Monday (7/6)
This week
Sarah and I are back at Pollock for our management rotation, this time
shadowing Amber. Instead of our usual early morning shifts, we were treated to
a 12-9 shift today. Boy, did it feel nice to sleep in! When we got to Pollock,
Amber talked us through her daily routine and had us tag along with her just
like it was any other day. Our first order of business was doing the order for
The Creamery, which is usually done every day because Pollock goes through so
much of The Creamery’s products (milk, cream, yogurt, ice cream, etc.). In
order to figure out how much to order, we first needed to figure out how much
was on-hand. Armed with a pencil and clipboard, we headed into the dairy cooler
to count the number of each product that Pollock still had. After about 10
minutes of standing in the fridge (brrr!) we finally finished up and headed
back to Amber’s office so she could show us how to input the order on FoodPro.
Next we headed over to Private Dining Room A with Amber, Jen, and 3 other
employees to sit in on a training session. For the 2nd summer in a
row, Penn State is hosting Summer Academy, which is a month-long program where
roughly 30 high-school students who are visually impaired come and stay at Penn
State. The goal of this program is to teach them how to adjust to life on their
own and away from home. Due to their vision problems, many of them have had aids
their whole life to assist them and therefore have not really experienced life
on their own. They have to learn how to hold a cafeteria tray, how to navigate
through each station and find the food they’re looking for, and most
importantly, ask for help if they need it. Every day they're going to be
eating 3 meals a day at Pollock, so the goal of this training session was to
teach the managers and servers how to interact with these students and
encourage them to speak up/ask questions if they need help. As part of the
training, we all paired up. Sarah was blindfolded and I had to guide her. To do
that I had to ask her what kind of food she wanted, lead her to that station,
describe the foods, and then describe where they were in an amount of detail
that would allow her to grab her food. It was tough! Then we switched so I was
blindfolded and she guided me. Even though I trusted her completely, it was
still scary not being able to see where I was going or what food I was
scooping. Participating in that activity made me see things (no pun
intended) in a whole new perspective. I'm so used to having great vision that I
guess I took for granted how well I can accomplish tasks without having to
stress about vision.
At 3 pm Maria drove us over to Mount Nittany Medical
Center, where we got to shadow Danielle, a dietitian in a clinical setting. She
took us on a tour of the hospital, showed us the cafeteria, and even showed us
the special “Celebratory Last Meal” that pregnant women and their one
guest-of-choice get to enjoy before the woman goes into labor. They definitely
get treated well there!
After our tour was complete, we headed back to Pollock
because we were scheduled from 12-9 PM. When we got back, Amber took us over to
the newly opened Crepe station, where we took turns at practicing making banana
pudding crepes. It’s a lot harder than it seems – the batter is so light and
delicate that one wrong move and it’s ruined! After we had our fair share of
crepe-making, we got down to business taking inventory of all the dry goods.
Sarah had the clipboard with about 5 pages worth of goods, and as she read the
item off to me, I counted the number of boxes/bags/pounds/etc. of each item. We
went through pastas and grains and peanut butters and sauces and baking
ingredients and so on and so forth. Man, that was a very frustrating and long
process! I guess it takes a lot of process to know where everything is and to
be able to estimate how much of each item was left.
Tuesday (7/7)
Today was another busy day, preparing for our luncheon (just a week away!) We began our morning at Pollock, shadowing Amber and starting off right where we left off the night before – taking inventory. This time it was produce, cheeses, etc. We spent our time going in and out of the dairy and produce coolers, taking inventory on how many pounds of cheese, cold cut meats, etc. or how many cases of kiwis, bell peppers, tomatoes, etc. It was a long (and cold!) process, trying to flip through all the sheets to find the item we were looking for and record how many of them were in stock. After about 25 minutes we finally finished up and went back out to the office (which felt like a sauna after being in the fridge for so long!). Our next task involved taking inventory of the bread and seeing if/how much additional bread needed to be ordered. We had to go through each rack of bread, make sure they were all organized by date (most recent ones on the lower racks), and make sure the bread wasn’t going to expire soon. Unfortunately there has been an abundance of bread recently and a lot of it was about to expire soon, so we had to put our thinking caps on and figure out what to do with the extra bread. Next was creating a production schedule for the Grade 10 workers for the following two days. First we had to figure out who was working what shift, and then we had to put each employee’s name on the production schedule, assign them a station to work, and then copy and paste all the required tasks for that station. It was a confusing job at first, but we finally figured it out and were proud of all our hard work!
After this was complete we got a dose of fresh air as we walked over to Redifer to meet with Maria and check in with her regarding our luncheon details. There are still many more details to go over, but we got a good chunk of those taken care of. In addition we met with Mary, who used our ideas to create an awesome menu card for the event. We were very pleased with how it turned out! Before heading back to the dorms, we made a quick stop at The Creamery, and I sampled a few new ice cream flavors. Yummy!!
Wednesday (7/8)
Since Amber had today and Thursday off, Jen (one of the other managers) kindly took Sarah and I in and agreed to be our mentor for the next couple of days. When we arrived at 7 AM, Jen informed us that she had some meetings to attend at Redifer, so she told us we could take the next few hours to work on our special projects and finalize any details. We took full advantage of that time and worked on finalizing guest counts, going over our ingredient list to see what we needed to purchase, and finalizing our NACUFS special project for Marianne Howell. After a very productive couple hours, it was back to Pollock. When we returned, Pollock was about to open up for lunch, so we walked around with Jen and made sure everything was in its place and ready to go. At 1 PM we arrived at the HazMat Building for our OSHA training session (Occupational Safety and Health Administration).
