Internship #12

*Example of Collaboration


Co-workers discussing case documents that contribute to file management

*Writing About Collaboration

For the most part, I directly work with two people. That is my mentor, and my partner/co-worker who guides me through the process of file management. However, those that I work indirectly with are also affected by my work because the case documents and files that I organize, are files that they have to refer back to for their work and possibly distribute to other locations as evidence or just needed information.

My direct work with others always goes well. I'm a very visual learner so after they guide and show me what I need to do, I absorb in all the information and get started with my tasks, asking question when necessary. My mentor, and my file management co-worker are both very friendly and helpful, and that makes it a lot easier for me too ask questions and communicate with them.

Like I mentioned earlier, even the people that I work indirectly with are affected by my work because sometimes they have to refer back to the files and documents that I organize. This really influences my work because, knowing that there are other co-workers that are depending on me for some of their important case files and documents, motivates me to do better with organizing them.

If I were in charge of the whole collaboration part of this law office, I would probably keep the whole idea of working together as a whole to make everything run smoothly, but I would probably add a little more energy and fabulocity!

Internship #11

Please post a summary of your week at internship. What were the highlights? What were the challenges? What was memorable and why?

well.....for the most part my week went pretty well. As far as work goes, I've just been working on my presentation and continuing to organize and prepare case documents. My highlights of the week would have to be seeing Randy for my conference with my mentor, eating mac n cheese from the staff kitchen, and showing my mom my office.

When I saw Randy, I started getting a whole bunch of Humanities flashbacks, and lots of funny memories of the class as a whole started coming to mind. As an intern and temporary co-worker, I get access to the staff kitchen, so eating microwavable mac n cheese was a major plus. When I showed my mom my office I felt really good inside because I knew she was really proud of me.

Internship #10

My office: Organizing, preparing, and learning from.....case documents, files, and vocabulary, that has to be put into long-term storage.

My intern has veered me towards a lot of different questions about the world. Below are the questions and wonders that came to mind:

1. Why can't other schools have internship?
2. What can high school students as a whole do to make internship opportunities available for all juniors at all high schools?
3. As much as law firms and people all over the world know about the law and peoples rights, why wont they all team together and fight for better rights and living conditions in poorer countries like Sudan Africa or southern Uganda?

Below are a list of things that I would like to go out and learn about on my own time:

1. Be apart of teen court. A program that allows u to do mock trials with other teenagers that are interested in law, to get an even better idea of how it is to work in the law business. In my case, how it really is to be a criminal defense attorney
2. Go sit in and observe a real trial
3. Interview a homeless person about their rights as a US citizen

Below are a list of 5 questions that I will be asking am important co-worker:

1. What is your profession? What do you do?
2. In what ways do you think law has evolved over and improves over the past years?
3. What was it like making the transition from college to the work field?
4. What drives you to want to come to work everyday?
5. How do you believe law suits and cases can be improved?

Internship #9

So, in the beginning I got a little carrid away and did my interview without fully understanding the requirements and how Randy wanted the interview to be. After re-reading the helpful blogs and understanding Randy's requirements a whole lot better, I chose to do a new and improved interview with someone else. However, I will be incorporating quotes and things that struck me in the other interview. The following are my background questions and summed up answers from my new interview:


Q: What college did you attend?
A:

Q: What did you major in?
A:

Q: Where are you originally from?
A:

Q: Do you have any children?
A:

Q: What high school did you attend?
A:

Q: How was your lifestyle growing up as a teenager?
A:

Internship 8

What new appreciations (for who? of what?) have you gained through internship that you did not have before? How did you develop these appreciations?

The main appreciations that I've gained while being here are being a student at HTHMA, having supportive teachers and family, internship, and my life in general.

I really appreciate my supportive family and teachers a lot more because with them I am encouraged and a lot more driven to want to put forth my best effort in whatever I do to make not only myself proud, but them as well.

I really appreciate the fact that I am a student at HTHMA because by being here i am presented with a lot more opportunities, support, knowledge, and creativity. If it weren't for the school, I probably would not have been given the opportunity to do internship and get a better understanding and idea of my possible career choice.

