4/28/15
With the internship winding down, I gave my presentation on the TLT Faculty Center last Friday with my partner, Matya. This project was a great way to learn more about Google Sites, speak with other faculty members within DoIT, and practice delegating roles in a team assignment. Though I felt very nervous during the presentation itself, Matya and I managed to do a good job and keep everything within time constraints. I am very proud of our work and am glad that I was given this opportunity through this program. Check out my site here!
Even though the Sr. Cons are more or less finished mentoring us on essential knowledge according to their guidelines, I have been continuing to ask them questions during regular shift and reviewing basic procedures. In fact, a customer asked me about turning a pdf that she had downloaded from the web into a fillable form while I was working in Main Library last Tuesday. I did not know of a program that could do this at the time, so I asked the Sr. Consultants if it was possible. Jim, who was mentoring Kristin at the time, showed us that Adobe Acrobat X Pro can be used for a lot more than just scanning documents. It can also detect text within a pdf and interpolate where fields in a form are likely to be placed. Additional fields can then be added as well as protections to prevent further changes to a pdf document. I feel that this kind of information is extremely useful and was surprised that I hadn’t been taught this from BootCamp, mentoring, or any workshops. Experiences like this one just imply that I should expect to be constantly learning on the job itself even after becoming a Sr. Con.
On Wednesday, I asked Charles to review class schedules on LotusNotes with me. Being the Sports Complex Site Manager, Charles does not normally need to upload a class schedule to his Blackboard page, so this was a helpful review for him as well. He helped me to download my LotusNotes id file from adam.cc.sunysb.edu and we quickly succeeded in downloading a classroom schedule to a pdf. After mentoring under Ming, I decided to stay an extra hour to run through Main Library closing procedures again. Ming reminded me that it is important to urge users that the “<SINC Site> is closing in <30,15, or 5> minutes.” and that they should save their work. After refilling the printers and emptying out the garbage, shutting off the lights in sections of the SINC Site also serves to remind users that the SINC site is actually closing soon. I am glad that it is possible to still drill good Site Manager practices despite my late shadow hours.