Internship presentation

This week is my final with the internship; my coworkers and supervisors made some kind of a small party for me at the job sight! They bought pizzas and soda and we were celebrating. It was a very interesting internship although it was boring at some point; I learned a lot of things such as designing a huge amount of text in a very small space. I also learned a lot about HPD and the stuff they do, which I didn’t know anything about before; this helped me a lot especially that I am interested in real estate in the future. I want to that you professor for the beautiful experience that we all went through, for the conversations we had in class to learn about each other’s experiences at our internships. I want to thank all my friends in this class; you were amazing and had a very good times discussing stuffs with you in and outside the class. So at the end, I learned a lot from this internship and I hope that everybody finds their ways into success, and have a blessed happy life. Thank You!

This week was the most interesting throughout my whole internship, so this journal is going to be a little long but it’s worth it. I came to work and finalized the three pamphlets that I had from last week. And around 1 pm, the supervisor came to me and told me that the Commissioner Vicky Been is about to speak in front of everybody today, it was because the fiscal year is over and they used to do that every year. So I waited for her until she arrived and started shaking everybody’s hand with a very big smile on her face. I had the privilege to shake her hand and introduce myself to her. Everybody was standing around her in a circle and she started thanking everybody for the huge work they did this winter, because it was a very hard winter with a lot of complaints. And when she finished everybody applauded and thanked her. Here is the best part, while everybody was busy with the food; I was having an inner fight inside my brain as of should I speak to the commissioner or no. The yes part won at the end and I went to her and asked permission to speak to her, she was so positive and said “sure! Ask whatever you want”. So I addressed to her the problem of not having a good graphic design department or at least one good designer in such a big department. She agreed 100% with me and referred me to the communication director and told me to talk to her. So I did, and I was surprised that the director told me “you are right! I just received this position and I want to look into this problem, it is one of my main interest”. Then she asked me for my information, I gave her my business card and she was impressed with the design and told me that she will contact me about a job there! I was so happy that I had the courage to speak to the commissioner because it leads me into a very big opportunity. So all I wanted to say is that luck only comes once every while, so when you get the chance doesn’t ever miss it, it might change your life!

This week was less boring; the supervisor told me that we have a new meeting with the coordinator. So we went at 11 am to meet her. This time she the big screen to show us what should I do. I felt for a moment that I have an important position in HPD, because usually these kinds of meetings point major issues in housing in NYC. So this time the coordinator had three projects for me to work on, but the deadline was a little short; she needed them done by the next week. The three projects were “Heat and Hot Water”, “Code inspection” and “Property Registration” pamphlets; they needed them for a major yearly meeting with the owners in NYC. As soon as the meeting was over, I went straight to my cubicle and started working on those projects. I finished most of the work by 5 pm but I still had a couple of tweaks, so I asked the supervisor if I could keep some for next Thursday. He didn’t mind due to the fact that I only am available one day each week for the internship. It was a very good day unlike the earlier ones, because I had so much work that kept me busy the whole time, so I didn’t feel the time went by fast. I usually like to work with pressure because I can get more creative in tight due days, and I can find solutions better when I’m under pressure.

Last week I didn’t do any work due to the technical difficulties that I mentioned before, so I had to go downstairs to the department print shop and help with whatever they needed over there. They had to print couple of different brochures for an incoming event; I’ve been into the print shop before, but they didn’t have that much to be done. So It was me and the lady that runs the shop, she had a little knowledge about basic printer configurations which she taught me, plus how to change ink and paper in big printers. We had to print 3000 of each brochure, looks like it was a big event, so I had to ask the lady what kind of event is it. She said it is a Property Registration seminar and it is held all over the five boroughs. At first I didn’t catch what she said, but when we started printing, I saw that it is the brochure that I was designing last week, and was waiting for the director’s comments on it. Apparently she was happy with the work, and didn’t need any change or fix in it. I felt happy that my work was processed that fast, as opposed to the ABC’s of Housing that I designed in the beginning of my internship, and had to change like a million times. These kinds of moments push me to keep going as a designer, and not to care about any difficulties, because we only learn from those difficulties to make our work and life better and easier.

This week I came to work hoping that I have any comments on my work, so when I arrived, I went straight to my supervisor and asked him if there is any reply from the director. He said that the director was a little busy and didn’t have the time to check the design, but whenever she does, she will definitely tell us. As usual he didn’t have any design work for me, so he told me that I have to start a new Council District Report, but I have to add March 2015 into it. I went to my cubicle and as usual logged in into my user, but this time the password expired and I had to replace it, it’s a monthly thing here at HPD for security purposes I guess. So after I successfully changed the password and logged in, I was shocked that everything was gone! No softwares (Adobe Collection, Cristal Reports…) everything was gone, even my design work. At first I thought it was because I had to change the password, but when a co-worker signed in at my computer, it had the same problem. So I ran to the supervisor to tell him about what happened, and he was shocked as well. He told me that he is going to contact the technician to check on what happened. I hope that the technician knows what happened, that he is that one that formatted the system and have a backup of my work; otherwise I have to restart it all over again.