It was a long 3 hours, but we learned a lot of very important information and guidelines regarding safety in the workplace. Once training concluded at 4 PM, Scott, Sarah, and I made a quick trip to The Creamery. As part of The Creamery’s 150th birthday celebration, they released a new flavor that fans voted on – Birthday Cake. Today was the first day it was being released, so we decided to taste it out and see how we liked it. Being the huge Creamery (and ice cream!) fan that I am, I also purchased a limited-time Passport that allows me to “stamp” each flavor as I try it. Out of the 87 ice cream flavors The Creamery offers, I’ve tried 35. My goal is to try at least half before I leave – I’m almost there!
It was a long 3 hours, but we learned a lot of very important information and guidelines regarding safety in the workplace. Once training concluded at 4 PM, Scott, Sarah, and I made a quick trip to The Creamery. As part of The Creamery’s 150th birthday celebration, they released a new flavor that fans voted on – Birthday Cake. Today was the first day it was being released, so we decided to taste it out and see how we liked it. Being the huge Creamery (and ice cream!) fan that I am, I also purchased a limited-time Passport that allows me to “stamp” each flavor as I try it. Out of the 87 ice cream flavors The Creamery offers, I’ve tried 35. My goal is to try at least half before I leave – I’m almost there!
Thursday (7/9)
Today was another long, yet extremely productive day! The majority of the morning was spent over in Redifer with Maria, working on final details regarding our final luncheon next week. Since none of our recipes had been entered into FoodPro, none of the food we need had been ordered yet… and it’s just a few days away! Uh oh! Since the produce and bakery orders had already been pulled for delivery, we had to put in special orders and make lots of phone calls back-and-forth with purchasing to make sure we could still order our food. In the long run everything turned out okay, and we got all our food orders. Whew – crisis averted! We have a bunch of thank-you cards to send to all the people who gave us tours, held sessions for us, or helped us out in any way shape or form, so that was the next item on our to-do list. We typed in everyone’s address, printed out labels to address the envelopes, and then began writing our thank-you cards. After a while our hands got pretty sore and we had to take a break, so what better way than to enjoy a break by heading over to The HUB?! Once our relaxing break was over, it was off to the HazMat building for our second and final day of OSHA training. It was a long 3 hours, but we managed to get a lot accomplished because we brought our thank-you notes to work on during that time. As soon as we got back to the dorms, there was a lot more to be done. We continued writing cards, cutting ribbon, and tying pictures to the thank-you notes to attach to our goodie bags. It’s a lot of work to be done, but we made a good time out of it and experienced a lot of laughter as we worked!
Friday (7/10)
This morning began at Redifer, where Sarah, Leah, Aimme, and I presented our PowerPoint to Marianne. Earlier in the program, we were asked to take the NACUFS host institution guidebook (a stack of about 50 pages) and turn it into a compressed, easier-to-understand PowerPoint that all current/future NACUFS program coordinators can use. It was quite a difficult task, but we finished it up and were proud of our hard work. Marianne also loved the PowerPoint, which was a huge sigh of relief for us! After the presentation, we picked out our plates and silverware from Redifer, then loaded it in the car and drove it over to Pollock, where our luncheon is being held. In addition, we hauled boxes of decorations over to Pollock, which will be used for centerpieces. There are so many little details to finalize, but things are slowly coming together! J After we finished for the day, we decided to head downtown State College to check out the famous ArtsFest (a weekend Arts Festival) and see what that had to offer. It was incredible to walk down Allen Street and see endless amounts of white tents with vendors selling their incredible artwork. Everything was extremely pricy, but it was still fun to walk around and just enjoy the whole atmosphere of ArtsFest. I even got to try two new flavors of the Creamery ice cream, so that definitely made me happy!
The Weekend (7/11 and 7/12)
This weekend was a combination of fun and work. Even though we wanted to sit back and do nothing, there were still a few final details we needed to discuss regarding our luncheon on Tuesday. It’s coming up so quickly! However, the rest of the weekend was very fun and exciting. We spent a lot of time walking around Arts Fest and taking in the whole atmosphere, so that was definitely a fun time. All the artwork was absolutely beautiful to admire, but unfortunately it was very pricy at the same time. To add to an already fabulous weekend, the weather was perfect! It was finally a weekend where every day felt like summer! I’m glad we got to experience Arts Fest and everything going on downtown – it was the perfect way to celebrate our last weekend here at Penn State.
What a long day of preparing for our final luncheon! Aimme and Leah spent the day setting up the room and making everything look pretty while Sarah and I worked with Chef Mark to prep the food. We had quite the busy day and there was a lot to be done, but at least we got it out of the way and all taken care of before our big day!
The day we've all been preparing for has finally arrived - the day of our final "Mediterranean Escape" luncheon! It was a huge success and we were extremely proud of all our hard work and effort.
Sarah and I spent the morning and early afternoon preparing all the food and getting it all plated, and Aimme and Leah were the servers and got to help make sure the event ran smoothly. It was a lot of fun being in the kitchen and preparing the food, but it was a lot of hard work! Luckily it all turned out delicious, and everyone seemed to love the food :)
During the ceremony we were presented with our certificates from Maria and Jim Richard, which officially put an end to our NACUFS internship :( I can't believe how fast these 8 weeks have gone by. All the sudden I blinked and my time here was over! However I have had the time of my life, and my experiences here at Penn State will forever be engraved in my memory. I'm so fortunate that I had this incredible opportunity to work here at Penn State for the past 8 weeks. I have met so many incredible people and had so many new experiences, and I will never be able to express in words how amazing this internship has been. Thank for to EVERYONE at Penn State who has made this journey so incredible, and I hope to be back in the very near future!
TEAM SLAM FOREVER. #jimmy #canteven #barrelsoffun #willworkforwine
 |
| Team SLAM's very first picture together |
No comments:
Post a Comment