I am appreciative of internship as a whole because it has really opened my mind up to new ideas, and has also given me more of a detailed picture or idea of how working in a law office environment would be like.

Mainly, this internship has helped me to appreciate my life a lot more. No words can explain how much I appreciate my life. I know that there are millions of kids in the would die to be in my position and be able to take advantage of such fun and fabulous opportunities, receive a good education, have a place to stay, have food to eat, and be able to just live a fun and happy life. I am so grateful to God that I am even still alive to be able to be apart of such a wonderful learning experience like internship. I know that there are a lot of students who could benefit from internship, but are just not able to have it. So I'm just really grateful.

Internship Interview

Person Interviewed: Michael Hellbusch of the Wolfenzon Schulman & Ryan law firm
Interviewer: Janae Noland a student/intern of High Tech High Media Arts High School in Point Loma

Q: What's your specific job for this position?
A: "I handle cases for assigned law suits and I oversee the lawsuits by settlement or trial."

Q: Why did you choose this job?
A: "That's a good question....Well I enjoy problem solving and my strength is writing; I wanted to utilize my strength."

Q: What experience or activity led you to towards this career choice?
A: "It wasn't really any experience or activity that led me towards this career choice, I was attracted by my love for writing and problem solving."

Q: What steps did you take to get to this position?
A: "My third year of college I took the LSAT test, studied the whole summer for it. I attended USD Law school for my undergrad for three years of law school. Then I studied for the bar exam and took that in July of last year."

Q: Do you see this being your final career choice?
A: "I'm still very young, but I do like what I'm doing. It's hard to say....but I've worked towards this for a long time and it will take about 10 years to complete it."

Q: What or who inspired you to work hard?
A: "My dad. He had his own business with 5 kids, so we all had to work hard for college."

Q: If you weren't in in law, what else would you have chosen to major in?
A: "Journalism or Music."

Q: Do you play anything.
A: "yes. I play guitar, bass, and the piano."

Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: "Writing. Motions....briefs. And it gives me a chance to to make arguments that will affect the outcome of the case."

Q: What advice on life beyond high school would you give a junior in high school?
A: "Go to college. It's very important. Having a high school degree is as important as having a college degree. And you can work hard towards what you want to do."

Internship #7: Summary of the week

Well....overall my first week of internship went pretty well. I organized a variety of different files and did a lot of typing. The typing came in the picture when it was time for me to input the information into it's specific word document. One thing that I actually didn't expect to happen was have pizza hut on Friday for the lunch. Most of the days the office usually7 decides to go to a deli. I dn't really like deli food, so on those days I usually wait to eat after internship. So believe me, when I found out we were having pizza hut on Friday I was really surprised.


The highlight of my week was when this really unusual thing happened right outside my window that I'd nver seen before. I've always wondered how glass windows on tall buildings stayed so shiny and clean, and for the first time in my lide I saw how!!! So when I turned around to look out my window, I saw this long pole and this big rush of water shoot on the window, and I knew it wasn't rain because it wasn't even raining. So I got up to take a closer look, and down at the bottom I saw this guy holding a really long pole with a mop and a hose that was in the middle of the mop that was attatched to the end of the stick. Right then and there is when I realized how the windows on tall buildings got cleaned. It was simpply a guy on the 1st floor outside standing on the ground holding a really long stick with a mop attatched to it, moving it back and foth and up and down on the window, washing off any spots, dirt, or dust.

One thing that I do need to continue working and focusing on is my project. I know that my project circuates around file management and that is what I've been doing pretty much this whole time, but I need to really figure out how I'n going to actually present and and share my experience here at internship. So organizing all my thoughts and the things I learned in a professional way that is presentable and easy for my audience to understand.

Internship #7: Project Description

Internship site:

Wolfenzon Scdulman & Ryan private law firm
4690 EXECUTIVE DR STE 125
San Diego, CA 92121-4009
(Main location in San Diego)

Department: Fileroom

Project Title: The process of file management

General Description: Records and files being organized for long term storage and archived for later access.

