Daily Logs

August-December 2020

August

Day 1: Monday, August 31st, 2020

I didn’t list hours because all we did today, was contact each other via outlook to set up a time to meet the team and how things will be looking for me this semester in terms of projects. We also established that I will be primarily working on Fridays remotely with some in-person meeting times if possible/needed.

Reflection:

I’m super excited to meet the entire team of the PACE house. My goal in life is to help give back to those who are struggling. I know I am really going to enjoy my placement with this group. I’m super excited to have the chance to gain this experience.

September

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020 (1 hour and 20 minutes, 1 hour and 20 minutes to date)

Today, Sandy planned a welcome back Zoom call for the office, so I was able to get to know everybody and learn their placements/duties. In the zoom call, we talked about how we are trying to stray away from using Zoom, and how we are going to be using the workplace platform, Slack. I got to meet Michael, Sara, Carolina (with Judy on the phone), and Ryan. They are all department heads in the PACE house.

Reflection: I enjoyed getting to meet everybody that I’m going to be working with this semester. Instead of one of those boring, get to know me introductions, Sandy came up with a fun “COVID Ice Breaker”. I had a lot of one with that because I’ve never done anything like that. I got to learn about everybody’s positions and job duties. Learning all the positive things these individuals do really is interesting to see and I think I would like to work in this field after graduation.

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 (40 min, 2 hours to date.)

Today I had a one on one meeting with Sandy discussing the plans for the semester and figuring out a plan of assignments for me to get hands-on experience. Since PACE has only had the chance to work with interns, instead of practicum students, we decided it would be best for me to take on the social spotlights that their now graduate assistant was formerly in charge of. Sandy got me in contact with Kacie via our work platform Slack so we can chat about how to do these social spotlights.

Reflection: I was very excited to get hands-on experience in something, but I was worried that I may not be good at it just because I’ve never used Canva before. I was happy to get into contact with Kacie!

Wednesday, September 9th, 2020 (2 hours, 4 hours to date)

Today I met with Kacie Caesar via Zoom. She was very sweet and super helpful. She gave me a little tutorial of Canva and showed me the previous spotlight posts she’s made for previous members. She informed me that I needed to get in touch with Michael since he has the ability to share the Canva pegs with me. She also shared with me a generic email with questions in regard to the spotlight.

Reflection: I really enjoyed meeting Kacie, that we decided that if I never run into issues during my practicum, I can always feel free to meet up with her. During this time period, I was experiencing a COVID scare, so I wasn’t able to make plans to meet up just yet.

Friday, September 11th, 2020 (5 hours, 9 hours up to date)

Over the course of yesterday and today, Sandy told me to start my social highlights with our core members of the PACE house. Michael and Sara were first, we went with this because this is the order on how we introduced ourselves in the welcome back meeting. I reached out to Sara Heim and Michael Webber and completed a draft of their social spotlight to send to them for review. Michael and I briefly discussed a schedule for these spotlights to be posted mainly on the weekends.

Reflection: This was my first time dipping my toes in some work on Canva, so I ran into technical issues, but I enjoyed the experience of actually doing something nice for somebody other than myself. Sara and Michael are both very kind, inspiring individuals and I look forward to keeping in touch with them throughout my practicum.

Monday, September 14th – Wednesday, September 16th (2 hours, 11 hours up to date)

I was having issues when I was creating Sara’s social spotlight, I guess I chose the wrong format, but I wanted her to be satisfied with it. Over the course of these 3 days, Sara and I messaged back and forth with feedback to make changes to the post.

Reflection: I was getting a little upset, that I wasn’t doing my best work. I reached out to Kacie and she reminded me that feedback even though It may seem rough, only makes you better at your job. I felt better after talking with Kacie.

Friday, September 18th, 2020 (5 hours, 16 hours up to date)

My goal for this week was to work on spotlights for our next PACE member in line. Dr. Carolina Brown and Judy McClure.  I reached out to them on Thursday, September 17th so I would be able to work my full five hours Friday on these two spotlights.

Reflection: I really enjoyed making these for both Carolina and Judy! I loved Carolina’s picture she chose for me to put in the post because it was wholesome content to match her wholesome personality. I was really moved when Judy said, “I try to do my small part to work towards a greater good every day.”

Week of Friday, September 25th, 2020 (5 hours, 21 hours up to date)

My goal for this week was to work on spotlights for our next PACE members in line, Ryan Weaver and Kacie Caesar. Ryan reached back to me with a later reply (which is just fine because I know we are all busy during these times) that he would get back to me in a week. Kacie responded to me in a timely manner which I expected after already chatting with her.

Reflection: I felt as if I was just sitting behind my computer screen this week because I was only able to work on one Spotlight. This was a very stressful week due to extraordinary circumstances that I didn’t feel like putting on anybody else. I was a little intimidated to work on Kacie’s spotlight since I basically took her old job duties.

October

Weak of Friday, October 3rd, 2020 (5 hours, 26 hours up to date)

This week I worked on a spotlight for my practicum director, Sandy Pope. I also was able to do a spotlight post for myself as well as per Sandy's request.

