#YOTYO
Sunday:
I spent about 6 hours on duty for the Shay Elliot memorial cycle race. We had 3 ambulances and a 4x4 and dealt with a single spinal, an abnormally small amount for a race of this type. The day was quite interesting though as it was the first time I had gone on 999 protocol, ie. lights and sirens, while on duty which was great fun but terrifying at the same time considering you're in a five ton ambulance on windy country lanes going at 60km/hr! In order to further my French this year, I participated in the French Exchange orgainised by the school with our partner school in Libourne.
This week my student came here and I tried to keep the week as active as possible for the both of us! We tried to do a range of activities from walks to q-zar, bowling and archery. Above all though he seemed to be most fascinated not by our landscape, attractions or school but by jelly, which he had never seen before, and our carpet, as his house had wooden flooring. A very worthwhile experience and I'm really looking forward to our time in France when hopefully I can become more comfortable speaking the language. Today John Whelan, the secretary of the Irish Kidney Association came to speak with us regarding kidney donation and organ donation in general as well as sharing some of his personal experiences as a kidney transplant recipient himself. He spoke to us primarily about kidney disease, what it's like to live with it, the medical requirements on a weekly and daily basis and the toll this takes on families and what the Kidney Association do for all involved, from encouraging more donors, through methods such as these talks, to providing accommodation for families while staying in hospital and holiday homes for people to get away from it all whilst still having the relevant facilities. Last Friday we travelled into Dublin to visit its museums, some of which I hadn't been to before so had high hopes for. National Museum of Ireland... Our first port of call was to our National Museum, beside the Dáil, which I have been to multiple times but was still nice to have another look at even more of our past, in particular the bog bodies which I missed before. Their almost perfectly preserved hair completely freaked me out! Collins Barracks... After the National Museum we all went for lunch and a look around town before getting a Dublin Bus to the Barracks, it's safe to say the bus driver wasn't pleased to deal with about forty students who didn't have the correct change! We walked around the network of hallways that brought us to various displays and had a look at some of the old UN vehicles, aircraft and uniforms as well as war memorabilia and ancient jewellery. An extremely interesting place and one that I definitely could have spent more time in. 3 Peaks: In order to raise the necessary money for our Difference Day work, it was decided to complete a hike over Bray's three large peaks, or hills as most would call them! Our trek began with a bus journey to the 'Sugarloaf' which we walked before proceeding across the N11 to top up on vital junk food before hiking up the 'Baby Sugarloaf' for lunch and some great blog pics! We then walked up 'Bray Head' for a nice class pic and to get even more sunburnt before eventually being able to relax with an ice-cream on Bray promenade. Difference Day: For this years D-Day, it was decided to help our neighbour and closest charity 'Festina Lente'. We had various tasks to finish in just a short period but managed to pull off quite a lot to a relatively high standard considering our limited experience. I mainly photographed and filmed the event for the video seen below. I also helped out with a bit of the painting on the wall and arena area and managed to finish up considerably cleaner than others! A really worthwhile day overall no matter what activities you were involved in and we could very clearly see the difference we made in a single day. Over this bank holiday weekend I was on duty at three events as most members were on their annual lourdes pilgrimage with the sick. Sunday: Assisted at a Greystones rugby blitz for the whole day. Dealt with: 2 concussions, 2 bandaged knees, a few scrapes and a full spinal on the main pitch which we transferred to a HSE ambulance upon it's arrival. As part of the TY program we recently had a day out visiting some of Dublin's well known locations. Our day began with a tour of Croke Park, viewing all the vital aspects from presidential entrances to changing rooms, the tunnel onto the pitch and the corporate boxes. We took in the views of it's manicured field and proceeded to invade the museum area with eighty kids wanting to whack sliotars as fast as possible or jump as high as they could! I actually found our time there really interesting, even though, let's leave it at I'm not sporty, as there seemed to be a lot of history shrouded in or around the building from the lawn-mowing techniques to the background to 'Hill 16'. We then got the buses to Glasnevin Cemetery, somewhere I've heard of often but had not yet been so was really looking forward to. It suffices to say it didn't disappoint and our three or so hours were oozing with interesting graves, facts and people. It was of particular note to see the grave of Michael Collins and the remembrance wall recognising all lives lost in the 1916 rising. Last week, for my community service, I assisted the staff of DublinSouthFM in Dundrum Town Centre with the running of their voluntary community radio station. The station has over 60 volunteers and it's shows are largely run by the disabled and elderly members of the area. I assisted them in multiple ways over the course of the week including Sound Engineering some of their shows and caring for their various guests/presenters that were in the studio.
I found the experience very engaging while I was busy working on a show or talking to guest although as it is a relatively small station, and a percentage of the shows are prerecorded, some days did pass quite slowly in comparison to other experiences but I appreciate this was a community service meant to benefit them more than gain experience so overall I can say it was a truly enjoyable week and a welcomed insight into the behind the scenes of a service I certainly took for granted before. Recently I had the opportunity again to assist our SVP committee in their fundraising campaign at Cornelscourt. I decided to do two shifts this time, from 12-4, as I had really enjoyed it last time and they were still looking for more people.
