Ella: week 6 blog 2

Tomorrow is the last day of our internship for SCORE. I am kind of happy that it is over but also kind of sad. I am sad because the people here are so nice and really appreciative of what I do here, especially my boss. She is super nice and always needs me to know that she is happy that I am here to help her! This is a great opportunity for all of us because, I may be speaking for myself but, I would not have done an internship if we didn’t need to. I am happy that we had to do this though. I think it is a really cool way to end our high school careers. Also my boss keeps telling me that if I ever need a recommendation for a job or anything that I should use her name. This makes me feel really good when she says this because that means I did a good job here and she wants other people to know it and hire me. I really appreciate things like that. I will also miss the random food that is always around here. A few times a week people from the office will bring random food in whether it be cookies or bread rolls like me and Brittany did one time. I brought in donuts one time and everyone in the office freaked out and was really excited. They couldn’t believe someone brought in donuts. I feel like people always do that whether they are in school or work. You feel trapped and you only have certain food there even though you want something else so when someone brings in something really good it is a big deal. My best days in school were the days that I had really awesome lunches. Is that weird? If someone brought in like a cupcake everyone would freak out expecting to get a little piece but seriously why would you share your only cupcake?! Anyway enough about food. I am kind of happy that this is coming to an end because my boss for my real job keeps asking me when it is over even though he knows because I have told him like a million times. Sorry that I have to graduate high school and go to prom Bob! I am done venting now. See you all on Friday!

week 6 blog 1

It’s the last week of SCORE y’all let’s go!! I am very excited that this is the last week o the internship because now I will have more time to work on my essay and my presentation. I will miss it though because the people are so nice here and I did have a good time. It will be weird not coming back next week, just like it is weird that I no longer have to go into the high school to take classes. It is really starting to sink in and I am really beginning to realize that I am basically done with high school. It is very exciting but also very sad. I will miss all of my friends when they leave for school.

Anyway today during SCORE I had to send out some emails and then do the happenings, just small stuff like that. Then I have to work on the project but have to wait until Brittany sends it to me so I can put both lists together. We are almost done with it I believe which is awesome! Sitting here looking outside makes me want to leave because it looks like such a nice day out! I would rather it be rainy or something because then I do not feel as bad about being inside all day on a computer. I only have two hours left for the day though so it is not too bad. I noticed that the morning goes by super fast. After doing the easy stuff in the morning I will look at the clock and realize that it is already 11:30 and I can’t believe it because it seems like not a lot of time has gone by. As you can tell I do not really have a lot of interesting things to say because I have already said them all in other blogs. I can’t figure out what to write about anymore. Everything I do here is the same as the day before and I if wrote about that it would only be about two sentences. Hopefully I will be able to come up with two other things to talk about for the last two blogs.

Week 5 Blog 3

Yes I am getting all my blogs done for the week in three days. I am very bored right now. After this I will probably work on that project for the rest of the day. Today is annoying because there is some guy who works here and whenever he is in he always takes the computer I am sitting at. It is the kind of official intern’s desk and I always use it unless I bring my laptop. Everything I need to do my work is on that computer but he always just takes it. It is very frustrating but he probably has more important things to do compared to me and what I am doing so its whatever. I feel like I never write what I actually do here. Well I do like once every two weeks because I am doing the same thing every day. A new project might come along but that is it. Anyway, I have really been enjoying this sleeping in later thing. Although it is only an hour extra it really makes a difference. I have never been very good at getting up n the morning. The morning is my biggest enemy but it has not been too bad since SCORE has started. It is weird to think that we only have the rest of this week and next week then the internship part of SCORE is over. It’ll be nice to not have to go anymore and sleep in even more! Although I will miss the people here because they are super nice and have really appreciated helping them out with the annoying projects that they do not want to do. The whole graduating and going off to do what we want with our lives is really starting to hit me and it is scary. I remember in the beginning of the year people told me to take advantage of my last year of high school because it will go by really really fast. I didn’t listen because I have always felt that school drags on especially at the end. This was not the case for my senior year. I could not wait to get out and live my life but I actually kind of miss school. I go into the high school sometimes to go to the library and it just feels weird going into the building and seeing the people. It definitely makes me feel older. 

Week 5 blog 2

I was reading some peoples blogs again and they all seem very repetitive. Some start out like “Today was kind of like every other day…” I feel like SCORE should have been like 4 or 5 weeks because although it is fun it is kind of dragging on. I might just be speaking for myself but I am learning some stuff about selling and radio but now I feel as though I do the same thing every day.