Reflection: I always enjoy conversations with Sandy, he’s such a positive person and he’s been a great mentor so far (even if we’ve only met on Zoom.) When I drafted the questions, I wanted to ask these individuals to figure out what information to spotlight, I asked them what overall theme they think about when it comes to themselves. Sandy said gardening, so I made his spotlight around gardening and I thought that was very personable. I was having issues with my own post because I wasn’t sure what to include.

Week of Friday, October 9th, 5 hours, 31 up to date)

This week I finished up my own spotlight posts and checked in with Sandy to make sure I covered us all. We were planning a midterm checkup/reflection on Friday via Zoom, but I became very ill with another COVID scared. We rescheduled for Tuesday, October 16th.

Reflection: I started to panic a bit due to the fact that I am sort of behind with my hours so I’m glad I expressed these issues to Sandy. I was not happy to come down with yet another bug either!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2020 30 minutes, 31.5 hours up to date)

Sandy and I met on Zoom to discuss my progress so far and further concerns if any.

Reflection: See Evaluation Tab

Friday, October 16th, 2020 (5 hours, 36.5 hours up to date)

When I organically reached out to Sara, she sent me a list of AmeriCorps members to get in contact with to spotlight them. Today I went back to this thread of members and started drafting out professional emails to get their feedback on whether or not they would like to be Spotlighted on PACE’s social media sites,

Reflection: When I was drafting these emails to these AmeriCorps members, I stumbled across one name that I knew I remembered. Desiree Jefferson, I was familiar with her past story because we went to the same high school and I was so happy to see that she’s doing what I want to do!

Week of Friday, October 23rd, 2020 (5 hours 41.5 hours up to date)

Responses slowly tricked in, as everybody is busy in their own ways. By Friday I had created Spotlights for 4 AmeriCorps members!

Reflection: I love hearing every bodies story on why they decided to join AmeriCorps. Being able to have the chance like this, to be the voice of others is truly an amazing experience because I know the feeling of coming from something negative but only wanting to give back.

Week of Friday, October 30th, 2020 (5 hours, 46.5 hours up to date)

This week I reached out to Ryan Weaver for contact information for his students, I plan on reaching out to Michael for his Food for Flock members, and Carolina for her NLA members. I also spent a good chunk of the day working on my Web folio.

November

Week of Friday November 6th, 2020 (5 hours, 51.5 hours up to date)

While waiting for the responses to trickle in I worked on doing research pertaining what other colleges in Maryland run their civic engagement groups to see if we could do anything that could make us better.

Reflection: After researching other schools and how they go about civic engagement it looks like our website needs some updating. I noticed that it follows the way the homepage is for Salisbury University and that my not truly appeal to new viewers.  

Week of Friday, November 14th, 2020 (5 hours, 56.5 hours up to date)

This week I met with Sandy and Michael via zoom to share the findings I found while looking at other schools. They also gave me one last final project to complete for the semester and that was to find 50-100 pictures on the SU flicker page for their new website.

Reflection: It was a good chance to meet with Sandy and Michael, I was able to express to them both the issues I’ve been facing this semester, whether it was personal or health-wise. They also told me to put the spotlights off until after Thanksgiving break to get the website up and running much faster.

Week of Friday, November 20th, 2020 (5 hours, 61 hours up to date)

This week I worked on finding and downloading images off of the Salisbury flicker page. I also started working on coming up with a story to cover what PACE is about.

Reflection: Looking at all of the spotlights I have done for members of different subgroups, I realized I need to come up with something that will inspire more people to change their community or join.

Week of Friday, November 27th, 2020 (5 hours, 66.5 up to date)

 The week of Thanksgiving break. I tried my best to finish up the remainder of the spotlights while continuing to search for pictures for the new website.

Reflection: This week it was hard to bring myself to the computer, but I managed.

December

Week of Friday, December 4th, 2020 (5 hours, 71.5 hours up to date)

On December 3rd Sandy reached out to me and let me know that the images I’ve been downloading in the shared folder were the wrong size. He sent me a screen recording (how to) to let me know the correct way to save these images. I ended up with at least 100 images in our shared folder, so I hope the website looks great!

Reflection: I’m glad I was informed on the correct way to download these images. When it comes to downloading many things and then uploading them to another location, there are going to be issues that you run into. I ran into losing the images on my finder and actually ended up downloading duplicates. I finally figured out the best way to get the images in the folder to be used, but it was a very time-consuming task, but I was happy to do it. I finished up with the last of the spotlights, but Michael sent out an announcement if anybody else wanted to spotlight one of their students to reach out to me.

Week of Friday, December 11th, 2020 (5 hours 76.5 hours up to date)

This week I focused on gathering everything together from the entire semester to see how this experience has changed me and how I can further promote civic engagement. Sandy reached out to me via email with the hopes of me presenting a 10-minute presentation to the entire group at our final meeting this year.

December 14th (5 hours, 81.5 hours up to date)

This is my last working day for my practicum this semester and I will be completing my final portfolio for Sandy and the rest of the PACE team to see.

December 15, 2020 (1 hour, 82.5 hours up to date)

I may have struggled this semester with getting my 90 hours, but after discussing with others who have also had practicum placements this semester, I feel like I got the best experience I could due to the circumstances.

The end of the year meeting Is today and I will be wrapping up my practicum with a final presentation.