Week 3 Journal

6/19/17

Coming off of the week spent in Rolling Meadows, the day started off with all of the coordinators asking us how everything went. With a group project due sometime this week, they told us what to do in respect to how to set it up, and how we should include the new intern, Brian, that arrived today. With no scheduled meetings and nothing on my plate, I finally was able to get my first project. I went up to my mentor, Jared, but he was too busy and didn’t have anything for me, so he took me to Martha and she had things planned for me to do. As part of the SOV for Griffin Capital Corporation, she wanted me to fill in the rest of the numbers of buildings for each area. At first glanced, this seemed simple, but when she told me this should take a few hours, I was surprised. I soon enough learned why this was going to take a while. For many of the areas, it is easy to recognize that it is only one building, however, for the many who aren’t as simple, you must act as an investigator and search where the building is and count how many buildings are there. However, that was for the more simple ones. For others, the addresses were complex and weird, having me search all types of things, and not find it. So after I finished all of the easy ones, I went back up to Martha and had her explain to me how to find the ones that were too hard to find. After lunch I continued my project with Martha’s advice and was able to finish the rest of that first project. The next project that I have, and am still working on, is a benchmarking project that Martha assigned me. It was a great first day back from Chicago.

6/20/17

Today started off with an email from Martha assigning Garret and I a project of converting the information of Edr to the SOV, wanting it by the end of the day. As I started on this, Garret and I realized that we couldn’t work on it together, so I took the responsibility, as I thought this would be interesting to do. Not too long after, we had a meeting with Ana. She went over certificates and the importance of them, but she also gave us a project having to do with looking over certificates, and seeing if there are some who may be duplicates. We had a few projects currently working on, so she gave us a few days to do this. After our meeting, I returned to the project that Martha gave me. Corey assisted me on how to make a good judgement on what classification the construction type would fall under. I did the best I could, looking up each building to see what I thought it looked like, as well as interpreting the building details that the company provided. Hopefully, my judges were good enough. I spent a lot of time looking up the latitudes and longitudes for each area that they had. After that, I was basically done with that project soon after lunch, and Martha was very pleased with it. Earlier in the day I was able to listen in to the follow-up call with Sunstone with Jared and Corey. They wanted me to write as many notes as I could because we would be having a big discussion on what I learned in the call. Many notes were taking and I will be sure to read over them to be prepared. The rest of the day I spent trying to finish the project assigned to me yesterday. I may need to go to Martha to asks some questions, because I’ve filled in as much as I could for Griffin Capital Corporation, but there is much more stuff to fill in, and I don’t know where to look to find that information. Overall, today was another good day. It was probably the longest day of the internship for some strange reason. Thankfully, I wasn’t really tired.

6/21/17

Today I got to work early. Yesterday I decided that I should try to get to work at least 30 minutes early. Not only do I think this will be good for me because it shows the dedication, but it will also allow me to get settled in before work actually starts. During this time I got to study the conference call that I attended yesterday with Sunstone. We scheduled a meeting with Jared to discuss what we learned in the call which went really well. I learned a lot of terminology that I haven’t heard of yet and talked about a new policy of threat of a malicious act, as well as active shooter. Before lunch all the interns had a two and a half hour meeting about property and casualty, but in this meeting Scott Firestone came in to talk to us more and gave us some work, but also life advice about communication. After lunch Garret and I had a meeting with Ana. She is the one who deals with the certificates. She gave us a project to work on. However, we are quite booked for the moment, so she gave us a few days to do it. As I went back to work on my project, again, I got stuck. So I went to Martha for help, and she told me that some of the stuff was too difficult to interoperate so she did those, but guided me on where to go from there. After that I finished my day off continuing that project. Another good day, however, for some reason I felt much more tired than usual.

6/22/17

The suit came out today as we had a trip to Caruso. They are all about business formal, so all the interns looked their best. The day started off with studying my part for the presentation that the interns have on the first two weeks of the internship. My part is covering the real estate presentation that Alex led. I enjoyed this presentation, as this one wasn’t all about advice on the business, but advice about life in general. This being one of my favorite presentations, I was happy to be able to be the one to present it. Later, I went up to Edytte to get some help to finish my project because I just couldn’t find where to find the rates for casualty in my benchmarking project. As she searched for where to find it, it was revealed that the rates did not match what it was supposed to in order for my project to be correct. Then Luis joined the help because he is the one working on Griffin, the company that I am benchmarking. He also didn’t have the answers, and told me not to worry about it and submit everything else. Since my project was finally done, I went to Martha to show her, but also tell her about the casualty rates. She seemed to be really pleased with my work, so that made me feel good. She then gave me another assignment doing the same thing but with Hudson. This one should be easier as they don’t have as many problems as Griffin’s folders did. The Caruso trip was extremely fun, but extremely hot. We walked all around the Americana looking at all of the attractions and learning all about the place. It was really nice to feel the atmosphere that they thrive to have. What I enjoyed the most was the openness seeing all of these families relaxing in the sun or shade. On our long walk back I quickly took my jacket off, as it was so hot and everyone was sweating so much. When I got back, I misplaced my key card and spent 20 minutes searching for it. I was upset with myself because when I found it out in the open in our office. Realizing that today was Thursday, I needed to finish up some journals. I finished most of the day doing that. Today was a much better day, energy-wise.

6/23/17

The day started off with a mini celebration, as it was Molly’s birthday. Technically tomorrow is her birthday, but since today is Friday, we did a mini celebration with her today. Not too long after that, we had our presentation to all of the coordinators. I’m usually very relaxed before a presentation, but the girls all were so nervous that it sort of got me feeling anxious. The presentation, thankfully, went really well and the coordinators were proud of us. The only shock was that I said, “Um” six times. Six times is not that bad, but it is amazing how hard it is to notice that we say it so often. Later, I got a lot of work done filling out my benchmarking project that I’ve been working on. I will more than likely be able to finish by the end of work Monday. A call from Luis came later. He told me that he had a project for me to do, and asked to go meet with him after lunch. For lunch, me Riley and Jacob all got Chipotle, however, this time we drove because we didn’t want to walk in that heat again. When we got back, I then met with Luis and he told me what he wanted me to do. The first thing was simple as it was just copying and pasting some information onto a more official sheet, but the next step is to put that information into Chubb and find out how much the premium will cost for Griffin’s new building. At the end of the day, me and Garret had in introductory meeting with Vickie. The reason why this has taken so long is because she was really sick all of last week. She still had a lingering cough today, but was still able to tell us what she does. She also has some projects she would like us to do, so hopefully next week won’t be too packed with projects so we can get to doing some of hers.