Anyway, watching everyone here with their different jobs makes me think about what I want to do when I choose what field of work I want to go into. You can’t just change jobs whenever you want to so I want to make sure I am doing something I enjoy. Easier said than done these days but it is still important. Most of the people here sit at a desk all day. I do that too but not for as long. I always feel bad when I leave because they still have to stay here for a few more hours and I do not know how they have the tolerance for sitting down at the same desk and doing the same thing for that long every day. They also talk on the phone all day. I might have already said this but I hate talking on the phone so that job would not go well for me. I do enjoy the food selection here though so I wouldn’t mind that. But food is not a good deal breaker for where you are going be working. Right now I am procrastinating to work on this project we need to get done. Brittany could not come in today so it is only me working on it and I was not assigned another specific project to do today. It is not too bad it is just typing out the same information just for different clients. It is very time consuming. Then we have to get new information on the client which is the hardest part. I am not exactly sure what kind of information she even needs so I should probably ask her but I will try my best before bothering her.

Week 5 Post 1

So one of my friends told me the other day that posts only need to be 250 words so I feel stupid and bad now. I thought they had to be 350 words so that is what I told other people when they asked. I told Brittany that they only had to be 250 words today and she was mad haha. Oh well. My mom told me it was a good thing that I thought it was 350 words because it is the only time during my high school career that I am overachieving. Thanks mom. Anyway I am going to keep writing 350 words because I have been doing that for the past few weeks and I just want to keep doing it.

                Today was a chill day. I arrived here this morning and as always there was a sheet of paper telling us what we have to get done today. It was probably the three easiest things that I work on. We got six new gas stands so I had to make six new gas signs which is kind of fun because it is kind of like an arts and crafts project. That took about a half an hour. Next on the list was stamp two more piles of ice cream stamps for the new gas stands. That took around 45 minutes. My arm still hurts from stamping all of them but maybe I’m getting a workout?! Last on the list was happenings. In the “happenings” email it said that there were six new emails. That is not too bad but I do not really like doing them that much so six isn’t the best amount for me. When I looked at the emails there was actually only two in there so I was very happy with that! Once I got those done and printed them out and brought them upstairs and put them in the Happenings folder, Brittany and I are talking about finishing up the project we were assigned a few weeks ago. We have slowly but surely gotten a lot of work done on it and we are almost done with it. We want to try to finish it tomorrow. Hopefully we can finish or if not get close to finishing it by the end of the week.

Week 4 Blog 2

I will probably be the only one to admit this in a blog but I was just reading everyone else’s blogs because I am interested in what everyone else is doing! I like to compare whether I’d rather have someone’s job than mine. Some people’s jobs seem very fun because they get to be outside which sounds like the best! Anyway after stalking some of my fellow classmates I started to stalk myself to see how many blogs I have done this week. I thought I had two already but I guess not so now here we are. Yesterday was a simple day here in Beverly. My first job was to stamp some more of those stickers we are handing out to other businesses. There were around two hundred so it was not the best way to wake up. After that I had to make some “Free Gas” signs for the sticker holders. Once I did that I got kicked out of where I was working because one of the other workers needed the computer for a little so I had to go to the inter computer. It is legit the worst computer I have ever used in my life. The brightness is so weird that I have to squint my eyes in order to see some of the stuff on the screen. I have no idea how to change the brightness on it but I do not want to try because I don’t want to break it. Yes I could probably break a computer even though fixing the lighting is very simple. Anyway, after a few minutes of not really doing anything I was called upstairs. One of the other interns we had, had her last day yesterday so my boss made an amazing cake for her and we all went upstairs to hang out, eat cake and say goodbye. I cannot stop thinking about the cake. It was chocolate with butter cream frosting. Probably one of the best cakes I’ve ever eaten in my life. After the breathtaking cake we all headed back downstairs to work and I worked on the project I have been doing for about two weeks.

Week 4 Blog 1

Its Monday, back to the old grind. Friday was a really fun day. Our station did a live broadcast at Dawson's, a local hardware store that just reopened, and I helped out a little to set up. All I really did was set up all of the delicious cupcakes that we got for the occasion. They all had tools on them because it is a hardware store. They were so cute and looked so good! Other than being on cupcake duty I did not do much else. I felt bad because I just stood there but it was cool to watch them do the broadcast and see how all of that works. Andrew, the guy that was doing everything behind the scenes, showed me how everything worked and how they would know when to go back on air and stuff like that. It was very interesting. Besides being on cupcake duty and learning about the stuff I kind of just stood there for most of the time. There was Dunkin Donuts coffee and munchkins and other sweets so I stood behind there because it was right next to were the broadcast was going on and everyone came up and thought I was in charge of all of the sweets and would ask me if they could take some. One guy came up to me and told me to pour him a cup of coffee. He didn’t ask he told me. I was like “ummm ok?” Other than that old man everyone else was very very nice there. The owner came up to me after we were done and shook my hand and thanked me for all of the help which was very nice. I also got a shout out on the radio for helping out which was awesome! When the event was over I stole some cupcakes one of the ladies I work with drove us back to the office where I worked on the project some more. Overall it was a very good Friday at work and I left in high spirits thanks to all of the nice people who I was around.  

