Blog #1

Internship has yet to start for me but I'm pretty hopeful about it. Granted I missed an important email and have yet to fill out the required paperwork to actually have an internship. However I hope by the end of this experience I'll come out of it with more knowledge on computer repair and network maintenance than before. I don't dream of labor but my biggest fear moving forward is that I might mess something up irreparably and I'll have to panic and find another internship.  I don't have anything in mind for a final project, to be honest I'm not even sure what I could personally do / create to benefit the school and myself. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing while working for the school's IT department but hopefully I'll enjoy it. I think the only real benefit in my personal life I could gain from this is experience in the field of IT and some skills I could use at home to keep my own personal devices in good condition.

(written 1/7/2025)

BLOG #2

The culture at my internship is very laid back and social. Working in the IT department involves talking to people both over email and in person to handle technical difficulties. People also occasionally stop by or just happen to be in the same place and they usually strike up a conversation, it's nice to socialize while working.
(written 1/9/25)

BLOG #3

What surprises me most about the internship is how poorly kept most of the hardware is when it's handled by students (see attached image). This is just what i remembered to photograph or was capable of physically displaying. In HTMMA there were computers with significantly worse issues, some with broken keyboards, others with broken cameras, and a few that just outright refused to power on.  The runner up for most surprising was how much varying effort simple issues like "my projector wont connect to my computer" took. Some were just unplugged and others had issues within issues. After each problem was fixed another would pop up. (see the projector on current projects)

(written 1/10/25)

BLOG #4

So far the largest struggle working in the IT department hasn't been the work itself. It's been the atmosphere around the work. Kurt and Tony are both very nice collected people but it seems like the space around the work that needs to be done is completely incongruous with them. 

I think my best example of this would be how on Tuesday the middle school was let out early for POLs, and Tony and I were working in the commons to fix the speakers they have down there. And as time passed the commons kept getting more full with people and exponentially increasing in volume. It got to a point where I had to ask twice or thrice for instructions not because I needed clarification, but because it was just so loud I couldn't hear them the first time. Near the very end when we were tinkering with the AV system some kid just started screaming.

I think my role in this internship has begun picking up pace at a rate i can handle. I have gone from small scale replacements (swapping keyboards and cameras) to more thorough repairs of damaged hardware, replacing screens, batteries, motherboards and the like. I think as this internship has progressed I've become more resourceful. I have learned to use the many, MANY resources at my disposal to get things fixed, and how to understand that just because something is broken that doesn't mean its useless.

(written 1/15/25)

BLOG #5

Now, I'm no stranger to being out of ideas. But I think this would be the worst time to run out of them. Currently there aren't any big installation projects at any of the 3 Point Loma schools and maintenance is really the main focus right now. And I haven't been able to come up with ideas for large scale things i could do to support the school. Kurt and Tony have been extremely helpful in giving me ideas for what I could potentially do but so far no conclusive decisions have been made by me. Which also Isnt a good thing because I am on borrowed time with limited minutes.

(written 1/16/25)

BLOG #6

If I had to take a guess at who is the primary benefactor of my work at this internship I would have to say it has been the IT department. I understand that as an extension of the school I am benefiting the school as well as the department with my work. However the way I see it is I'm taking a load off the IT dept's shoulders by handling the somewhat tedious task of repairs and physical maintenance on computers as well as assistance with installation (feeding cables through walls and ceilings, holding ladders, drilling holes). As a whole these things do help the school, but those benefits seem more like indirect consequences rather than a direct intent. 

Personally I'm glad to help out even if I'm just taking care of the small things, as it's usually those small unimportant or not-prioritized tasks that pile up in the background and slow down other projects. Chipping away at busywork isn't a thankless job either, any reductions to the workload is always appreciated.

(written 1/22/25)

BLOG #7

The Template questions - at least to me - lacked a certain pizzaz or personality to them. So I* (*except for the one Stanley Salizar wrote that's all him)  wrote some questions that I thought would greatly spice things up and indeed they did.

