This was an extremely hectic week, right from the get go. Unbeknownst to me, our resident accountant and HR representative had received a better offer for her employment on the Friday prior. Come that Monday, she had accepted it and was no longer working for us in any capacity. Without any warning, we were suddenly down a person, and as the intern, I picked up the slack before anything could go wrong. I have some new duties now, but they mostly boil down to data entry, printing and scanning documents, or just general IT, which is easy enough for me. This definitely changed how my mornings in the office went down, because before it was maybe a slow trickle before the lunchtime rush, but now, I usually get emails asking me to address things before I’ve left the house in the morning. I actually don’t mind, it just makes for more boring afternoons. The majority of the workload is now in the morning for me, and I feel like it just keeps me going and distracted until either lunch or they run out of stuff for me to do, which is a daily guarantee. I have noticed my workload steadily increasing bit by bit, so I hope something will be able to keep me occupied for a full workday. It has happened before, but it is rare. It only happened because there was a repository of receipts that I had to clean up before the day was out. I was occupied with other projects until about 2 that day, so when a coworker asked me to save and print receipts, I actually had to put it on the backlog, where pending projects go. I haven’t been able to use it all summer, but now I finally can. With that task, I was the last one out the door, and it was still only 4 when I left.
Monthly Archives: June 2022
MOAS Tour Exhibits
Before officially starting at the museum, they gave me a packet for which I could get familiar with the information that pertains to two particular exhibits: The Root Family Exhibit and the Prehistoric Exhibit. The Root Family Exhibit was an exhibit donated to the museum by Chapman Root; the collection began with his grandfather, C. J. Root. The exhibit covers many things – teddy bears, train cars, classic cars, but most importantly, what ties the collection together is Coca Cola. The Root Family was instrumental into the development of the bottle that holds Coca Cola to this day. If you ever visit the museum, you will see an entire wall of bottles that were prototypes for Coca Cola but didn’t last, for one reason or another. In an adjoining gallery, the same goes for vending machines that dished out the beverage. There’s a bunch of them of them to show how they changed over the years.
The Prehistoric Gallery is another big one on tours. Kids tend to love it, because the star of the gallery is our giant ground sloth, which could stand up to thirteen feet tall. Last time I did this tour, a student asked me: “why is a dinosaur standing behind you?” It’s also a lot of fun, because the giant ground sloth and mastodon were both found and dug up in Daytona, which is a point of pride for the museum. Plus, Florida doesn’t get many giant fossil finds. Additionally, the giant ground sloth at MOAS is the most complete giant ground sloth in all of North America, so it has been used to make casts for other museums in the country. Pretty cool!
The End of Camp
Camp finished yesterday, and overall I had a great experience. Helping out at the camp was not just an enjoyable time but an educational one. Helping out CDCVI and the Atlantic Center for the Arts allowed me to understand the struggles of visually impaired people better. Meeting and talking to Andy Slater was also a great experience I had a ton of great conversations with him during the mornings when we would get coffee. I enjoyed the time I had both inside and outside the Davis lab.
Now that camp is done my next step is to work on making a promotional video for the camp. I am meeting with Eve sometime tomorrow morning to go over the things we both got. In this meeting, I would like to go over some ideas I have for the camp and create a more focused idea of what the promotional video will have. I have some ideas in mind already of what to do, but I just want to run them by someone else to get their opinions. Tomorrow and Tuesday I will go through the footage and photos to create a refined folder of what will be included in the video. I have hours of footage and hundreds of photos so going over them and sorting them will be very helpful at the end of the day. Even though the camp was very exhausting I think I was able to capture a lot of good photos and videos to edit together.
Last Day (Goodbye Stetson and YSS :( )
6/25/2022
It was sad and strangely eventful as I pack and gather my things out of the room. Being in Dorm rooms for four years, with some sounds that tend to be muffled because of my walls being covered in wall decor. There was less echo present, but when I stayed in House 2 room 15. Being reminded how the empty room always symbolized the beginning and end of my time in the room. I enjoyed working with Young Sound Seekers. I learned a lot from working with visually impaired students from how they work, the variety of abilities, etc. I would take everything that I learn and input it into my current career in the education field.
Prep for the New Exhibit
One of the biggest jobs we have going on in the office right now, apart from summer camp, is prep for the exhibit set to be open in July. Every time I go in, I’m working on another few labels for the exhibit, which has its downsides due to the lack of identifying information on items so old, but overall, it has been a lot of fun to do! I find it to be a lot of fun researching really old radios, alarm clocks, phonographs, etc. It is a super interesting topic. One of the more funny (but still interesting items) I had to research and write a label for was a 1911 vacuum. The exhibit will include a lot of old technology, such as radios, tvs, phonographs, gramophones, 90s/00s video game consoles, etc., and so I’ve been tasked to identify them, research them, and write a small blurb on them. I think it’s a lot of fun to work with the old technology. It’s always been particularly interesting to me, and now learning about it is a part of my assigned tasks!
The staff member primarily in charge of collecting items for the exhibit brought in about twenty more items from someone who previously collected and now wants to see them preserved and in an exhibit. These items alone were just radios/clocks/alarm clock radios/etc., so I spent the day going through the items, looking for brand names, model numbers, serial numbers, or anything else that would be useful in identifying what the item is. Interspersed between that task, I would work on labels for a list I was given that contains a lot of old phonographs, old home video game consoles, etc. I’d write 1-3 paragraphs going over the history, their function, how it works, and so on. All of this took about a week and I just finished (until I’m assigned more as there’s still more items), so it was a very rewarding task, especially because I’ll get to see all of my work displayed in an exhibit!