Week 3 Blog 3

I am writing another blog right now because I just drank a lot of coffee and I have way too much energy to sit and do this project. I started my essay last night or rough draft of my essay… it is a very very rough draft. I only have two pages so far. I have a lot of stuff to write and I know what to write I am just not very good at writing. I always have something good to say in my head and then when I try to write it it just does not come out the way I wanted it to. I always feel as though I am repeating everything I have already written but just in a different way. A three page paper I am ok with, that’s what I am comfortable with but a twelve page paper that I need to do good on in order for me to graduate makes this the most important paper I have written in my high school career. Usually I am happy when I have all the pages that are required but now I have to have the required page amount and it has to be the best paper ever. Challenge accepted. I seriously doubt anyone is excited that they have to spend the next few weeks inside writing this paper while it is so nice out but once it is done it will feel so good. The paper is probably the most difficult part of SCORE for me. Once I figure out what my presentation will be on and get my paper done things will get a lot simpler and less stressful. I do not mind standing in front of a few teachers and giving a presentation, especially when it’s on something I know pretty well about and it is something I really care about and not on a “Spanish painter from the 1800s”. I want my presentation to be unique and something the teachers remember. There is so much I can do because of where I am working I just need to figure out what!

Week 3 Blog 2

Thursday morning and there is another meeting going on. I used to not mind them even though the door was open and I was trying to work and stuff but now I do not like them. The reason is because they have been talking about the Excel list I made last week and it makes me scared that they may say something negative about it or something so I try not to listen in anymore. The list has literally thousands of past clients, I do not know how they do it. What I do know is that I would not do well at their job. They are on the phone all day with clients and trying to get other people’s business. I hate talking on the phone; I actually have like a little fear of it. No matter whom it is I do not want to talk to you on the phone especially if I was trying to sell something. I feel like phone calls are awkward and you can’t see the person and it’s just not fun. Anyway I would just not be good at that job. Another thing is that they mostly sit at a desk all day on the computer; my back hurts just thinking about it. In this business advertising is the name of the game. I have learned a lot of ways to advertise and get people’s information out there.

 The station is having a live broadcast somewhere tomorrow that I will be working at which will be very fun so I am excited for that. Brittany and I are still currently working on the new project we were assigned and it is going pretty fast which is good. Going through past clients we have to get certain information on them and one is how much they spent in one year on ads from us. Some companies spend a lot of cash on this. I understand that companies have to get their name out into the public but I didn’t know they spent this much money on it. Brittany and I like to take how much the client we are working on has spent compared to the other. It’s kind of like a game to make it more fun!

Week 3 Blog 1

So it is only Tuesday. This week feels like it is going to be long, I am not sure why but oh well. As for SCORE I am listening in on another meeting the people I work with are having. They just finished talking about the huge list I worked on for about two weeks. My boss told them that I had created a list of everyone they have done business with and that they should try to contact some of them or something like that. She told them what it looked like and that it was color coded and stuff like that. Some people did not like that it was color coded others did. I officially love the people who liked that it was color coded because they do not know how hard I worked on that list and they are talking about it like it took me ten minutes. Whether they like my list or not I still got nervous when I heard them talking about. I did not know they were going to use it for anything big, I thought it was just for my boss to look over and maybe call some people. Now I cannot stop thinking about if I did something wrong or if I forgot something or color coded the wrong person. I am over thinking this but I don’t want to mess them up and have them be like “That darn intern messed up and now we have no clients!” I think it is all good though. I told her if there was any problem n the list she should tell me and I would fix it right away and she has yet to say anything about it other than how thankful she is that I did that because no one else would have gotten to it. As of yesterday I started on a new long term project of filing and researching past clients. It is not too bad just very tedious. That is what I did all day yesterday and probably will do all day today. I will have some help from Brittany though so it won’t be too bad.

