Date(s): 1/29/18
Activities: Orientation
Technical
Information: Firefox
Reflection:
Today is my first official day on the job! I am very excited
to work for my brother John at Petroleum Transport Company and help him with
his job. Today, John had me go through the orientation all employees are
required to complete when hired. Some of the things I had learned was the proper
method of entering a truck cabin where your hands are always gripped. I also
learned how they record and process driver data using their eLog Systems and
Drive Cams. The orientation helped me learn a lot about the company and how
they operate with their drivers and I am very excited to start my work.
Topic:
Petroleum Transport Company or PTC is a trucking company that transports fuel ranging from diesel to gasoline to a variety of retailers across the Southeast with a headquarters in Mount Airy, NC. They have terminals all across the Southeast region from Savannah and Charleston to Lexington and Roanoke where tankers are dispatched from to service gas stations in the surrounding area. My role in the company is to assist my brother John, who is a Regional Safety Manager, in whatever projects or activity he needs help with. I will be working directly with John as he assigns me work to do via email and take a few visits to the Greensboro Terminal to do work on the yard.
Date(s): 2/3/18
Activities: Monitor Repair
Technical
Information: Monitors, Wires
Reflection:
Today I performed my first major task. John had given me three
broken monitors for the truck computers to fix. The cords for the monitors had
been pulled out of their sockets which caused them to stop displaying the screen
for the computer. I had to unscrew and take the backs of the monitors off, remove
the piece of the monitor where the cord was and place the cord back in it’s
proper spot then put everything else back together. Not only did I learn
valuable repair skills, but this also showed me that whenever given an assignment
in the workplace, to follow the directions and do things how you are told
otherwise you won’t be able to complete your assignment.
Topic:
Since I am working from home their isn't much of a work environment I can describe, all the decisions that involve me are made by John or my parents. My work ethic is the same that applies to my schoolwork and there isn't much of a dress code. John told me that he will eventually take me to work with him and I'm sure things will be very different there.
Date(s): 3/3/18
Activities: Car Cleaning
Technical
Information: Car Wash Teller
Reflection:
Today, John had me take his car to get washed at the car
wash and then I helped him clean out and sort through all the work documents he
kept in his car. He gave me his company credit card and told me to get the best
option for cleaning. After that it was an easy sorting of everything in his
trunk, throwing away or stowing things that he didn’t need and rearranging what
was left in his trunk. While this was a rather simple task, it was important to
do this because John had very important files and documents throughout his car
and it’s important for him to keep them sorted and in an accessible place and to
taught me some organizational skills that I can use in the future.
Topic:
I'd say many of the skills I learned with AOIT involving the Office Suite and how to professionally communicate with people have already helped me greatly in this internship in the small assignments John has given me and I'm sure this will continue throughout the rest of my internship. One thing I wished I had learned more of was more skills concerning hardware of computers and replacing and repairing parts such as when I repaired the monitors. While I know there are already non-AOIT courses that teach these skills, it would still be good to incorporate some of these skills into the curriculum.
Date(s): 3/17/18
Activities: Address Gathering and Letters
Technical
Information: Word, Excel, Access, Search Engines
Reflection:
Today was a very busy day! First, I spent the morning
helping John gather locations of various stores of PTC’s customers. I had a list
of what specific stores needed address and I went searching through the websites
of different store chains getting the addresses of stores and compiling them
into an excel sheet. After compiling the list, I was sent a separate set of
addresses and asked to get them ready to be printed on envelopes. The best way
to do this was using a mail merge in Word but I couldn’t import the Excel sheet
to do that. So, what I had to do was import the sheet into a database in Access
then I would take the database and import it into a mail merge in word. After matching
all the fields of the address to the mail merge, I adjusted the paper size to
match the size envelope the addresses would be printed on. The envelopes and
the content being mailed aren’t ready yet, but they should be soon. I learned a
great deal from today. I learned how to use multiple sources of information on
different websites to track down the addresses of the stores, I learned the
basics of creating databases in Access, and I learned how to make a Mail Merge
in Word.
