Week 2

Week 2 came a lot more easily than week 1, as I was already in a routine with my time management and the expectations of the kids at Pillar.  This week at Pillar would be a big one because their field day was on Friday, which meant a bunch of preparation and finding activities to occupy 4 year olds for an entire four hours straight.  Unfortunately, this week was plagued with rain, which forced us inside the church basement or big gym for recess everyday.  We encountered many injuries because the basketballs were always left out, and four year olds seem to have no concept of the pain that throwing a basketball into the head of a friend will cause.  The other new trend was bandaids.  Once one preschooler got a bandaid, then every single other child wanted one, whether or not they actually needed it.  They also screamed that they were bleeding after every fall, even if there was no mark on their body to back that story up.  I spent most of my time at Pillar cutting paper this week, as it was their second to last week of school and we had to prepare many books and projects for them to take home.  Given that there are 19 children in the class, this was an incredible amount of time and I left with blisters on my hands at one point.

St. Louis Magazine was incredibly fun this week, as Helene decided that I would write an online article about graduation gifts, "Five Great Graduation Gifts for Guys and Girls."  In the beginning, this appeared as a simply easy and timeless task, but it was quite possibly the exact opposite.  I had to find 10 gifts, 5 for guys and 5 for girls, at all different stores around the entire St. Louis area.  They had to vary in price and type to appear to the large demographic of readers.  Then, I had to call every store and ask them to send me an image of their product to use for the article.  Unfortunately, some stores were less than cooperative (Jcrew was not too happy) and at other stores, we had to contact their headquarters to ensure that we weren't copyrighting their products (Tiffany's took almost three days to figure out!!)

This may project was an incredible experience for me, and I think that the combination of vastly different jobs allowed me to really understand a lot.  Time management was crucial throughout these three weeks, as attempting to balance Pillar, St. Louis Magazine and lacrosse practice everyday at 3 proved to function like a job, especially when there was rarely any time for lunch in the day.  Pillar was overall so fun, and I absolutely loved all of the 4 year olds that I got to be with.  They were always so happy and carefree, could make me laugh at any time and made May Project feel like a fun three weeks for me.  St. Louis Magazine was an eye-opening internship just because I had never dealt with a magazine before, nor did I have any clue as to how it worked, how it was run and every single little detail that went into publishing and articles.  The copyright on pictures and images, constant shoots around the office and brainstorming 24/7 about possible ideas for the cover was almost overwhelming to me, as I realized that it may not be my calling to work for a magazine!  I did feel like I wielded a lot of power, and having the pleasure of writing my own online article was a real blessing.  Although it was a tiring and long three weeks, Pillar and St. Louis Magazine both helped the time fly by and helped me learn so many things.  I also think that I would recommend to maybe only stick to one May Project, because having to deal with 2 in one day and practice was much more stressful than I had actually anticipated...It was a lot of rushing from place to place and ensuring that I was on time and ready to go.