Work Experience

Currently, I am summer intern at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, CA. I am working in the computation department under the ISCR - Institute for Scientific Computation Research. My mentor is Matthew Harris and because I have just started this internship, I don't have much work to show yet. I will be doing mostly web developing but I, however, have no experience in this field whatsoever. Despite this, I am excited for this opportunity and eager to learn.

All American Bingo

Prior to this, my work experience is a little unconvential than the average high school teenager. My first job - other than the occasional yard work for neighbors and family - started during the summer of 2012 (prior to my senior year of high school) at a local non-profit bingo hall called All American Bingo. I initially applied to work as a simple floor runner, handing out sums of cash to the elderly - who sought out bingo night as the highlight of their week - in exchange for their heavily paint-marked bingo cards declared as "winners." But during my first week of training, I couldn't help but approach the rather expansive throne that belonged to the soon-to-be bingo callers. Unlike your average old folks home, this bingo system had a massive table with holes for the balls of the called bingo numbers to be placed in that would then display the played numbers on monitors spread out across the entire bingo hall. Along side it was the ball hop that circulated the balls in their container, visible to the audience. One ball at a time would come up the shoot where the bingo caller would then grab it and place it on the ball queue where a camera was placed to display the ball on the television screens. There were also several computers that ran the many different types of bingo games and helped control the facilities system. My boss, and part owner of the business, noticed me messing around and rather than scold me for it, asked if I wanted to try it out. I of course said yes, trying not to sound too excited as I wasn't a child. The next day I was no longer being trained as a petty floor runner, but instead as a bingo caller, and I became the youngest caller in the whole town (I like to think maybe even the whole state) by a substantial amount at only 16 years old. My hours were usually about 16 a week and although the pay started out as minimum wage, ($8.85/hour at the time) I moved up to getting $12/hour by the end of it.

Unemployment

Unfortunately, All American Bingo could no longer afford to stay in business and closed in late October of 2012. During the school year, I had switched to only working on Sunday nights to earn a little extra cash, so the ordeal wasn't too detrimental to me. During the summer after high school graduation, I decided to not work but instead focus on my running (as I was about to start running collegiately) and helped tutor a friend in math for his entrance exam at a community college.

Express Employment Professionals

After my freshmen year of college, I was unsure if I was going to be able to get a job because of my surgery that I had had less than one week after school let out. Three weeks after the surgery, (now about early July) however, my knee was doing fine enough to walk around on comftorbly and so I decided to look for a job. Most of the typical restaurant and other side jobs had already been filled so I went to Express Employment Professinals to look for a temporary job that I could work at until late August, when I had to go to back to school to begin training for the upcoming cross country season. Immediately, Express was able to land me a job working at our local WalMart during a remodel. The catch? It was a full time graveyard shift. Monday - Friday, 9:00PM to 6:00AM and payed minimum wage ($9.10/hour). The job only went to August 1st, so I took it. During this job, I mostly tore down old equipment, such as shelves, and replaced them with new ones. Often time we also had to move merchandise and its corresponding equipment to other parts of the store. We generally workekd in small groups and had projects assigned to us the took the span of a few days or at most a week. When things were slow, we sometimes helped stock merchandise, cleaned the store, or were given other miscellaneous tasks. Though it wasn't my favorite job of all time, (mostly because of the graveyard part) it was overall a good experience.