Learning Objectives: To gain a better understanding of the steps it takes to prepare case files and documents for the main storage and later reference through a hands on experience, along with new vocabulary, and the law oddice environment as a whole.
Organization/Company Objectives & Benefits:
Schedule:

Academic Skills: Computer / Organization / Group

Technical Skills: Basic knowledge of Microsoft Word

Collaboration—Skills and Opportunities: Working in a group effort with people of more experiece and law knowledge that can help me to get a better understanding and idea of my possible career choice of becoming a criminal defense attorney.

Exhibition Plans: Reflect on my overall internship experience:

What did I learn?
What obstacles did I face?
How did I overcome them?
What was my most interesting experience?
What would I do differently?
How could I improve myself?
What advice would I give the incoming interns?
etc., etc.

Then, using some artifacts or materials that I used (Boxes, labels, folders, rubber bands, and stickies) in the office to organize the case documents and files, I was going to show step by step how I prepared and labeled boxes for storage.

Schedule & Timelines: Considering the fact that workers are never really "done" in a fileroom because theres always cases that are constantly coming in, being worked on, and prepared to be sent out to storage, I'm working on my project and file management stuff pretty much everyday of my internhip.

Internship #6

*My goals for this interview are to get a better understanding of career choosing from a different perspective other than my own, and to connect and build sort of a bond with a person who really does a lot to help keep the Wolfenzon law firm up and running.

Interview day: January 15th

Interview Questions:

What's your specific job for this business?
Why did you choose this job?
What experience/activity led you towards this career choice?
What steps did you take to get to this position?
Do you see this being your final career choice?
What/who inspires you to work hard?
If you weren't in law, what else would you have chosen to major in?
What do you enjoy most about your job?
What advice on life beyond high school would you give a junior in high school?

~Things I want to Learn About: The New Interview~

* Their profession

- I would really like to become a Criminal defense attorney. And even though the woman that I am interviewing is a paralegal and not an attorney, it's still important to me that I become familiar with all the positions and aspect that keep a firm running, and I believe that she can help me with that.


* Their career choice process/journey

- How did they get to where they are now? How hard was it to get there? I understand that my education, success, and becoming a defense attorney is not all going to be handed to me on a silver platter. I'm going to have to work for it, be determined, and stay focused on my goal. I know that learning about her career choice process is important because it will give me an idea of some of the key thongs that I'll have to do to get to where I want to be

* Personal Life

- I think that for me learning about her personal life is more along the lines of curiosity than it is important. I think that its just fun to learn about the thing they do and have to deal with outside of the work place.

Interview time: 11:45ish
Interview location: My office :-)

Internship #5

Project title: The Process of File Management

Project description: Records and files being organized for long term storage and archived for later access

Project schedule: Everyday

Materials & Equipment needed: Computer (Microsoft Word) - Boxes - Printer - labels

Project documentation: Blogger (photos) and possible physical evidence (folders/ labels)

Internship #4

1. What academic skills could you use on the job?

- Organization Skill
- Computer skills
- Creativity Skills


2. What forms of collaboration could you use in a project?

Well, I already know that my project is going to be a project that revolves arounf organizing case documents and files anf making all the files easier to access and refer back to. So in order to make this project a success I could use my organization skills to keep everything in order, creativity skills to organize everything in my own way, and computer skills to input all the info into the conputer properly.

3. What technical skills can you use at your internship?

I've mainly been using Microsoft Word to input case documents into the computer so that they can be easy to find when an attorney or someone needs to access them.

4. What new things can you learn while working at your site?

- Case/attorney vocabulary
- How to adapt and adjust better in a profesiional environment
- How to become a faster typer

5. How can you exhibit, showcase or otherwise share your work?

To show my work, I can either take pictures and upload them to blogger, or print them out, write about it, draw it, or just simply talk about it.