This week I came to work so happy knowing that I have design work to do. As I mentioned last week, the project that the director gave me was Property Registration flyer. It is a flyer that HPD delivers to owners only, informing them that they have to register their property at HPD each year. This registration cost $13 and it is a form that contains contact information of the owner each year, so HPD can keep track of who is the owner and notes if there are any change, in order to know who to talk to when a report is made or a violation happens. This flyer contains a lot of information, but this is the main idea behind it. From a design perspective, it was a little challenging because HPD had a Property Registration flyer before, but the director told me that she needs to add about ten questions and answers to that flyer. So I had to change the size from a full letter page folded in four like an accordion, into a full letter folded in half and stapled like a booklet. I finished the design so fast with all the information in it and sent the first draft to my supervisor Ron who sent it to the director. I am waiting for the feedback next week so I can make any changes she asks about.

This week I had to continue the rest of the reports for the 2014-2015 year, so I arrived to work early before my supervisor, and started to work on it. At around 1 pm, my supervisor Ron came and told me that we have a meeting with the director at 2 pm. At first I was confused because since I started the internship here I never met or saw the director, so I was excited to meet her. I have to mention that I never had any meeting here before, my work and tasks came straight from the supervisor to me. So at 1:50 pm, my supervisor came to me with a notepad in his hand and asked me to take my notepad too for the meeting. Ron preferred that we go up the stairs instead of the elevator and I agreed. That building is so huge from the inside that you have three lanes of stairs! I never expected it to be that big especially that from the outside it looks like a normal small building. We arrived to the director office but she wasn’t there so we waited her for a couple of minutes till she came back. At this time Ron and I were chatting a little bit about housing rules and regulations. I had a couple a questions that he answered in a precise and understandable way, I can’t forget the sentence he told me then, “In NYC housing rules are very strict, If we left owners to act the way they want, poor people will be affected, we can’t let that happen.” So at this time the director came, she was the sweetest person ever, she gave me a new design project to do which is the Property Registration flyer. I got so excited for that project especially that I haven’t had any design work to do for the past couple of weeks.

This week I had to continue the Council District reports that I was working on last time. So I was done with the fiscal year FY 2013-2014, and I had to start with the year 2014-2015. I was a little surprised because it was from July 1 2014 till Feb 28 2015, so technically it wasn’t a full FY but still considered as one, because there are certain times that they should send the reports to the officials for review otherwise they won’t review them. One thing I noticed Is that these reports are categorized in five folder, each is made for a borough. As I mentioned before Manhattan is number one, I had to do twelve reports for it, then Bronx with twelve reports too. Brooklyn is number three with eighteen reports, then Queens with fourteen reports and finally Staten Island with only three reports. So I got curious and asked my supervisor why does Brooklyn have the most reports although it isn’t the biggest borough in size? He said that in Brooklyn, there are a lot of buildings that are old and deteriorating, not to forget that it is the number one when it comes to population. Plus, he added that there are a lot of led paint poisoning in Brooklyn, and that is because little kids eat the peeled paint, which has a sweet taste like candy, so at HPD they receive a lot of led paint poisoning reports from Brooklyn. I am happy to learn new stuffs about the boroughs from this job, it gets more and more interesting with time.

For this week, my supervisor had no graphic for me, so I told him that I don’t mind doing any other office work. So he asked me to make “Council District Report”, and showed me the right way to do it. At first I didn’t understand what I was doing exactly, so I had to go to my supervisor and ask him to explain it to me in a brief and simple way. So he said that Council District Report is a research using various computer systems within the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) building, to obtain data on housing violations within the five boroughs (Manhattan considered borough one, Bronx number two, Brooklyn number three, Queens number four and Staten Island number five), through one fiscal year. So I was working on the report from July 1 2013 till June 31 2014. The system they use in the department is an Oracle database system, which is a server that allows multiply users to access concurrently a large amount of stored data. It is a very important system to use in big data departments. And the software I used to make the reports is called Crystal Reports, which is a software used to make and design reports from a very large data source. Once retrieved, the data is submitted to various government officials to review the department of HPD’s plans for that fiscal year. I am happy that I was involved in that kind of work, which is new to me, because I learned about Oracle servers, Crystal Reports software and how mixing both together is very needed in a large data retrieving process.