Hi Fellow Interns,
Just introducing myself. I'm Shelby Bailey and will be interning at Willamette Valley Medical Center. I am a recent transfer student, coming from Willamette U. and into what should be my senior year. I had a change of major and am here for the nursing program. So this adds on a few extra years to my undergraduate but at least now I will be graduating with something I want to use! At WVMC I will be working in the Emergency Room Dept. and am excited for being in the hospital setting and learning more about my future profession. Ultimately, I would like to become a nurse practitioner. This should be a great experience! I hope all of your internships are going well!
Friday, September 28, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Yamhill County 09/17-09/21
Thus far, I have been working solely on updating the Odyssey court management system. The system "went live" in June 2012, but it is still far from complete.
When court cases from the old court management system (OJIN) were ported over the Odyssey, many of them were either not ported over or are missing important documents. I have been working on putting together an Excel spreadsheet of the cases that need to be updated. OJIN held court cases from approximately 1983 to 2012. This amounts to millions of court cases, just in Yamhill County. I currently have a spreadsheet of 60,000 cases that need to be updated in Odyssey or need to be scanned into Odyssey. This is crucial in the event of an appeal. By statute, the Courts must keep court cases in their court management system for a certain amount of time, usually several decades.
With the implementation of Odyssey, Yamhill County court went paperless. All files were scanned into the new system and then put into storage for a period following implementation - these files will eventually be shredded. However, hundreds of these cases were not properly scanned into the system for whatever reason and now, I am in charge of inventorying them. Thankfully, the court did not shred their paper files yet so that employees can retrieve the ones that I am finding that were not scanned properly.
In my opinion, going paperless is silly. As an accounting major, I will never work for a firm that is "paperless." It is incredibly inefficient to try to do everything using technology, despite the push to do so in order to be "progressive." In the court system prior to Odyssey, paper filings and case documents could only be lost because of human error. With various safeguards and policies in place, this rarely happened. With the implementation of Odyssey, case documents have been lost by the Odyssey system for reasons that court employees and Odyssey technicians do not understand. This causes a lot of grief for employees, myself included.
When I am finished with my Excel inventory, all the missing cases will have to be retrieved from storage and re-scanned. This takes valuable time and resources away from employees and is a cause for severe frustration and a drop in employee morale. Employees already do not care for the Odyssey system, and technology glitches like this one are bound to make it even more unpopular.
When court cases from the old court management system (OJIN) were ported over the Odyssey, many of them were either not ported over or are missing important documents. I have been working on putting together an Excel spreadsheet of the cases that need to be updated. OJIN held court cases from approximately 1983 to 2012. This amounts to millions of court cases, just in Yamhill County. I currently have a spreadsheet of 60,000 cases that need to be updated in Odyssey or need to be scanned into Odyssey. This is crucial in the event of an appeal. By statute, the Courts must keep court cases in their court management system for a certain amount of time, usually several decades.
With the implementation of Odyssey, Yamhill County court went paperless. All files were scanned into the new system and then put into storage for a period following implementation - these files will eventually be shredded. However, hundreds of these cases were not properly scanned into the system for whatever reason and now, I am in charge of inventorying them. Thankfully, the court did not shred their paper files yet so that employees can retrieve the ones that I am finding that were not scanned properly.
In my opinion, going paperless is silly. As an accounting major, I will never work for a firm that is "paperless." It is incredibly inefficient to try to do everything using technology, despite the push to do so in order to be "progressive." In the court system prior to Odyssey, paper filings and case documents could only be lost because of human error. With various safeguards and policies in place, this rarely happened. With the implementation of Odyssey, case documents have been lost by the Odyssey system for reasons that court employees and Odyssey technicians do not understand. This causes a lot of grief for employees, myself included.
When I am finished with my Excel inventory, all the missing cases will have to be retrieved from storage and re-scanned. This takes valuable time and resources away from employees and is a cause for severe frustration and a drop in employee morale. Employees already do not care for the Odyssey system, and technology glitches like this one are bound to make it even more unpopular.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Capital Planning and Development at Linfield College
I started interning with CP&D early July. It’s been one
of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve had at Linfield, and has given me
opportunities that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible working a typical job,
at say a deli or grocery store. I’ve been able to learn so much about how
Linfield functions behind the scenes and the tremendous amounts of effort and collaboration
that goes into the planning, designing and construction of its physical environment.