6. How can your work or your skills & abilities help your company or organization?

I believe that my skills and abilities can help my company by helping them to become od course more organized with their documents, but also more open-minded about high school interns in general. Sometimes businesses tend to freak out when it comes time to work with a high schooler. But hopefully after accepting me as an intern and recognizing what I'm capable of doing, then next time they might be a little more opened to accepting other high school interns as well.

Internship #3

What skills would you like to develop at your site?

1. Organization
2. Time management


What interests do you have regarding the work done at your site?

1. Case documents
2. The process used to make a case a successfil case


What needs can you address (needs your mentor has, your company has, etc.) based on your skills and interests?


1. Organizing documents and files so that they can be easir for people to reder back to and use for trials

Project Ideas

Well, at this point I'm pretty sure what the project is going to be about. It's going to definetely have something to do with organization in the offices storage unit where all the case documents and files are stored for reference, but my partner and I are still trying to figure oyt a way to sort of mold and present it as an actual project.

Below are a couple of ideas that we brainstormed:

*Powerpoint

-included pics
-why organization is important for the files/documents


*Tri-fold

-pics
-captions


*Essay

-the significance in organizing case documents step by step

Internship #1

WELL...TODAY EVERYTHING WENT PRETTY WELL!!!...I even got my own office!!!! When I first got here I was a little nervous, but after getting my forms filled out and drinking coffee and tea i started to loosen up. I woke up at like 7:30 this morning. My ride came to pick me up around 8:30 and we got here a little before nine. That was good because i had to be here at nine so i was on time. I looked pretty cute. I wore some black slacks, a peachish-colored shirt and some green flats that matched my purse.

I was kept busy but not too busy. what i did today, was go through about 25 boxes full of paper work and organize case numbers, titles, and files to be prepared for shipping. After organizing their files, I entered all of the organized information into a spreadsheet. It was slightly confusing in the beginning but after doing a couple, i started getting the hang of it all and even came up with a few strategies that helped me to move and get done a lot faster.

Doing all this really opened my mind up to new law vocabulary and i was able to really get a feel of how being an attorney would be. Everybody here is really nice and they even have snacks in the kitchen that I'm welcomed to anytime i want them! I'm pretty excited about more to come and i can't wait to learn new things.

Internship #2

What have you actively done to start off on the right note?
What have you actively done to create interesting opportunities for yourself?
What have you actively done to advance the interests of your mentor and/or site?
What can you do in the immediate future to improve yourself and your experience in the above areas?

The main things that I've done to start off on the right note were keep an open mind and stay alert. By keeping an open mind I'm making it easier on myself to take in new ideas and be able to sdjust to them. By staying alert, I'm stopping myself fron falling behind and always being prepared for any new tasks or directions that are given to me.

To ensure that I create interesting opportunities for myself I just stay positive and ask questions. Staying positive helps to make everything seem a lot more dun and interesting, while asking questions helps to make sure that I don't get confused and bored about the things that I'm interested in---law.

I believe that by just simply being here I'm advancing the interests of my mentor and the site. I have a special way of bringing along and spreading my energy anywhere that I go!

In the immediate future I plan to improve myself by just continuing to work hard, stay focused and open minded, and incorporating more ideas.

Economy Questions

How do you think the recession is affecting this business as a whole?

" WELL..IT HIT OUR BUSINESS REALLY HARD. "


What is the most significant change you've noticed ever since the recession began?

" WE'RE TRYING TO BE PROACTIV SO WE'RE CUTTING BACK ON OUR COSTS. CLIENTS ARE A LOT MORE HESITANT TO SUE, WHICH MEANS THAT CLIENTALE IS GETTING CUT BACK. "



What steps do you think will need to be taken in order to improve businesses?

" MORE SUING. MORE BUILDINGS. A LOT OF OUR BUSINESS IS WITH CONSTRUCTION DEFECTS SO LESS BUILDINGS MEAN LESS DEFECTS AND BUSINESS OBVIOUSLY. SO BUILDING INCREASING WOULD REALLY HELP US AND ALSO LEAD TO MORE HOMES AND MORE JOBS.