Please, please forgive these late posts!  Lately there have been many things cropping up -- school and college apps music and martial arts...but enough with excuses!  They only do discredit to both you and me.

This week was rather unusual – unusual in the sense that I only spent four hours (one day) on site, due to illness, and those four hours were all spent re-labeling all of the active files in the system.  Once again – character development.  I spent some time addressing the need for patience in my past journals, but this…was much more than I expected.  Thank heavens the peppermint tea is free…

Speaking of filing, I will now introduce a topic that has not yet been mentioned in my journals – gracious professionalism.  Of course I did not want to spend my time filing – I would much rather have helped out in the other class or even simply gone home.  However, this was a job that needed to be done, and it was my duty to graciously accept it.  Having this reinforced in my mind only makes me more thankful that I have taken an internship at this point in my life, before my selfishness or self-pity can have any drastic consequences.

Job-specific skills – although I complained about filing above, I did manage to encounter several areas where I had to make conscious decisions during my re-labeling of the file system with my wonderful co-mentor, Felise.  I had to decide whether to mass-produce labels rather than make a small batch at a time and apply them to the files, and whether or not using stickers rather than cut-outs would create a more permanent filing system depending on which material they were applied to (plastic sheaths or paper files).  I realize that this sort of decision-making is not the most exciting of skills, but it is necessary, and very important, considering the review of all of the active files that is about to take place.

Communication did turn out to be an issue this week, since I got sick in the middle of the school day – I sent an email to my mentor, stating that I would be unable to go to my internship.  However, my phone took four days to send said email, and I only realized that the email had not been sent after I had been home long enough to eat lunch, take a long nap, and start the work I would have to make up for the next day.  I flew into panic mode and called my mentor – rather foolish of me, since she would have been teaching the class at that moment – and sent another email.  Fortunately, there were only a few people in the class, so there was no want for help, and my mentor understands the many intricacies and frustrations of technology.

            My long-term goals remain as they have been – make a permanent difference in the lives of these children in whatever way I can.  As for my short-term goals, however:  it’s time for me to think of a semester project!