Ideal Group Interns

Jacqueline Perez January 29, 2016 Innovation Room It was around 7:15am this morning and I has just arrived to school when I received a text message from Sylvia saying I had to join Pat Wells in building B. That insinuated that there was something big going on because I never work back there. I arrived to work and I got a run thru about what was going to happen today. Ideal Group employees from different locations in the company came to Ideal for a “Frank Meeting” . This meeting was to have more recent employees have a better understanding of the company, get feedback from them and to learn about what goes on and what happens in the community. Today was a real eye opener for me because I could see how a good company should run. Frank really followed the same regimen as I have been taught in my organization of business class at UDM. I have been taught that a good structured company should have a good relationship with its employees. I could really see that here at Ideal and I

Jacqueline Perez January 15, 2016 Productivity I enjoyed coming to work today. I helped Sylvia and was able to catch up on tasks that I yet had to complete. I was able to finish up all the Thank You certificates for GM Cares Week stakeholders. I also cleaned and dusted the office towards the end of the day. I also did my slide for the exec meeting about GM Cares Week in the community. I also did some filing and got that completed today. School is going really well. I have exams next week and my grades are currently all A’s. I have been studying for the exams all week and will continue to do so for the upcoming weekend. I am happy with what I have done today and I can’t wait to come back and do more.

Jacqueline Perez January 11, 2016 Most Memorable Moment of 2016 I had lots of great experiences in 2015, but one stood out more than the rest. I went on vacation to Texas for about a week and a half. I didn’t expect to stay there that long, but I’m glad we did. On the second to last day we went to Galveston Island, which is a small island off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. I had never been to see the ocean or anywhere near salt water so it was an amazing experience for me. I always wanted to go to the beach and this day we had spent all day there will all my extended family. There also wasn’t that many people on the beach which made it more calming. I had been stressed over work, scholarships, and the upcoming school year. That day was the most relaxed day I had had in months, maybe even year. I am happy I got to experience that and it’s something I look forward to doing again.  

Looking Over First Semester                 First semester had its joyful moments, but it also had day’s weeks where I struggled. An overarching concept stayed true though, and it was that commitment meant everything in my life. Most of the academic and social success that I have had at Cristo Rey and in Southwest Detroit has come from staying committed to my community and grades.                 This first semester, I went beyond my goal of achieving a 3.9 GPA and earned a 4.05 cumulative. The boost came from the AP Environmental Science class and Honors Latin. Throughout both of those classes, and all my classes in general, I had papers due, projects to work on, Environmental Groups- like the Green Paws- to plan with, and the National Honor Society to lead. In Environmental Science, we have salmon that we have to keep an eye on. Even before they hatched from their eggs, I had to check the ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and pH levels daily to make sure that they were healthy. I

My Christmas break was pretty ordinary if anything. Mostly, when I wasn’t working, I just stayed home and relaxed. On Christmas I opened some clothes (gifts from my family) and bought myself some Christmas presents. My family and I were together as well and I calmly celebrated the occasion. For the next couple of days I worked, ate, slept, and repeated. On New Year’s my family and about three others all ate together and celebrated the holiday extremely loud. The last days were full of relaxation and sadness because of school rapidly approaching.             Today I felt extremely helpful, attacking a huge PO scan pile. In the morning I made two full pots of coffee. After I had served myself some of the coffee, I went straight to the intern computer for scanning. I had gotten a bit tired of depending on Jennifer to split documents for me so installed a pdf splitter so that the other interns and I will be able to split the documents on our own. Having successfully accomplished this I

   When Enrique and I arrived at Ideal Group, we went inside the main building and made coffee. After we made coffee, I went to Ideal Surplus. I sat down on the front desk and started working on the Ebay listing. It took a while because the page would open. After the page opened, I started working. I did about a page before Jose told me that Sylvia wanted me to meet her in the main office. I grabbed my coat and went to the main building. Sylvia told me that I was going to have a meeting with her, Linda, Sarah, Mrs. Rowe and Mr. Khoury.    The meeting took place at Detroit Cristo Rey. I met with Mary Alice from General motors and Jennifer Dowd from NWF Eco School program. The meeting was about bringing a new program to the school called Eco-Schools USA. The program really seemed interesting and would fit perfectly with Cristo Rey's Green Paws and Cadillac urban Gardens. After the meeting, we went to lunch. I came back from lunch and continued to work on the Ebay listings. My day wa

