It's hard to believe that today is Saturday.
Saturday......
It's been a long week of training, and yesterday and today were the final days to learn everything that we needed to do. I'm an ace at photography. Writing stories (and shells) are easy. InDesign and Photoshop are nothing. InfoScore (our scoring system) is still a bit tricky, but our notebooks have step-by-step directions for virtually everything and anything we might encounter. Plus, the checklist will be our best friend this summer.
This morning we got to get out on the course and do some set up. My team set up the ropes around the first tees. We drove around the 16th, 17th, and 18th holes setting up water coolers and flipping over the Care for the Course buckets. Went over the 15 and did yet another review of the rules. I think I'm good with the rules.
Well, at least I better be good with the rules because one of my teammates and I are the first pair to go out tomorrow morning with the first group of golfers as their rules official and pace of play official. That's pretty exciting, and our rules coach who will be with the first three pairings is a really great guy (everyone who works here is great, actually) and I expect it to move smoothly.
This afternoon us communications folk got to see more of the operations side of the work, and vice versa. We rode around the course and learned about hole placements, stenciling the distances, marking hazards and out of bounds, etc.
After that we got down to business.
The basement has now been set up as tournament headquarters for the Preseason Junior at Château Élan. Our communications teams now have our computers down there, and we did plenty of pre-tournament setup. Did I mention that the checklist is our best friend? I don't really need to get too much into what we did, because it was mostly grunt work and printing papers that need be printed.
After dinner (pizza!) we headed over to the hotel, where registration and the meetings were taking place. As the ops people did the registration work, I was around the taking pictures of the juniors and other random happenings in the hall. I wish I could have gotten some better pictures, but I was using the medium length lens and had to pick my spots wisely (mostly in the corners). I am really proud of two or three of my photos. They have great logo placement.
We helped set up the projectors and the screens for the meetings, and then helped take them down. And then our duties for the day were over, and got back to the hotel before 8:30. Did I mention we were at headquarters before 7 am?
Did I also mention that for tomorrow's first round, We have to be at headquarters before 6? This is going to be a really fun weekend.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Internship Training
You want to know what I've been up to for the past three days now, don't you?
Don't worry family, I'll still find some time to talk with you on the phone and Skype perhaps (Danny, you count as family). But for the sake of not having to repeat myself to multiple people and then the stories suffer because I tell them so much, I will try to post something here as often as I feel like it so you can have a feel of what I've been up to.
Sunday: Landed in Atlanta, grabbed my luggage and miraculously found my way to the right shuttle pick-up spot. Three other interns showed up shortly after and we headed over to the hotel in Atlanta for the night. I ate at the hotel restaurant out of convenience with the dozen interns who were also in the restaurant, and then a lot of us just socialized in the lobby. It was a really fun and relaxed night, and we met up with our teammates and other friends that I made back in February when I was here for IRW.
Monday: The real action begins.
We were picked up at the hotel by full-time staff members, and then drove the 45 miles to headquarters in Braselton. The 48 interns were all there by now, and we had some breakfast in the basement as the higher-ups of the company gave us some speeches. Lunch was served (still in the basement) and we were taught some golf rulings and how to mark the course. Communications interns (me) get to mark the yardages!
Comms and Ops split in the afternoon, and we got to move upstairs to the more comfortable chairs in the boardroom. We had an overview of our responsibilities and some introductions for an hour before we went into our first look at the scoring system we'll be using. That lasted for two hours. It was long and I was very uncomfortable from lack of sleep and sitting down all day. My head ached from all the information that was spilled on us.
But it went on. The next hour we went over our photo duties and some good and bad examples of photographs. I know a lot about photography, so this was all some simple stuff. After hearing about all of the specific things that we NEED to photograph (lots of pictures for our sponsors), I think what I look forward to the most is going around on the final round of a tournament and just snapping away on these beautiful courses.
We started dinner around 7:30, and we given our outfits for the summer. These clothes are amazing. Six super fresh Polo shirts, four pairs of shorts, a belt, two hats, sunglasses, and two pairs of Under Armor shoes! When we got back to the hotel room, my roommates and I had like a mini fashion show trying on all of our stuff. It was like Christmas morning.
Tuesday: Another long day. These definitely won't get shorter, but today was really fun.
In the morning we had went over our vehicle assignments. My team has one big GMC truck that will haul our trailer, and a brand new Yukon. They are called Casper and Starbuck, respectively. In our big binders with all of our travel and vehicle information, it covers our routes, tournaments, emergency info. etc. They are big.
There were three guys from the Georgia Driving Academy who showed us some super old videos about truck driving, and after lunch, mine and two other teams hit the road for some driving school.
First thing I learned was the vehicle inspection duties. It's pretty much a big checklist of responsibilities and items we need to make sure get done when we arrive at a new location. Then I had the chance to take the truck and the trailer on the road. With one of the truck drivers with us, we drove around the Braselton area for about 45 minutes each, learning how the truck handles with a trailer and important things to take note of when there's a trailer attached to your vehicle. That was really fun.
When we were done with that, a teammate and I then learned how to back in the truck with the trailer. We did a straight back in and a jackknife back in. Before either of us got in the truck, I told her that we were about to be the best team. She went first each time as I helped direct her, and then we switched roles. It's a really tricky process backing in the trailer jackknife style, but we did it pretty well with just about zero mistakes. Our instructor then told us we were the best ones all day. Booyah.
