Celebrations and Excel Sheets

This week was my 21st birthday on Tuesday, July 31st.  So to celebrate just a bit, I brought in some chocolate strawberries for my boss, and two other employees I have formed a relationship with.  My boss was excited to celebrate with me, to say the least.  It just so happened that chocolate strawberries were also her favorite dessert.  That may be why we work together so well.

     Back to business, I continued on with the hardcopy contact list project.  I got roughly 30% more completed.  I am now through with the "Media" contact list section.  Now there is only the "University Related Information" contact lists to go, which will not be completed in a days work.  There are roughly 34 excel documents, some containing up to four tabs.  And the project continues.  There will also be photos to come of the binder, so that my readers can have a visual of what I have been detailing for the past seven or so weeks.  

     The photo above shows my work environment. Or should I say, my cubicle.  I have not taken any time in the four months of my internship to do any decorating, just because it may make me sad to un-decorate.  But while the environment is simplistic, it is educated and inspiring, with magazines and new clippings of past exhibits framed and hung up on the walls.  

Digital to Print

This week in my internship, July 24th and 25th, I began taking my contact list project from the computer to a hardcopy format.  As I discussed last week, my boss wants me to provide her a hardcopy record of the new, concise, edited, formatted, and updated contact lists, as a safety measure.  Not to mention the fact that she loves binders, and she has a hardcopy of every exhibit that decorate the walls of her off.

     So this process of taking the digital excel sheets to hardcopy form is, surprising, not as easy as simply clicking the "Print" button.  First, I pull up the excel files, one at a time.  I highlight and "copy" the list, then "paste" it to another "worksheet" on the same excel file.  Then I delete the unnecessary information for the printed sheet.  The necessary information, that my boss wants to see, includes the name of the organization, the contacts name, their position, and the email.  Next, I highlight the text, then "set the print area," followed by "previewing" the print.  In most of the cases, I would rotate the paper from "portrait" to "landscape," which would allow me to fit all of the columns of necessary info on less amounts of paper.  I do like to conserve a tree where I can.

     So after formatting the excel sheets into a printable version, I began to shoot off the copies to the printer.  Then I gathered up the roughly one hundred or so pages of contact lists, hole punched, then stapled the related lists together, alphabetized the lists, and set them in the corresponding folder in the contact list binder.  I am only about 30% through this project, so there is much work to be done.  And so it continues. 

Same old, Same old

This week I continued working on my locating, editing, and updating of the museum's contact list project.  I have moved on from the Media Contact List folder, since those are as clean as I can possibly make them.   It is nearly impossible to find every single "bad email" or "opted out."  As it is, there were about 789 "bad emails" or "opted outs" in the exported PatronMail list that contained 1,363 total media emails, from the entire database.  That is 57.8%.  Tracking down those 789 emails is mission impossible.  A strong majority of the emails were located under understandably labeled Excel sheets, but the goose chase for roughly 130 of those emails took me about two weeks to find few, then get annoyed and move on, with my boss' permission of course.

     Now I have turned my attention to the University Related Information folder.  There are roughly 842 "bad emails" and "opted outs" out of 3,254 in this folder, which is 25.8%.  This folder, I am cleaning up relatively quickly, compared to the Media folder.  This is namely due to the fact that the majority of the emails are to be found in an understandable location.  For example, if I have a "bad email" from the Japanese History Professors list, I can easily find it under the "Japanese History Professors" list in the "University Related Information" folder, under the Public Relation's "Contact Lists" section.

     My boss has high aspirations for what this ultimate, clean, dynamic, high-performance, supreme contact list compilation will do for the museum.  Next week I will begin on the hard-copy procedure of the project, which I am excited for.  It will give me something new to do, shake the routine up a bit.  I just hope my boss likes my vision for what is to come.  Stay tuned.

Co-workers Joy!

        This week, my internship got a happy surprise!  Let me give you a bit of background to begin with.  Last summer, when I entered my marketing internship at the Bowers Museum, there was an intern in the Graphics and Communications department, who had about a year experience with the museum and the Marketing department’s protocol.  Her name is Eleanor and she was a friendly face to ask any concern or curiosity to.  She dabbled in some of the marketing work, along with what she did under Nancy Johnson with Graphics.  She sat in the Graphics and Communications department, which housed four desks.  Those desks are occupied by my boss, Nancy Johnson, her right arm, Sasha, the website orchestrator, Vincent, and Eleanor.  I actually sit at the desk Eleanor use to, last summer.  She is a sweet, determined, talented young woman.  Last summer, we would have lunch together, so we grew close, noticing that we both love to cook and have an eye for photography.  