Camp Day 5- Jaguarundi
June 23, 2022
The day has been relaxing, and it’s upsetting to know that it’s the second to last day of camp. This morning, we got a chance to hear some suggestions from two members of DSV, who are visually impaired, and told their experience and information about online accessibility. There were also two park rangers from National Canaveral State Park. After the quick round table, the campers could ask the rangers their interview questions while Ranger Michelle was in room 102. I heard the most bizarre news: during the 60s, there was an escape Jaguarundi from a circus, and to this day, it lives in the State Park. I was astonished for the past two years of going to that park. That wasn’t a story that came up at all, mainly the Wild Hogs. It was interesting to hear how from the difference in sound, the ranger knew that this wasn’t a native in the area like the well-known Florida Bobcat. I love the moment of learning about these tales and how sound can help identify a different species that are out of place. It’s fascinating when I think about it.
YSS Counselor, Kelly Love
Hontoon Island State Park
June 21, 2022 (2pm – 5 PM)
It was an exciting first-time experience venturing and recording sound at HonToon State Island Park. Started off by going on a short boat trip with a local park ranger to the state park learning that the purpose of the park is on an island that helps to minimize human interference with nature. During the 5K walk, I was able to record the surrounding sound that can be found in HonToon State Park along with finding out the benefits of control prescribe fires, and how the animals and plants benefit from them. There were a lot of Biophony, Geophony and a few anthrophony sounds recorded, with exception of the motor boats, trains, and airplanes, which weren’t constant. Due to the lack of anthrophony, I was able to pick up some bird calls from a Woodpecker and Yellowthroat. There were some other faint sounds of other birds. It was quite an interesting turnout while also gaining more experience working on a Zoom-H4N recorder to be able to teach and help out the campers when they are field-recording tomorrow. I’m excited to start editing my own recordings and input the sound of nature into my final project for Dr. Boland’s class, which is a fantasy world poetry podcast.
The Joy of nature sounds
It’s another fun first-time experience trip, but this time to Florida Blue Springs State Park. Many great opportunities to capture sound and guide campers to many great spots to catch something new and lively. I roamed the area a little and got to see great moments in nature. My favorite find was seeing a small gator in a natural habitat, not behind a cage. It’s a sight to see, and it’s really awesome to see and hear animals in a habitat where they are free to roam and grow naturally. I love exploring the Thursby house as it is kind of fascinating that some sounds you hear in the house can show and express how vacant it is, its age, or how the objects in it can affect the sounds in a historical house versus a modern-day house. I really enjoy exploring different parks and structures and experiencing some new sounds. I was excited to find some Manatees, which didn’t happen, but experienced different sounds on the hydrophones when talking to Dr.Wolek about how it felt that the people splashing in the water sounded like they were right next to the microphones, but they were on the other side of the stream or further upstream. I start to wonder if sound travels that fast and loud then I start to think about the animals. How do they use and produce the information around them in an effective manner? If some of the sounds sound as if they are super close when in reality they’re farther?
Summer Camp DAY 2 (Audio Lab experience)
June 21, 2022 (8:30 AM)
At 8:30 AM, The Young Sound Seeker’s campers learned to work on MacTosh computers in Davis Hall. Starting the day learning how to make it accessible to their level of accessibility, from Zoom, Voice-Over, Inverting the colors, and adjusting the size of the cursor. It wasn’t only a learning experience for them, but for me to be able to take the information and help anyone that needed help in the next part of the lesson in the Audio Lab. The campers were able to get started on the basics of working with the audio program Reaper. One of many programs made accessible for the visually impaired. They were now starting to work on the basics of audio mixing. It was an excellent review of how to do the basics on a different platform outside BandLab. It helped campers work with audio mixing basics, from adding tracks, slicing, and deleting audio. Three out of five campers in my area needed some assistance before they fully understood the process. I enjoyed experiencing the lesson, as it was a big help to broaden my understanding of audio along with clarifying some information that I learned in my current summer Introduction Digital Audio class with Dr. Boland. Now, I have a clear idea about Reaper and is interested to put some of my works on Reaper and see if it’s easier to work on BandLab or Reaper.
Halfway Through Camp
Camp has gone on for three days and it has been really fun so far! At first, I was nervous about the camp with the students being around high school age, and knowing how high schoolers are I was preparing for a dreadful experience, but honestly, it has been a blast. Getting to help these kids learn how to record and edit audio has been fun and not as stressful as I first thought. Also, I feel like my presence is helpful with not just me going to fetch stuff or be an assistant but having my opinions and actions matter. Talking to Eve today about what exactly she wanted from me when making a video helped me narrow down what I should record and how I should edit the video. Before our conversation, I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to make a highlight reel of events the students have done or create a 5 minute narrative about the week and what the students have done. Now that I have the idea of making a highlight reel I can focus on the students working more than the teaching parts of the day. The hardest part of recording to me is when the students spread out from whatever location we are filming for the day. This has been a struggle because I have to check everywhere for a person and I feel like that every minute I don’t see someone field recording is an important minute that I have wasted. The last field recording trip we did with the camp was a little bit of a struggle, so hopefully, tomorrow when we all go out and record it will be a little easier.