(transcript AND audio link) 

The quote that I resonate most with is "I’m always trying to either better myself or keep growing towards the next promotion, the next opportunity,the next project" from Kurt. The question i asked was "Are you content with where you’re at? Do you feel satisfied with your current profession?" and his answer did make me actually think. If there was ever a right answer to a personal question that was probably it. It resonated with me because I feel like alot of my issues stem from being driven by the pursuit of comfort rather than self improvement. I improve myself along the way but only because i want to be comfortable in my current position. And what Kurt said made me think about what i could do going forward, how i could better myself by thinking about what i do in the present and how that could benefit me later down the line rather than just going for short term mood boosts.

(written 1/24/25) 

BLOG #8

My role in my internship has gone from repairing chrome books and hitting buttons on a projector remote, to both of those things, holding the ladder, feeding cables through walls, installing cameras and speakers, and miscellaneous menial tasks. As I've said before I take pride in taking care of the small tasks that tend to pile up, to me there's just an inherent satisfaction in clearing out busywork, it doesn't take much time and it feels like cleaning out a schedule to prepare for something more important. 

I like helping make space for the more important things, it feels like what I'm doing matters beyond just getting a handful of tasks done. I feel like I'm contributing to something greater than the sum of its parts.   

(written 1/29/25)

BLOG #9

My project for this internship has yet to manifest itself, despite the brainstorming and ideas given to me by both mentors and cohort teachers. I have yet to concoct a coherent project or grand thing that benefits the school as a whole, or something I can tangibly show off if i want to. I understand it's not about the project itself it's what the project means or what was accomplished by / during it. But i can't help but feel as if all my work has been for naught since there's no grand scheme it was part of. It felt good to help, felt great at times when i knocked out some big task, but I never felt complete when they were over. That sucks.

BLOG #10

I think throughout all of this I've been too focused on the small things. I've been focused on how the work I do day-to-day affects the department as opposed to the school. My scope has been too small and i worried about how i was helping the department and how my deeds would add up and lead to a project. Instead, I should've looked at how each individual task affected the school as a whole. Every repair, every update, every cleanup, every thing i did had a tangible benefit to some part of the school. In a very cliche way, my project was literally helping the school.

The part that went the greatest was really the work. I never felt like i was just waiting out the clock, hoping the day would end. I always felt like my work had meaning even in small ways. I never felt like i was just being kept occupied.

The only thing that could've gone better is scheduling and organization. A lot of classes were occupied when we needed to do work, or the class was disorganized to the point where it was a wild goose chase to track down some of the things we needed to repair or find outlets to plug things into.

The only thing that really stood out about any of this was the lack of work for me to do once repairs were out of the picture and the more time consuming installations were done. It really felt like once those were taken care of i was at the peak of the mountain, there were no more worlds to conquer.

BLOG #11

my iPOL preparation process has been the same strategy I have used for every presentation since 9th grade: Make a slide show, put some very cookie cutter answers on each slide, and then elaborate on those answers on the spot while sprinkling in my own snarky sense of humor and perspective on things. My slides are just a google slideshow, I don't do notes because they look awkward when talking to a group so I'm relying on memory for this whole thing. I also haven't made an effort to predict what questions will be asked because I can't possibly predict what I'm going to be asked regarding my work in IT, i might be asked about how many computers need to be fixed, i might be asked who treats theirs the worst, i might be asked how bad the wifi is or why things stay broken. 

Regardless, I'll wait to answer those questions when they come up.

Well it's been a fun ride.  I would like to thank Kurt and Tony for being such gracious hosts as well as Todd and Eddie for helping me out along the way. I would also like to extend a thanks to Mr.Dan for assisting me in the logistics end of this internship and giving me snacks in return for manual labor tasks. This was a nice change of pace from the usual day in day out school I've been going to for the last 16 years of my life and I can't wait to do this again.