The Capital Planning department does exactly what its name
entails. As stated on its home page, it “strives to bridge gaps between the
academic mission and campus physical and environmental development”. TJ Day
Hall was a project designed and constructed under CP&D, as well as the
implementation of the 85 solar panels mounted on TJ’s roof. More recently Tom
Hellie unveiled the building’s LEEDs Gold status which has been anxiously
anticipated at Capital Planning.
I often get asked to clarify what it is I do at CP&D. The
bulk of my work is balancing Linfield’s utility bills, so often I say ‘accounting’.
However there are many things I assist with that do not fall under the typical
task of an accountant. Some days I am in the office designing web pages or
organizing info, on other days I am wearing a hard-hat, shadowing engineers, looking
at blueprints, taking measurements and documenting campus construction.
I never quite know where I will be working or who I will be
working with. However, this is a tremendous benefit of my internship because I
am pushed to become familiarized with concepts, programs and skills that
generally come from different backgrounds. While it may be unrealistic to
master everything that I help with at CP&D, my goal is to develop a set a
versatile skills that will give me the edge in the job market and a business
oriented mindset to assist with my environmental policy background.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Yamhill County Initial Impressions
Thus far, I am definitely enjoying my time at the Yamhill County Circuit Court. It is similar to the other courts that I have worked in (Benton, Marion), but there are also several striking differences.
The first, and most obvious, is the presence of the eCourt Odyssey system. Yamhill County is on its way to becoming paperless and while it is a noble effort, it is a struggle as well. For certain tasks, like filings for civil, domestic, small claims, and probate cases, becoming paperless is simply not practical. Criminal filings may be submitted to us electronically through the citing party, which is usually the Oregon State Police. Everything must be scanned into the system from older cases that were not paperless and this is proving to take up a lot of precious time. Clerks are finding it difficult to open and maintain new cases while having to scan documents for older cases (and believe me, there are lots of them), at the same time.
The second is the organizational structure. I will be submitting a copy of this to you later this week, but it is very different from other court management structures that I have experienced, so I thought it would be notable to discuss here. At Marion County (where I worked this summer), each department has one lead worker and one supervisor. These departments include civil, small claims, accounting, domestic, probate, and records. At Yamhill County, there are no department supervisors - all these departments are looked after by one Court Operations Supervisor. She reports directly to the Trial Court Administrator. In Marion County, the structure is much more tiered. There was an entire administration department that worked under the Trial Court Administrator (the person in charge of all court operations) that then reported out to the supervisors of individual departments. Interactions between court staff and the Trial Court Administrator were very limited. In Yamhill County, the structure is much more direct and I regularly speak with the Trial Court Administrator. He even assigns projects to staff, which would have been very uncommon in Benton or Marion County.
Yamhill County is indeed similar to Benton County in that they are two of the State's smaller courts. As smaller courts, they receive less funding. The work environment in both Yamhill and Benton County is stressed, catty, and generally negative. Staff complain nearly constantly about their workload and about the glitches in the new eCourt system. It has been a bit of a struggle at Yamhill County this far in that regard, but I am familiar with work environments like this because of my time spent at Benton County. I am excited about the opportunity to be a part of such a forward-moving event in the Oregon court system.
The first, and most obvious, is the presence of the eCourt Odyssey system. Yamhill County is on its way to becoming paperless and while it is a noble effort, it is a struggle as well. For certain tasks, like filings for civil, domestic, small claims, and probate cases, becoming paperless is simply not practical. Criminal filings may be submitted to us electronically through the citing party, which is usually the Oregon State Police. Everything must be scanned into the system from older cases that were not paperless and this is proving to take up a lot of precious time. Clerks are finding it difficult to open and maintain new cases while having to scan documents for older cases (and believe me, there are lots of them), at the same time.
The second is the organizational structure. I will be submitting a copy of this to you later this week, but it is very different from other court management structures that I have experienced, so I thought it would be notable to discuss here. At Marion County (where I worked this summer), each department has one lead worker and one supervisor. These departments include civil, small claims, accounting, domestic, probate, and records. At Yamhill County, there are no department supervisors - all these departments are looked after by one Court Operations Supervisor. She reports directly to the Trial Court Administrator. In Marion County, the structure is much more tiered. There was an entire administration department that worked under the Trial Court Administrator (the person in charge of all court operations) that then reported out to the supervisors of individual departments. Interactions between court staff and the Trial Court Administrator were very limited. In Yamhill County, the structure is much more direct and I regularly speak with the Trial Court Administrator. He even assigns projects to staff, which would have been very uncommon in Benton or Marion County.