Week 2 Blog 3

Thank god it is Friday. The weeks and days seem to go by pretty fast which was weird but I will not question it. Being here for six hours each day feels a lot shorter than being in school for six hours. Even though the work here is kind of boring I am not going to complain because I would much rather be here than school. I think the reason is because I would always feel so trapped in school and couldn’t really do what I wanted. I couldn’t even eat or drink what I wanted when I wanted it. Four years of being trapped felt like forever. Now that I am here I feel as though I have a lot more freedom, because I do. My boss does not babysit me and tell me I can’t go to the bathroom. I can go to lunch whenever I want to and not at 10:39 which is usually when I am just getting up in the morning. Looking back at all the stuff we all had to go through in school I am proud that we got through it and do not have to go back. I am not really sure why I am using this journal to complain about school but I was thinking about everything and needed to get this out in the open.

Back to what I have been doing… there was not a lot going on yesterday because I had finished my long project and was being assigned other small stuff. Today is the same. I worked on some happenings this morning and did research for one of the people I work with and that is kind of it.I thought I was going to go on a coffee break but I ended up not going because me and Brittany were supposed to go but then she couldn't and things got complicated. Another intern that works here that usually goes did it this morning so everything worked out in the end. Brittany and I will be going next week though. Hopefully we will get some donuts... fingers crossed. Anyway, I will probably spend the rest of the day matching album names to song tittles that we have played on the radio. It is a very long list and I am only on letter D. Lets do this.

Week 2 Blog 2

Earlier this morning I was sitting at the intern desk while there was a meeting going on in my boss's office. The desk just so happens to be less than ten feet away from the desk that I sit at so I could hear everything they were saying. It was very interesting to listen to because you would think that people working at a radio station would be talking about what songs to play and stuff like that but they were actually talking about advertisers. It was all about business and a lot of other details that I had no idea went into creating a radio station. The people I work with all have clients that they take care of and give them spots on the radio for advertising for their businesses. Anyway during the meeting they were talking about different ways to get this person this amount of business and that business that amount of business and when the best time to air their commercials due to the day of the week and what month. After listening to that Brittany and I were assigned a project that will probably last until SCORE is over. It is a lot of filing and alphabetizing and researching different businesses that we have not worked with in a while and try to find if there is anything new going on and see if they need to advertise with us again or not. Yesterday I was working on that project that I have been doing for a week or two. I am almost done with it. I had to color code it yesterday and now I am just matching the customer's name with the person here who has the account. Since tomorrow is Friday that means I get to do a coffee break which I am pretty excited about. The only down side is that we have to get all of the good tasting donuts and baked goods but we cannot have any of them but I think I will live. The coolest thing about coffee breaks is that we get to use the 104.9 car which is decked out and everyone looks at you and stuff. It'll be very fun!

Ella Week 2

Second day back this week and I am still doing the same project I was doing yesterday... and a week ago. I was assigned to alphabetize a huge list of advertisers. I saw that it was only four lists so I thought 'Eh wont be too bad.' Well I did not scroll through all of them because each list is about five or more pages long. I am almost done with putting all of them together and there is around 2,000 advertisers on the list. I started this project before vacation and did it for about three days for six hours straight. Seeing as it is Tuesday I have worked on it for two days straight for six hours a day and am still not completely done with it. It is just not fun looking at a computer screen for six hours working on the same thing everyday. I guess you could say I will not be getting a desk job when I get older. The people I work with are there for longer than I am everyday. I don't understand how they do that. I do like it at the station though. It is cool because the receptionist is also one of the people that has a show everyday on the air so sometimes she gets up and goes upstairs to record something and comes back down a few minutes later and then you here what she just did a few minutes later. If I was her I would be so nervous to do that. I was actually on 104.9 a few months ago for a sport thing and it was live and they called me and stuff. I was super nervous and struggled to answer questions. It was scary knowing that it was live and if you messed up people would hear you and you could not fix it. It was still very cool though. Anyway I still get to eat Nick's everyday so I still got that going for me. Also the people I work with are extremely cool and funny, there is always something weird going on in the office and it is fun. I think Brittany and I get to go on our first Coffee Break this Friday with just the two of us which will be very interesting.