Topic:
I'd say that so far the Internship has met my expectations that I had when I started. John had clearly laid out my daily schedule, some major projects I would help him on, and planned out when I can go to work with him. I am glad my expectations are met because I have very little say in what I work on and when I work on it, as almost every decision is made by John or my parents.
Date(s): 3/18/18
Activities: Letters
Technical
Information: Word, Excel, Access, Printing
Reflection:
I received the envelopes today and I began printing out the
fist set of names in the Mail Merge. It took a lot of trial and error but with
the help of my mom we finally managed to get the envelopes printed by
individually feeding one envelope at a time into the printer and printing the
next address in the merge. It was a pretty repetitive task, but we managed to get
through the first set of addresses on the list. Now I must wait on the next set
of names being completed before I mail all the envelopes. I learned a good
skill in Word formatting as well as a better sense of patience and the tolerance
for completing small, repetitive task multiple times.
Topic:
I feel like even though it's not finished yet, this project with printing out these envelopes to be mailed will be my biggest accomplishment in my internship. I feel like this because nothing John has given me had this much work involved and I've spent the most time in my Internship on this project. Every little project has made me a little proud of myself because each one I put effort into and I learned something with it and that does make me feel proud of myself.
Date(s): 3/24/18
Activities: Car Work
Technical
Information: Tools, Car Parts
Reflection:
Today I helped John with replacing parts on his company car.
We needed to replace the radiator and the brakes and the process for each for
each was somewhat complex. For the radiator, we had to remove some of the plastic
coverings under the hood, bleed the antifreeze from out of his car, remove the
bracket behind the bumper containing the radiator, swap the radiators out then
put everything back together and put new antifreeze in his car. For the brakes,
we had to go one wheel at a time taking it off, detach the caliper from the
brake rotor and pry it off, place the new rotor on, remove the old brake pads
from the calipers and lubricate and place the new pads, put the caliper back on
the rotor, spray the rotor and wheel well with brake cleaner and then place the
wheel back on. This was a very important task because without his company car,
John can’t do his job, and neither could I. I also learned valuable skills when
it comes to repairing and replacing parts on a car.
Topic:
My duties have changed since I started in that I have been given much more difficult assignments. I started this Internship driving John's car to the Car Wash and now I'm repairing his car and having to print out hundreds of envelopes to mail out. This is definitely an increase in responsibility on my end and I have to make sure I can live up to the increased expectations put on me.
Date(s): 3/27/18
Activities: Going to Work with John
Technical
Information: Truck Computer, Tools, Wires
Reflection: Today I went to work with John at the Greensboro Terminal! To make things more exciting, I drove over there in John's car while he critiqued my driving using the same evaluations he assess his drivers with. Once we got there I was able to meet some of the office staff at the terminal and we soon began our first job: Replacing the Computer in a Truck. There are many regulations set by various State and Federal Agencies, in fact there are too many that I'm not going into much detail except there is one regulation set by the Department of Transportation that all trucks must have computers in them to electronically log hours and report issues. John and I got to work removing the old computer from the truck and replacing it, all the while John was telling me somewhat random facts about how the trucks operate. Unfortunately, one of the cords John had was too short to be used so we had to stop there. We took a break and got lunch at a nearby diner and when we got back we started out second task of the day: Cleaning out the storage container. John opened the container and we began removing everything we could from it while sorting through what was broken or empty and what wasn't. Once everything was out, John had me take the trash to the dumpster while he hosed off the inside of the container. Once we had finished, we began putting the rest of the items back in the container. We had to be careful where some items were placed as there are regulations on how various items like different fluids needed for trucks are stored. It was during this time that John found a box with the exact cord we needed to finish installing the cord in the truck. Once we had placed everything back in the container and closed it, we got back to installing the computer in the truck with the new cord. We finished that and we began to do a general tidying of the terminal. once we were done, John drove me around the Tank Farms of Greensboro then took me home. This was a great day where I did a lot of different tasks and learned a great deal of skills and general information like installing Truck Computers and How to Properly Enter a Truck Cabin.