Just like the previous time, I loved talking to the various customers that passed through and became quite hungry looking at the huge variety of fresh food that I packed! We managed to raise a total of €1,750 over the course of the day though. About 10 of us were on duty on the sea front and the main street for about 4 hours dealing with basic plasters and a few lost kids!
Finished my final ECDL module today on Kompzer (Website Builder). Possibly the hardest yet, closely followed by GIMP, but probably the most useful in the long run.
I really enjoyed the ECDL course and feel I learnt a lot of little things along the way that will help me with my use of IT in general and in particular with programs I'm only now starting to use. On Tuesday evening I finished my TY Steer Clear course, obtaining 94% in the final test.
During I had the course I had the opportunity to learn all aspects related to driving and vehicles in general from various signs to changing tyres/car maintenance to finally driving a car around (even if it was just the school)! I was delighted to get the chance to this as I felt I learnt some really important things that will without doubt help me in the upcoming tests and just driving in general. For my TY mini-business I teamed up with Anna and Rachael to create and produce an educational board game. We wanted to do something more than reselling products and felt a design project like this suited us best. The Business: Over the course of a few months we talked with teachers and drew up our initial designs. I then created a digital version over the course of a weekend and after a lot of tweaking in the following weeks we managed to produce something really quite professional. We then reached out to various printing agencies to get the best quotations. We ended up going with Reads for our 3,750 A6 cards and one of Anna's contacts for the boards. After a huge amount of work finalising the details of each card and packaging them up we marketed our product to the schools in the area and ones we had ties to. Once we had completed this process initially we immediately began work on the business plan required for the competition. Competition Day: The enterprise display and competition was held in the Wicklow Local Enterprise Office's campus and had about 35 teams participating. We first had to give a three minute speech in front of everyone and then afterwards we had three rounds of judges come around to us to ask about the various aspects of the business. I felt the judging went really well as it was a lot easier to describe our reasoning behind things to them in person rather than a report. Clearly they also thought we explained it well to them as we ended up winning the award for 'Best Pitch/Presentation'. Overall I feel, although stressful, it was definitely a valuable program to participate in both for the CV but also as it concretes some of the principals and topics we cover in business and therefore reinforces them very effectively. Very enjoyable too and a welcomed break! Finished my second last module of ECDL today on GIMP which is a rather complicated image editing program, after all it took me three attempts to pass!
A very useful program to know how to work though for the future and enjoyable to be on. After my recent success in the BT Young Scientist I was offered a place in the BT Business Bootcamp in the UCD Innovation Academy along with approx 30 other prize winners. The program, now in it's seventh year, is a four day residential bootcamp designed to teach basic entrepreneurial skills in order to take ideas from the drawing board to production. My idea was chosen as one of the six, out of over 500 projects, that would be developed and focused on over the week. Over the four days we had lectures from their professors, talks from past participants and TV personalities and went on visits to companies.
Overall I found this week to be one of the best in TY to date as it was extremely well organised and we all felt like we were of importance in every place we visited and I feel that I've received some very valuable insider knowledge into possible career paths and just general life.
This weekend a few of us in TY and 5th year participated in the Wesley Model United Nations, myself for the first time. Our teams represented two countries, Syria & Ukraine, I was the ambassador for Ukraine and was on the DITECH committee (Disarmament & International Technology Committee). We met up on Friday evening to lobby our 'resolutions' and get signatures, followed by a General Assembly meeting and a short committee meeting where we discussed procedure and presented a mock resolution and amendments. When we returned on Saturday we immediately started discussing resolutions and passed or declined amendments. After lunch my committee decided to debate my resolution as it had received the most signatories in the room. After debating three amendments to it, proposed by other countries, my resolution was passed, which I was very happy with as it was first time doing anything like this. We finished with another General Assembly followed by a closing and awards ceremony. I had been looking forward to MUN since last year and found the experience completely lived up to my expectations. Hopefully now I'm aware of what's required and have some experience doing it I can do even better next time the opportunity arises. Last week I, and the 80 or so others in TY piled onto two buses and raided the small town of Carlingford in Co. Louth for what was going to be the busiest, most action-packed five days of Transition Year to date! Our first day started with a briefing as we were split into our groups for activities and shown our rooms, which for me meant sharing with 10 people, eventful to say the least! Over the five days we completed a full spectrum of activities, both indoor and outdoor, ranging from juggling and plate spinning to zip lining and laser tag. We also had a half day of rafting/canoeing which was a nice break from the land environment but was absolutely freezing and I wasn't thinking about much other than the cold when I was out there! I would have to put the zip lines in the forest as the highlight because of their length, speed and view from them which added up to some really enjoyable moments but these were closely followed by the laser tag for which the forest course and camouflage overalls made it feel rather realistic. For a better sense of what happened you can watch the video I produced below. vvv *Before I get started, yes there were men working there, about