My First Work Week

I would just like to give my self a small pat on the back. I just finished my first complete work week, granted it is a part time job but still. I am now a member of the working class, and some how, I have managed to survive. 

I'm lucky, I have what most would consider to be the perfect summer job. I work at the city sailing center teaching kids each morning how to sail. I work while most of my friends are asleep and get to spend every day on the water. It is tons of fun and I love it.  

My very first day of work 

My very first day of work 

I have only been apart of the traditional working world for a week but I have already learned lots. Here are the top three things I learned my first week working. 1. You have to take care of yourself: my job requires a lot of physical labor, lifiting boats, carrying things, etc. so it is important that I eat healthy and get sleep. I also didn't know that I was suppose to work this Monday so now I know to call in and be proactive

2. People make mistakes, but sometimes they don't want to admit it. Today at works it was windy and a bit chaotic. I was in the class room as my superior had instructed me while they were on the water. Things got out of hand, one thing led to another and my superior tried to blame me and a co-worker for the chaos that we didn't cause, either way I know that my superior just didn't want to look bad infront of his superior. Thing a happen, people don't want to look bad, you gotta just rll with it and realize that no one wants to look bad. 

3. Saftey first then have fun . It was extra windy today, a bit to windy for some of my beginning sailors. Some of them stayed on the dock or were scared, some capsized. The main thing was to make sure that the kids were all safe, but even when they capsized I did my best to make sure the kids had smiles on their faces. some of the girls in the class whole originally scared, once they learned how to stay safe and hole out, they realized that it wasn't so bad and had big smiles after class. In the words of   Sophie "it's fun to capsize, you just get wet". Once you are equipped with the skills to stay safe the fun comes naturally 

I had a great first week working and can't wait for more. While tutoring might pay better, being a sailing coach is very rewarding and I love being able to work each day helping teach kids to do something that I love so much.  

-Julia  

Spring Break 2014

It is hard to believe that it is the last day of Spring Break of my junior year. It seems that time has gone by so quickly; I cannot believe that the year is almost over. 

This was an especially fun, busy, exciting, stressful, beautiful, wet, weird, just about everything you could imagine break. I spent Easter with my family and we had a lovely day together and during the week since my parents were working and my sister had school- her break was a week earlier- I went on a college tour with my grandparents eventually ending up in the bay area for my High School sailing Pacific Coast Championship regatta.  

Spending the week stuck in the car with my grandparents, and visiting 3 amazing schools had its ups and downs, but mostly ups. It was stressful at times to give driving directions, I need to remember not to say "left, right here" or its the at way and point in the backseat where my hand cannot be seen, I've only got my permit as a backseat driver, but soon I will get my backseat drivers license, watch out world!  

I toured UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, and Berkeley. UC Santa Cruz had the most beautiful campus out of all of them in my opinion because of the amazing views of Monterrey Bay and the fact that the school is basically in a forest, The city of Santa Cruz was a tad to hippy for me, I need a little mainstream in my life. But I was glad to see that they had a Trader Joe's, Urban Outfitters, and a Forever 21.  We accidentally ate dinner at a Vegan restaurant, I thought they served meat, I was completely wrong. It was okay but I will not be turning vegan anytime soon, I'm not really sure what my grandparents thought of it but my grandpa kept on saying that his soup would be better with some beef broth and cream if that gives you any idea. Stanford was extremely pretty and I know understood why this is so many peoples dream school; it's definitely mine now too. I loved the feeling of Stanford; the school was so intellectual and witty, but you could tell that these kids also liked to have fun. I actually came on the first day of admit weekend which was really cool because I got to participate in some of the admit stuff like seeing the band perform and the tree dance and all the dorms come out and cheer. The Stanford band is wild but I already knew that. I also loved the fact that Stanford is 20 to 30 degrees warmer than the rest of the bay area and that they have a mall next door and a Trader Joe's across the street. One interesting thing I noticed about Stanford was that every kid rode a bike, my Dad would really enjoy that as he loves to bike. 

The last school we toured was UC Berkeley. I had already been to Berkeley before as I had done a Model UN event there a month earlier but it was really cool to go on an actual tour of the campus. Unfortunately it was raining the day we went to Berkeley but it had been extremely sunny and beautiful during the MUN conference so it was cool to see Berkeley when the weather is stormy. I got to explore Telegraph Avenue more and I was so happy when I saw a Diaso near campus. Since we got to Berkeley early and because it was raining we stopped at a coffee shop across the street from the urban campus to drink tea and so I could do my homework. I very much enjoyed doing that because first I got some of the massive pile of AP homework and studying I have to do and second I got a feeling of what it is like to study and be a college student at Berkeley. The only thing that I didn't really like about both Berkeley and Santa Cruz was the fact that they are so large as are the class sizes but wither way they were both beautiful campuses that I will most definitely be applying to .

I had ton of fun so far on my trip. It was extremely windy on Saturday and we will have to see what Sunday is like, it is suppose to rain again. 

Wish me luck on finishing all of my homework. 

Julia

The importance of being present and making sure your ideas are known

As a high school student I am constantly learning and still have much to learn. This week I was lucky enough or unlucky enough to learn the valuable lesson that if you want things to work out well- the way you want things to happen- you must be present and make sure that you get your points across. I always have been an advocate of learning through real world and life experiences so I guess in part I sort of got what I wanted. 

I am the secretary/ really the one in charge because the presidents are suffering from bad cases of senioritis. Anyways the meetings are on Thursdays but I wasn't there because I was at youth day, so the treasurer was in charge of the meeting. We had just come back from Berkeley- which was so much fun. It was my first time and the clubs first time doing such a big travel conference. I organized the trip, and made review sheets for the club members to fill out and rate the trip and to help me organize a better trip for next year. One club member took it upon themselves to tell to the club that I had made these sheets to just boost my ego and made sure that no one filled out a review sheet. I found this to be extremely rude to me and this person does not have good manners or have any respect for the club leadership.

There are two things I got out of this experience. One, if you want something to run smoothly and work the way you want it to , then you need to be there to make sure things go as planned. And two no one should be pushed around or have false messages spread about them. It seemed to me that this member may be jealous or wants to be in charge, my prayers go out to them to help them learn about manners and respect.  Once I found out about this I made sure to tell this member that they were completely wrong in thinking that my intent was to "boost my ego and show everyone who is 'really' in charge". One key part of being a good leader is making sure that the people you are leading are having a positive experience and feel included. A good leader tries their best. I know that I could have done things differently for a better trip and I wanted the club to be apart of the process of making a better trip. The person had disrespected me so I talked to them to make sure that they understood that what they did was unacceptable and that should not go around telling things that are not true and that actually hurt the advancement of the club.  No man, women, or child should be disrespected, if you feel that you are stand up for yourself or find some people you trust to help you stand up to those who disrespect you.  Every person deserves to be treated with respect. 

The second thing that I learned about this week that taught me about making sure your ideas and presence is known happened with another club at my school. My friends younger brother is in my club adviser class. The club has about 50 or so t-shirts sitting in the back of his class in a box. He apparently has been giving out the t-shirts for free and using them as towels when things spilled in his class. This is not right for the club property to be treated this way, but I think what this really comes from is that he thinks that we don't care about the t-shirts anymore. I need to make sure that he understands that those shirts are club property that we are trying to sell as a fundraiser. I'm going to put the shirts in a nicer box so they don't get thrown around and wasted. I think that when I get my point across and make sure that everyone is on board that everything will be fine. 

It was a stressful week. I was running on very little sleep, had tons of homework, and the normal problems of life. Sorry for the rant but I had to get it out somewhere, besides my dad. 

Julia