Topic:
To speak honestly, this internship hasn't really influenced my plans for college and a career. I've always loved computers and I still want to pursue a career in the field. I will say that the Internship did help confirm this for me as I greatly prefer doing online work as compared to the more manual labor I did today (I am so glad it's Spring Break). As for college plans, the Internship hasn't swayed me from my path from attending Wake Tech to obtain an Associates then transfer to a university like NC State. I should note however, that outside of my Internship, John has helped me plan out my time at Wake Tech.
Date(s): 4/4/18
Activities: Reprinting Envelopes
Technical
Information: Word, Excel, Access, Printing
Reflection:
Today some of the envelopes came back and had not been mailed to their destinations. It turns out that the
second address field for one of the lists didn’t match up to a field in the
mail merge. Luckily this affected only a handful of envelopes, so I was able to
correct the mistake and reprint the envelopes and mail them quickly and without
any difficulty. This taught me to always go back through my work to make sure
everything is right and nothing got messed up.
Topic:
This Internship hasn't shown me many new revelations about myself as it just reinforced ideas I already had about myself. A couple of examples as my love for computers and disdain for manual labor mentioned above fit this theme well. As for a career this has shown me that I enjoy this kind of work where I am given an assignment and left alone to work but always have the ability to ask for help and from research I have done in the life of a Computer Programmer this matches well. Usually, a member of a team of programmers is given a smaller piece of a large task to work on independently while having the ability to ask for help from a fellow programmer.
Date(s): 4/7/18
Activities: Picture List
Technical
Information: Word, Photo Editing
Reflection: Today I had to compile a list of various reference photos and descriptions for John. I was sent pictures and told to sort them and place them in a specific order into a Word Document with descriptions on each photo. Each photo had to be sized and placed in different place in the Word Doc, I had to format multiple groups of photos to fit on a select pages. This was a relatively simple task but I did learn a few things about editing photos and formatting in Word.
Topic:
There have been few major problems I've experienced in my Internship. In fact, the only two that comes to mind is the initial printing of the Envelopes and issue with the envelopes not having the second Address Line causing them to be sent back. Since my blog post about this, a couple of additional letters have been sent back with the same issue and while the method of matching the Address Line into the Mail Merge and reprint the Envelope was a simple fix. As for the initial printing of these Envelopes, it was frustrating when it took multiple attempts to get the Address aligned and centered on the Envelope and it was very frustrating having to print each Envelope one by one since the printer would jam otherwise. However some jobs are like that and you just have to push through.
Date(s): 4/8/18
Activities: Buying Safe
Technical
Information: Search Engines
Reflection: An office worker had just gotten her notary license and she needed a a secure box to house her documents and stamp. It is illegal for a notary to not have their items secured as someone could use them to notarize a document without the need of a notary which can be a very severe crime, even resulting in jail time. So I was tasked with finding a portable case with a lock big enough to keep all the notary documents in it. I searched for a case to match these requirements and after a good amount of searching I found one that could work at the OfficeMax in Apex. So my Mom and I drove there and purchased the case. It was the perfect size to house all the notary items and the lock was secure enough to protect them. I learned a good skill today about making sure that anything I do in the workplace met the requirements given so it will work with whatever the project is needed for.
Topic:
Looking back, I must say that at times my Internship may have been fairly lax as compared to others but there were other times where I went from the morning to the night working on projects with John. These infrequent boosts of work while somewhat annoying have prepared me well for the workplace as many jobs are like that. I have learned many new skills like the basics of Access, Mail Merge in Word, Installing Computers in Trucks, Proper Technique for Entering a Truck Cabin, How a Tanker Unloads their fuel into a tank, etc. That while some were trivial, others can and most likely will help greatly in the workforce and I am very thankful I was able to learn them. Overall, this was a great learning experience for me and I am very glad I was able to have it, It should go unsaid that I wouldn't be in the place I am today without the help of John, my parents, and PTC. I am incredibly grateful for them giving me this opportunity and I do hope it will prepare me well for my future.
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