Yamhill County is indeed similar to Benton County in that they are two of the State's smaller courts. As smaller courts, they receive less funding. The work environment in both Yamhill and Benton County is stressed, catty, and generally negative. Staff complain nearly constantly about their workload and about the glitches in the new eCourt system. It has been a bit of a struggle at Yamhill County this far in that regard, but I am familiar with work environments like this because of my time spent at Benton County. I am excited about the opportunity to be a part of such a forward-moving event in the Oregon court system.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
First Thoughts at DisneyWorld
I have been here for several weeks now, giving me enough time to get a feel of how this company works, how living will be, and how this experience is going to effect me in general. My initial thoughts were a mix of feelings including nervousness, excitement, fear, confusion and so much more. It took almost two weeks from my check in date to fully being a full time worker in the parks as a character performer. The first things they had me, and everyone in the program do, is attend several workshops/classes as to learning Disney heritage and history and how they work within the Disney universe. There are "four keys" that the company follows at all times and what helps the company progress and stay efficient. Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency. Following these 4 Keys will help achieve the greatest possible results Disney has to offer, with Safety being the main "Key" that also creates the Disney working motto, "SafeD begins with me!" It's a little cheesy but think about it, if you yourself are not safe, how can you guarantee a safe working environment for those around you in one of the largest resorts and theme parks in the world.
Being a character performer, during my training I learned how to properly fulfill my character role and interact with the guests on a daily basis. This is like mascotting to the extreme. I am a character everyday that thousands and thousands of people around the world know and love and have to take on the role of that character and bring him to life. Whether it be getting down on one knee to give a smaller child a hug or posing with a giant family to make there day, the best role of being a performer is the smiles and ways I can make all the guests react. It is the best feeling I have ever had and want to be able to do this every day for the rest of my life. I never thought it about it until I arrived here, but working for Disney is essentially my dream job. I love performing and entertaining and this gives me opportunity to that I would and could not find anywhere else.
I think one of the greatest things that there is to offer here at Disney is the ability to venture and grow into any field that you want to get into it. With time in the company, one can do many things such as move up in management, work around the world in different parks, move up to adventures like the Disney Adventure Program or be a part of the Disney Cruiselines. Anything that I want to do here, I have the opportunity to, and that's partially what I believe makes Disney one of the best companies in the world to work for. Sure it may not be the best pay or time efficient in hours working, but the joy and magic brought to guests everyday is what makes this the greatest job ever. I hope this first post is a little taste of what I've been a part of down here so far. And there's so much more to come. Ask anything and I will answer to the best of my ability, without revealing too many Disney secrets of course.
Have a magical day - Garrett Soumokil
Being a character performer, during my training I learned how to properly fulfill my character role and interact with the guests on a daily basis. This is like mascotting to the extreme. I am a character everyday that thousands and thousands of people around the world know and love and have to take on the role of that character and bring him to life. Whether it be getting down on one knee to give a smaller child a hug or posing with a giant family to make there day, the best role of being a performer is the smiles and ways I can make all the guests react. It is the best feeling I have ever had and want to be able to do this every day for the rest of my life. I never thought it about it until I arrived here, but working for Disney is essentially my dream job. I love performing and entertaining and this gives me opportunity to that I would and could not find anywhere else.
I think one of the greatest things that there is to offer here at Disney is the ability to venture and grow into any field that you want to get into it. With time in the company, one can do many things such as move up in management, work around the world in different parks, move up to adventures like the Disney Adventure Program or be a part of the Disney Cruiselines. Anything that I want to do here, I have the opportunity to, and that's partially what I believe makes Disney one of the best companies in the world to work for. Sure it may not be the best pay or time efficient in hours working, but the joy and magic brought to guests everyday is what makes this the greatest job ever. I hope this first post is a little taste of what I've been a part of down here so far. And there's so much more to come. Ask anything and I will answer to the best of my ability, without revealing too many Disney secrets of course.
Have a magical day - Garrett Soumokil
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