Kate’s senior project

I worked from 11-12, and then 1-2. Today is remarkable because we finally folded all the napkins! The room is filled with baskets of napkins, and the rest of napkins that don't fit into the boxes just sit randomly across the room. It was such a view. At reunion and graduation nights we can just look at the tables and be like, you see the napkins? Yeah we folded all of them. By today I have 53 hrs. 

It’s crazy how the senior project flew by. It was intimidating before I started, because I knew the Development Department is responsible for graduation and all the connections with alumni, which means I have to reach out to strangers who only share the same high school background with me. On top of that, I hate making phone calls, especially to people I don’t know. Therefore, after making the decision to work in the Development Department, I’ve been anxious about what I would do. Would I make a thousand phone calls everyday? Would I have to call strangers only to be hung up on? All the uncertainty taunts me until the first day of my senior project.  I remember vividly what we did the first day. Making phone calls, having meetings, meeting new people…all of the above didn’t happen. Instead, we counted plates. I have this video of the three of us, Wes, Carly and me, sitting on the carpet and counting plates, completely confused with why we are doing this. What Carly said later reall...

  It’s crazy that another week has passed by. This week is somehow way faster than last week, probably because I’m getting used to the work I’m doing. It’s really interesting in fact, although we call ourselves “interns” I still found pleasure in doing small but useful things. They make me feel my value (not trying to say doing errands is the only thing I can do). For sure there are greater things waiting ahead, but it’s nice to get started on small things. I learnt there are different sizes of letter envelopes this week, and sometimes people put the smaller ones to bigger envelopes so whoever gets the mail can put either cash or paychecks in them. There are surprises too, because things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes I have games or early practices, so I have to leave early accordingly. That means I won’t have enough hours in. That frustrates me because I hate it when things don’t go as planned, but obviously I can’t skip practice or games. My solution is to get my hours ba...

 Today I worked from 10-2. This four hours really is about folding napkins and a little bit of writing thank you notes, considering the amount of napkins we have to fold. But I think we’re almost there! I counted how many piles of napkins we’ve done and the conclusion is we’ve folded 1,300 napkins and we have only 500 more to go. That’s easy work if the three of us all do it together, and I think Wes already covered some of the 500 as he took over the napkin folding room after I left. Next week is going to be easy, and that really cheers me up. We’re so close to the finishing line! I’m at 51 hrs now.

 Today’s pretty interesting. We had 2 meetings in a row, and we focused on different things. The first meeting we focused on part of the history of Proctor and the importance of giving back to Proctor. The second meeting is way more straightforward, it’s about the rundown of commencement. I never knew the budget for the commencement as high as $150,000 if my memories correct. Or I typed one extra zero. Other than that I went to fold napkins again. I worked from 9:15-11:45, and 12:45-2. That adds up to 47 hrs.

 Today we worked on folding more napkins and writing thank you notes. I worked from 9-12, and then 1-2 as we had a game. I lost track of how many napkins I folded, but I think we’re getting there. Now the room where I fold napkins is like a to go place when there’s nothing we can work on. And at this point I can remember things I write on my thank you notes word by word. And I worked extra from 7:30-10:30, because one of my mentors also my dorm surrogates. Now I think I’m at 43 hrs 15 mins.