Christian Perales January 26, 2016 Entering the Second Semester             After the final exam is graded, each student gets a somewhat fresh start in the new semester. No matter how good your fresh start seems in the beginning, it will drastically change if you do not do what is needed to maintain or exceed the expectation. For some students, their grades were satisfying to them and they do not feel the need to change too much, others may feel like they need to work a lot harder to obtain a better grade. For my first semester as a sophomore, I had straight A’s, but I know that there is always room for improvement and if I begin to slack off my grades will not be what I want them to be.             One major thing in regards to reaching and exceeding a goal for grades is effort. You cannot expect more than what you put in. If you put in minimal work, your grades will reflect that. If you put in a lot of hard work then your grade will definitely reflect it. Another major issu

            The most extraordinary year that I remember is either 2015 or 2014. This is because I accomplished many personal feats. I had worked hard and I set my GPA to a solid 3.8, which had surpassed my expectations. I had somewhat discovered what I wanted to do in the future, computer science and other things like it. Lastly I had incredibly changed my weight by working hard and exercising. Those years have severely changed and modeled who I am today and I will continue to look back upon them because of my great developments throughout those years.             Today was pretty casual for me. In the morning I accompanied Richard to go make some coffee. When we had finished we parted ways and I headed for another day of work. I sat down in Erika’s old desk and began on some scans. The process was a bit slow because the computer did not have a splitter like the others. But still with the help of Jennifer I steadily did my scans. When lunch came around I decided to relax for a bit

Christian Perales January 19, 2016 New Year, Same Me?           As the first month of the New Year is coming to an end, many people are already turning back on their New Year’s resolutions. Although focusing on only changing the bad won’t make you good. Focusing of what makes you good and keeping it that way will have a better impact along the way. A trait I have that I would like to keep in the New Year, and many more to come, would be my understanding and compassion. Having those two traits together will better impact others and even me.           To be able to understand a problem and to be able to see both sides of the story and be compassionate about is a good skill to have. When faced with a problem of conflict, we tend to have a very bias opinion and do whatever we think is best for us instead of taking into consideration anyone else’s feelings or wellbeing.  If you are able to make a unbiased decision and go for what is beneficial to everybody, it will help you in

DRIVEN with Frank Venegas and other Leading Individuals                 Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the DRIVEN event honoring people in the automotive industry who help grow and support a multicultural atmosphere. The organization honored people from General Motors, LEAR, the Ideal Group, and other companies.   This award is a one in a lifetime opportunity to show how much someone can help spread diversity in a workplace, and Frank Venegas was one deserving character to receive it.                 The importance of spreading different cultures throughout a workplace is important to the atmosphere in a job. It allows for people to not think so similarly and to go around common thoughts. If you can’t figure out a problem, chances are that a peer that is closely like you won’t be able to either. If you had someone that came from a different environment that solves problems in a different mindset, you would have more options to attack the challenge. People who under

            Some ways that I have personally encountered were going to sleep when not needing to, day dreaming, and wishing that all my assignments/studies just magically finished. What usually makes me procrastinate is having a long and tedious day – the type of day that drags on for an eternity at a time. Though I occasionally still carry out those idiosyncrasies, I mostly think of my grades and my future. I want to succeed today and later on. If procrastination gets in the way of that, then I would really rather go on without it.             My day was pretty decent and well spent. In the morning I had a cup of coffee and went to go look for any tasks. I found Stephan and we talked about the uses of Fabtrol. Then within a couple of minutes I asked to organize a couple plans. He agreed, and for about an hour I organized some construction plans. When I finished I moved on to scans but it took a while to get started because I needed to get a program that could  split  documents for

   Today was an average, just like any other work day. When I got off the bus, I went to the main building, made myself a coffee, and said hi to Pat and Osmara. I walked to Surplus and said hi to Gary and Steve. I started working on the Ebay listing project. Me and Christopher Lara have gotten through a good amount, but every day, new parts are either added or sold, which makes this project more trickier to do. I continued to work on the lists of items, I only ran into one issue when the Ebay page froze, but everything went smoothly. I was able to get 2 pages down of items before lunch.    I went back to the main building for lunch and greeted Sylvia and Sarah Clark. While I waited for Osmara, Sylvia told me my blog topic. She wanted me to talk about the Driven Award Ceremony that I attended yesterday. Me and Osmara went home for lunch. After lunch, I continued to work on the Ebay listings. I was able to get another 2 pages down before I wrote my blog. My day was pretty great, went by

Christian Perales January 12, 2016 The Week before Midterms             With the midterms being only one week away, people will tend to get nervous and overthink many aspects of it. In doing this, it has over complicated something fairly simple. If time is set aside each day in preparation for midterms, the stress and cramming of information does not have to happen the night before each test. The time set aside, which doesn’t even have to be long, will help prepare you for what is to come.             For each day before the midterms, studying one or two subjects would be best, because that way there is not too much different information coming in all at once. Two subjects a day will easily allow your brain to soak in the information without feeling overwhelmed. If while studying you begin to get overwhelmed with information, take a break, because the information you attempt to learn after that point will only bring about more pointless stress and confusion. A 15 minute break