Ella Silag Stearns Blog 2 4/10/13

Although the idea that Nick's is right across the street from where I work is awesome my mother does not think so. Yesterday I told her that I went to Nick's again only for the second time this week and she actually got mad and told me not to go anymore. Too bad she is not there to stop me but that is not the point. I just thought it was funny. Anyway onto a more professional topic something really cool happened today at work. I was working in my boss's office because someone was fixing the computer I was at and that was the only other computer that had the files I needed to work on on it. Anyway my boss's office is more quiet than outside where I usually work so I could hear the radio more clearly. They started announcing the Happenings and heard one of the ones that I did! For those who do not know what a Happening is, it is announcements for charity events and such that are happening throughout the towns around here. The interns usually work on them. What we do is take the email the person sends us that wants us to put on air and fix some of it and put it on our website. Then we make another version that is shorter which is what the people on the radio announce. So now that you know what it is and that I work on them you can see how cool it was to hear my work on the radio! It made my day. I kind of just sit at a desk all day but I think it will get more exciting once I have settled in. Brittany and I get to go on a coffee break Friday morning which will be fun. That is when people send in requests for one and we choose a winner for that week. We bring them coffee and muffins and scones and stuff like that. Best part about it is that we get to drive in the 104.9 car!!! The reason why this is such a big deal is because it is all decked out designed to advertise the radio station so it has Boston Red Sox all over it and 104.9. The whole car is covered like that and I am super excited to drive in it!

Ella Silag Stearns 1- 4/8/13

First day of SCORE woohoo! Today was my first day working at 104.9 Radio Station. I talked a little with my boss and then she Introduced me to everyone who worked there. Then she put me to work.  Brittany Collens also works there so we were able to work together today. There is actually another intern who is in college who works there too. She helped Brittany and I all day. The first thing we worked on was basically summarizing announcements other businesses sent us for charities they are fundraising for and we put it on the air. You have to get certain information about the event and then post it on the website and then make a different copy for the people announcing it to say. We did that for more than half the day. One of the best parts of working there is that it is right across the street from Nick's Roast Beef!!! We went there today and I plan on going as much as possible. I got to have my junior beef. There was also cinnamon rolls in the office. I am not exactly who brought them but I thank that person for finding the most amazing cinnamon rolls I have ever eaten. Although I felt very fat after eating one it was totally worth it. After lunch there was another project that required looking up songs and the album of that song and had to find out who their producer is. I am pretty sure it included all of the songs played on our station. Let me tell you the list is very very long. Other than being across the street from Nick's the other cool part about where I work is being right downstairs from the recording studio. They have the bright red "On Air" sign and everything which I found very cool. I was able to go inside. That stuff interests me because it is amazing to think that tons of people are listening to you from that one room and that one microphone. Maybe I am the only one who thinks that is cool but whatever.  Overall it was a good day. My boss is super nice and easy going and I am excited to see what else there will be to do in the next couple weeks!

Ella's Outline

Ella Silag Stearns

104.9 Radio Station

Question: Is radio programming still relevant in the digital age?

Thesis:

Radio does not just let us listen to todays top songs but also broadcasts important information going on in not just places around where we live but also information throughout the world and without this information we are cut off from global news, therefore radio programming is still very relevant in the digital age.

Paragraph I: Technology

-       How has technology in general changed throughout the years?

·      Phones

·      Television

·      Radio

-       Why has it changed?

·      Generation change

-       How has this new technology changed people lives?

·      Is the change good or bad?

·      Are people’s lives easier or more difficult?

Paragraph II: Radio before

-       What was radio like?

·      In new America

·      Who listened to it?

·      Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds”

-       What kind of information was reported on the radio?

·      News

·      Entertainment

-       How did radio effect people’s lives?

Paragraph III: Radio today

-       How has generation change affected radio?

·      Who listens to it

·      Topics that are broadcasted

-       It is still relevant… why?

·      News/NPR

·      Sports

·      Music

·      Can connect with communities regardless of education or economic levels

-       How does it affect people today?

Paragraph IV:

-       How has television, music, media, etc. changed the way people look at radio broadcasting?

-       Does it still have the same affect on people

Paragraph V:

-       How will radio broadcasting and the media change in the future?

·      Better or worse?

·      If better why/If worse why?

-       What kinds of things might radio be used for in the future?

·      The same things?

Conclusion:

In the past we needed radio, win the present we still need it and in the future we will still need it as a resource to gather important information. No matter how much it has changed and how much it will change radio will always be a necessary tool in our world.

"Mid-Week Beat: Is Radio Still Relevant in the Digital Age?" Brown Paper Tickets MidWeek Beat Is Radio Still Relevant in the Digital Age Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. <http://community.brownpapertickets.com/wp/?p=9303>.

Campbell, Robert. The Golden Years of Broadcasting. New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1976. Print.

Gifford, Clive. Media and Communication. First ed. New York: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1999. Print.

"Radio Reaches Digital Age." SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. <http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Radio-reaches-digital-age-2685913.php>.

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