half of their staff actually!!! Over mid-term I spent my week at the offices of Mothercare's Ireland's HQ working in the e-commerce and distribution department. This very small group of four manages all the running of their online store (which brings in multiple millions every year) and manages the delivery needs of the stores and online customers. Monday: I started off my best week yet by completing sitting down with one of the directors to discuss the in's and out's of their online business and how every sections works, in extreme detail. Something we talked about for that hour or so was customer experience whilst on their website compared to others so for that day I spent my time going through certain product codes (PLU's) and made sure they were searchable correctly in relation to their catalogue, what information was given for each product (ie. images / videos) and the overall customer experience from the point of view of someone who hadn't visited their website before instead of someone who looks at it everyday and knows it inside out. Tues/Wed: For the next two/three days I was asked to complete market research on the Irish big five (their main competitors), something he would've liked to do but couldn't spare the man hours! I spent these few days on their websites examining every minute detail from fonts to buttons to how you navigated the website and searched for items. Most importantly to an online business is the ease at which customers can order items from it. There's only one way to do this effectively, order something! So on Wednesday, I ordered items, a lot of rubber ducks, from the five largest baby stores, including Mothercare and evaluated every single click for it's necessity and overall feel when going through the process. Throughout the week I also boosted their online presence with basic google resources they hadn't fully availed of such as individual store opening times and images on google maps and suggested possibly introducing 360 interior shots (street view) so customers can walk around the shop and look at products from their house. Thurs/Fri:
On Thursday I reviewed the companies Terms & Conditions and Returns Policy and again compared them to competitors, which was more interesting than it sounds! After reading through these documents I discovered that there was a loophole meaning that say for example the computer glitches and gives the same price for every product on the website, which happened to multiple companies in the past, this extra condition would mean that the company wouldn't have to honour the price in certain cases. I created the clause by merging other companies similar clauses and submitted it to the board which passed it on Friday morning and it's now live. Also on Thurs/Fri I wrote up a two page product returns leaflet to be attached to every delivery from now on so clients can easily find information about returning goods or customer service info. On Friday I summarised all my findings and suggestions from competitor research and the like and presented it to board members. An absolutely phenomenal work experience overall and one in which I really felt part of their team from Monday through to Friday. Last week our almost two month ordeal with 1950's life came to it's culmination. After six shows and 100's of man hours the whole thing was over and we had to "go back to high school".
As I've mentioned previously, and most of you will remember, I played the role of 'Teen Angel' in 'Grease'. I also was a band member for the big dance and song two duets as part of that. Although I wasn't completely comfortable with the acting part of it at the beginning of the process, I feel I adequately grew into the roles as the weeks went on and hopefully pulled off good performances. Overall, a very enjoyable time and much needed break whilst building teamwork at the same time. Yesterday I had my first real world experience of working with the Order of Malta Ambulance Corps (OMAC) (First Aid - Community Service) at one of their calendar's biggest event, 'Hell + Back' in Killruddery Estate. It involved about 4,500 participants, 10km, 29 obstacles, 4 OMAC units, 3 ambulances, 4 jeeps, a minibus, 35 medics, 115 injuries, 4 hospital transfers and over 10 hours of total hell! (great fun actually) The day started at about 8:00 when we met near Meals on Wheels to get a lift up to the estate. We set up the first aid hall and the various posts around the course before proceeding to a briefing and finding out where we were stationed. In my case 'Tango 3' (foot patrol) near start/finish line in the morning and 'Papa 1' (first aid post) in the afternoon.
The morning was quite uneventful with just one sprained ankle in about two hours so we spent our time dancing to the tunes blaring from the start line and laughing at the many individuals literally tip-toeing through the small puddles and muck only a few meters from the start line when we knew what was around the corner (ie. 10ft hills and almost neck deep water)! The afternoon was another story altogether. I looked after about 15 patients with large cuts and some almost stab wounds from obstacles, stones and sticks. Most had to be thoroughly cleaned with syringes of water, bandaged/plastered up and then I spent about the same amount of time filling out the respective paperwork! In the afternoon I, being the trainee on site, helped out a patient with a broken leg, where her bone was protruding through her skin. After I and a colleague prepared her for and put her back into the ambulance, from the first aid post where she was examined, she was transferred to St.Vincent's Hospital. I also assisted in the care of a possible spinal injury patient after she had fallen off the '10 Foot Tassie' onto her shoulder. After about an hour of checks by the onsite doctor and paramedics, it was deemed she just had a torn ligament and was advised to make her way to her GP in her own time. Due to her and a few others needing extra care a few of us were kept back until they had all safely left meaning it was about six before I finished up! Definitely one of the more enjoyable parts of the year so far, even taking into account the type of work I was doing, and I felt I learnt a lot more being dropped in the deep end than I would on other duties.
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Hi, my name is Joshua Dargan Hayes and
I'm a TY student passionate about Enterprise and Tech. Categories
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May 2016
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