes over anything else, what you learn comes second. The key is to excel at both of these elements and I believe Joey and I have done that very well up to this point. We are almost finished with our edit and it is looking great so far. We expected some hurdles from the beginning and once we get over those and are in the clear we should have a great final product.

How Editing Works!

The editing process is becoming a pattern for me. What seems o happen is once we hit a new section of the film we do a voice over narration and then find clips to suite the words said. Then the final cut edit takes place where I make precise edits so that everything flows smoothly. Doing this over and over gets a little frustrating, but it is paying off. I love the film we have produced so far. There are some important sections, like history, that are not the most exciting and captivating, but they had to be done. Overall our goal is to keep your attention throughout the whole film, not for you to fall asleep, that would be a failure. Yes, we worked on this on our own, but throughout this we brought people in to view sections and get comments. This is to see whether they are enjoying it. Joey and I didn’t watch the film with them but rather watch their facial expressions to see whether they were enjoying it or found it boring. Almost everyone says it is good, but we believe they were only being nice, so there were changes that had to be made, for the better.

Another Monday...

...Well, not really. Most people might dread Mondays and wish that they never existed. I think that’s a waste of time because then there would just be Tuesday to complain about. But for me, throughout this project, I can honestly say that I've been extremely excited for every single day. I'm doing a lot of work, that's the truth. But, it's all work I want to be doing and all work that is extremely interesting. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m definitely enjoying this experience! So again, for me, the days mostly blur because I enjoy every single one of them.

However, this Monday actually was actually very important because it marked the turn into the last week. Yesterday, on Monday, I dis used with my sponsor how the last week was going to look. On Friday, I discussed in my blog how I’m now moving into some finalizing steps. Yesterday, I continued to get to work on that. I wouldn’t say that I have an overwhelming amount of work to do and things to accomplish before the end of the week, but I will say that this week is a highly, highly important one. Yesterday, I made my turn towards the finish line. I might have been serious before, but now it’s time to really get serious and really take these finalizing steps seriously.

La Fin

Today, Brandon and I had a goal to finish our documentary completely and be happy with the final product. But, we had to do a bit of last minute filming and editing before we were fully satisfied, knowing how much of a perfectionist Brandon is. After we compiled the last minute footage, put it all together and watched our entire documentary… it felt amazing. It was incredible to look see all of our work coming together as we watched our 10 minute film. After it was finished, and the credits rolled on the screen, I looked back at Brandon and smiled. It was such a relief that all of our hard work paid off. However, there is still work to be done in preparing for our presentation. Knowing our film is 10 minutes long, we still have to make a short presentation, explaining how we put this movie together. There is still two days left, which is a lot of time. With this being said, Brandon and I will likely devote our time to practicing the presentation and working on our reflections. All in all, we had our doubt early in the process, unsure of how the final product with turn out. But in the end, we couldn’t be happier. 

All on Our Own

Our time with SWERVE was a fantastic experience but it was also an amazing experience living in New York City for two weeks. Both of us had been there many times in the past, but always for a short time with a parent. This was the first time we lived their on our own. We were both nervous before we got there because we weren't completely confident with our ability to navigate the city. We knew that we needed to be economical which meant taking the subway to and from work every day. We spent our first day in NYC learning which train we would take and which stop we would get off at. We even did some test runs on the subway to make sure we understood our route.

I was so surprised at how quickly we became familiar with the city. We began to figure out where everything was and even know how long it would take us to get to each place in the subway or a cab (even with crazy NYC traffic). It was really cool that we were on our own because it gave us a sense of responsibility that neither of us really knew we had.

The experience really helped us get ready for college. Before we know it, we will be moving away and living on our own. Our time in New York City has helped us become much more confident about moving away from home and everything we our comfortable with. We now see how capable we are to adapt to our new surroundings.

-Amanda and Marshall

SWERVE-ing into Cleveland

After delving into the realms of franchising, our next task was to look into Cleveland. Is Cleveland populated with people that fit SWERVE’s demographic? Are young professionals moving to or back to Cleveland? Most importantly, is Cleveland a good fit for a SWERVE franchise? How would franchising affect SWERVE?

Upon reading several articles that supported the increase in the young professional demographic in Cleveland, Amanda and I deemed it a perfect fit for SWERVE. The ideal location for SWERVE would perhaps be downtown or in Ohio City- as both are thriving destinations with residential buildings and "trendy" restaurants. Among all of the up and coming areas in Cleveland, downtown is the most populated with young professionals.

Despite SWERVE's excellent potential in Cleveland, Amanda and I agree that franchising should be a long-term goal. Why? Because SWERVE, the "mother company," would lack absolute control over the franchise and the actions of the franchisee, and this could create conflict.

In conclusion, Amanda and I agreed that Cleveland would be a great location for a franchise (and perhaps we could be the franchisees! :) ), as our extensive research supported; however, SWERVE should solidify its roots in New York before anything else.

The table below indicates growth in Cleveland that specifically correlates to SWERVE’s demographics.

Written by Marshall Rankin and Amanda Trau on May 30, 2014