Revising Ideal’s eBay Listings, Letters of Recommendation, and a 2016 Calendar Today’s tasks compromised of a main job which was to revise Ideal’s eBay listings. I was also able to work on the 2016 calendar for Cadillac Urban Gardens and some scholarships. On eBay, I basically went through as many items I could get to and revise their custom ID’s that people search for. Previously, they were put in as a number that could be found in the title of the item, but to keep consistency and allow easy finding techniques, we rename the ID to a specific set of numbers in the item’s description. I can see why Ideal does this because it’s extremely time sensitive to keep things in order for workers to locate the tool properly. I got through a couple hundred listings before I was able to go down to Sylvia’s office for a signature. I was going to ask Sylvia for her signature on a recommendation letter. I was going to upload the letter to a variety of scholarship applications I’ve complete so

Working with Setech during Christmas Break                 During the last two weeks, I was working with Setech to help advance the progress in moving into the far side of Building B. I worked with Enrique, Richard, and Christian. Looking over this group of different personalities was interesting because the motives for each person to work during break were different, so keeping them all energies to work was a challenge. I had fun throughout the whole process, even if I spent most of the time doing a tedious, yet important, job with my friends.                 Throughout the first week, I paired up with Christian, and Enrique went with Richard. We were working in the same area, but we had different tables to do our task. Our job was to fold the unfolded boxes into a certain shape that could hold the parts from Surplus. We had about six pallets worth of cardboard stacked to about my chest’s height. Every day had its challenges, like working faster than Phil could find larger con

              The aspects of myself I want to keep in 2016 are my child at heart feelings. This is because they help with my stress, they make me feel appreciative of what I have, and they make me feel happy because of the little things in life. Whenever I feel like a kid again all of my every day, adult, worries disappear. I make myself feel like how I did when everything was much simpler. Also when I was a kid I didn’t have much and I held everything dear to me. When I remember those nostalgic days I remember a time where I never paid for my own things and money was just paper. Every time I was given something as small as candy, my day instantly changed, but now I worry about my appearance. Back when I was a kid everything was much simpler and it was easier to be happy.                Today was a very soothing day. In the morning I felt a cool and crisp wind to wake me up. I walked in to get a cup of smooth & creamy coffee. I asked where I would sit and in for the rest of the

   Today I started off my day by continuing the Ebay list. I worked on the list for a while. It usually takes about two minutes to do three items on the Ebay list. I was able to get about 2 pages done before lunch. I had lunch at my desk and did some homework as well. After lunch i continued to work on the list. Gary told me that me and Chris only have about 20% of the list done. I was able to do about another page and a half before stopping and writing my blog.    Procrastination is a huge problem with students during the school year, especially during midterms or finals. Many students don't take these exams serious, the exams are worth 20% of their semester grade. The reason many students procrastinate is because they find studying boring and rather do something else they'll enjoy. There are many ways to beat procrastination and they're not hard to do. Sometimes you just need a little motivation to get you started.

Christian Perales January 5, 2016 Exams and Procrastination During the last couple of weeks before the exams, teachers will hand out seemingly endless packets and reviews that will make many students just want to give up. With a stack of work and every question seeming the same it can become quite repetitive and dull. This will cause students to take breaks more frequently and even forget to go back to it. With the internet, the world is almost at your fingertips and with that, students will tend to go it leaving work behind.             Which sounds more appealing, constantly studying the theorems and definitions, or playing a video game and going on a phone? For many students around exam time, option two is most desirable. In that case, a set time for studying should be had in preparation for exams, with the occasional short break in between subjects.             A way to stop procrastination would to be to turn off your phone for an hour, go to a quiet place to study, or

   When the bus dropped me off, I went to go get a coffee in the main building and then walked to Surplus. I went to ask Gary for work, but he told to me to check with Phil first. Phil had nothing for me to do, so I continued to work on the items on Ebay. The items have a different label and we have to put our item number. Me and Christopher have been working on this list for about a month. The list has a hundred pages and each page has two-hundred items. I worked on the list until lunch. I stayed in building b because it was cold outside and I didn't feel like walking.    After lunch, I wen back to my desk and continued to work. I ran into a couple of issues because the computer sometimes doesn't load the list of items. It did this about three times while I was working. I was able to get a few pages done before I had to stop and write my blog. My day was great, I was able to get some work done.    For the month of January, me and Enrique had to create some blog topics for us