Then next station of our driving school was just getting a group of five of us and a staff member in a Yukon and just cruising around. That was when we saw the Wienermobile.
We talked a lot, told some jokes, and when somebody said something about "winging it," I promptly corrected him, "Don't just wing it, Tim Wing it." Two seconds later when everyone got it, they cracked up, and later that night I heard two of them tell that story to other people.
After some Yukon cruising, we learned how to change a tire on the trailer real quick, and then did some cruising in a truck with a trailer before heading back to headquarters. We had some dinner, were told some important announcements, and those of us who had driving school were given keys and we had the responsibility to drive ourselves back to the hotel.
And here I am now. There are a bunch of things I'm sure I skipped over, but that's the brief rundown of the first days of training. Tomorrow will have a lot more learning things, but the chance of hands-on equipment set-up. We'll host a tournament here in Braselton, and that's when things will get both hectic and fun. I'm really looking forward to it.
And I miss you Oscar, you amazing mobile baby!
Don't worry family, I'll still find some time to talk with you on the phone and Skype perhaps (Danny, you count as family). But for the sake of not having to repeat myself to multiple people and then the stories suffer because I tell them so much, I will try to post something here as often as I feel like it so you can have a feel of what I've been up to.
Sunday: Landed in Atlanta, grabbed my luggage and miraculously found my way to the right shuttle pick-up spot. Three other interns showed up shortly after and we headed over to the hotel in Atlanta for the night. I ate at the hotel restaurant out of convenience with the dozen interns who were also in the restaurant, and then a lot of us just socialized in the lobby. It was a really fun and relaxed night, and we met up with our teammates and other friends that I made back in February when I was here for IRW.
Monday: The real action begins.
We were picked up at the hotel by full-time staff members, and then drove the 45 miles to headquarters in Braselton. The 48 interns were all there by now, and we had some breakfast in the basement as the higher-ups of the company gave us some speeches. Lunch was served (still in the basement) and we were taught some golf rulings and how to mark the course. Communications interns (me) get to mark the yardages!
Comms and Ops split in the afternoon, and we got to move upstairs to the more comfortable chairs in the boardroom. We had an overview of our responsibilities and some introductions for an hour before we went into our first look at the scoring system we'll be using. That lasted for two hours. It was long and I was very uncomfortable from lack of sleep and sitting down all day. My head ached from all the information that was spilled on us.
But it went on. The next hour we went over our photo duties and some good and bad examples of photographs. I know a lot about photography, so this was all some simple stuff. After hearing about all of the specific things that we NEED to photograph (lots of pictures for our sponsors), I think what I look forward to the most is going around on the final round of a tournament and just snapping away on these beautiful courses.
We started dinner around 7:30, and we given our outfits for the summer. These clothes are amazing. Six super fresh Polo shirts, four pairs of shorts, a belt, two hats, sunglasses, and two pairs of Under Armor shoes! When we got back to the hotel room, my roommates and I had like a mini fashion show trying on all of our stuff. It was like Christmas morning.
Tuesday: Another long day. These definitely won't get shorter, but today was really fun.
In the morning we had went over our vehicle assignments. My team has one big GMC truck that will haul our trailer, and a brand new Yukon. They are called Casper and Starbuck, respectively. In our big binders with all of our travel and vehicle information, it covers our routes, tournaments, emergency info. etc. They are big.
There were three guys from the Georgia Driving Academy who showed us some super old videos about truck driving, and after lunch, mine and two other teams hit the road for some driving school.
First thing I learned was the vehicle inspection duties. It's pretty much a big checklist of responsibilities and items we need to make sure get done when we arrive at a new location. Then I had the chance to take the truck and the trailer on the road. With one of the truck drivers with us, we drove around the Braselton area for about 45 minutes each, learning how the truck handles with a trailer and important things to take note of when there's a trailer attached to your vehicle. That was really fun.
When we were done with that, a teammate and I then learned how to back in the truck with the trailer. We did a straight back in and a jackknife back in. Before either of us got in the truck, I told her that we were about to be the best team. She went first each time as I helped direct her, and then we switched roles. It's a really tricky process backing in the trailer jackknife style, but we did it pretty well with just about zero mistakes. Our instructor then told us we were the best ones all day. Booyah.
Then next station of our driving school was just getting a group of five of us and a staff member in a Yukon and just cruising around. That was when we saw the Wienermobile.
We talked a lot, told some jokes, and when somebody said something about "winging it," I promptly corrected him, "Don't just wing it, Tim Wing it." Two seconds later when everyone got it, they cracked up, and later that night I heard two of them tell that story to other people.
After some Yukon cruising, we learned how to change a tire on the trailer real quick, and then did some cruising in a truck with a trailer before heading back to headquarters. We had some dinner, were told some important announcements, and those of us who had driving school were given keys and we had the responsibility to drive ourselves back to the hotel.
And here I am now. There are a bunch of things I'm sure I skipped over, but that's the brief rundown of the first days of training. Tomorrow will have a lot more learning things, but the chance of hands-on equipment set-up. We'll host a tournament here in Braselton, and that's when things will get both hectic and fun. I'm really looking forward to it.
And I miss you Oscar, you amazing mobile baby!
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