        Eleanor, on Tuesday, July 10th, walked into the Graphics and Communications room, and gathered the group.  So Sasha and I walked over to Nancy's desk.  The second Eleanor said, "I have an announcement," I knew exactly what she was going to say.  My boss legitimately screamed when Eleanor announced she was pregnant with her and her husband's first child.  I was so excited for them, not just because I love babies, but because I know Eleanor and I have become familiar with her husband through our lunchtime conversation.  They are both very smart and have tender hearts, so I know they will make excellent parents.  

Thumbs Up and Celebrate!

This week, my internship flew by so fast, namely because of the 4th of July celebrations.  It did surprise me that the 4th of July happens to be my boss's favorite holiday.  A peculair pick for a "favorite" holiday, but to each their own.  Mine would have to be Thanksgiving, for the food, of course.  It was very nice of Nancy to order all her interns, there are three of us for the summer session, to take the rest of the week off, seeing as she would not be in the office either.

      So Tuesday, July 3rd, was relatively mellow.  I got into work at 9:30am, and immediately continued to work on my joyous, never ending Excel contact list project.  Nancy, my boss, was in a meeting for roughly the first hour I was there, but when she retreated to her desk finally, she asked to speech with me, regarding my advances with the project.  But, at that time, she was not ready to speak.  She still had to run around the building, getting some of her own work done.

     She settled into her desk chair at about noon, and I walked her through what I had been doing.  She essentially just wanted to double check that I was cleaning the system in an efficient way, rather than confusing myself and making a more dramatic mess of the chaotic database.  She enjoyed seeing the progress I had made thus far, and instructed me on how to advance.  Her instruction, little did she know, was my idea.  I knew how I wanted to proceed, she just happened to read my mind.

     So I continued on down the path for this project for another few hours, then left work on Tuesday at 2:30pm, ready to start my weekend essentially!

Excel Sheet After Excel Sheet

This week, I continued with my contact list process.  Let me explain, in detail, the following step, after inputing the lists into the PatronMail system.  PatronMail exported a list of “bad emails” and “opted outs.” I then focused on continuing to search out and delete those emails.  To say this process is tedious to the point of going a bit insane, as I scanned roughly twenty excel sheets, for these obnoxious emails, is not a dramatization.  I spent all of Tuesday, June 12^th, and half of Wednesday, June 13^th, trying to wrap this up.  But what I was not aware of, was that this project would be endless.

            As I went through the lists, finding these emails, I track my progress in a clear way.  As I erased the bad email, I kept the other info from the contact and marked the email column with “Bad Email from PatronMail List 6/12.”  This way, I could evaluate how old some of the lists were, based on how many of the contacts had this bold, underlined, red label. 

            While my boss also enjoyed seeing how I had tracked the bad emails, through the excel lists, she advised me on how to proceed.  She told me to print the lists out, so we could have them on record.  Then she advised me to go ahead and delete the entire contact that had a bad email.  Her reason was intelligent, saying that if the email was bad, then there is a fair chance the contact does not exist anymore.  And this summarizes my eighth week on the job.     

Hiccup

This week, my internship had a hiccup.  I can into work on Tuesday, June 19^th, with the beginnings of a head cold.  The museum had the opening of a brand new exhibit, Faberge: Imperial Jeweler to the Tsars, coming within days.  With that, my boss was not reluctant at all to tell me to go home.  I’m sure she wanted me to rest and get better, but she was more threatened by the potential contagion of her entire staff, which could not happen at that critical moment, when every second counts. 

            So I gladly retired for the day, went home and rested.  But the next Monday, I woke up feeling worse.  I emailed my boss to let her know my condition, and she response was very humorous.  I knew she would have no intention of wanting to see me until I was one hundred and fifty percent better, which she communicated saying “for my sanity, please remain in your bubble.  My bubble is too fragile right now.”  So I did not make it back to work until the following Tuesday, June 26^th, when I was in perfect condition.  Luckily, I will work over 150 hours at the Bowers Museum this summer, which is twice what the History 398 asks for, so this hiccup will not affect that factor.