Reflection Blog

I'm finally glad to be able to say that I have finished my Capstone hours for my Senior Exit project. Its been a long and hard process, very stressful but through it all I'm glad to have finally been able to accomplish my goal and more importantly made it this close to graduation. I've seen lots of students fail because of this and lots of students succeed on this, I'm happy to be able to say that I am one of those who has succeeded on this project. It was not easy doing this project, the amount of stress this project adds on to a Senior Student who has a lot of things to worry about is unbelievable. The fate of our graduation is at the hands of this project I personally don't think its very fair.
The whole process to initially find my mentor was very hard and I couldn't believe how hard it was to find someone to help me. I had typical responds from my first three or four attempts of and that was that 25 hours of there time was too much to give up. I could not complain because I understand that 25 hours is a lot of time. That didn't however stop me I kept looking and came across Jeff Mitchell from Rocket Fuel. I was very fortunate to have found him and have the opportunity to work with him.
From the get go the whole experience was really good and in a way eye opening to what the real world is. It just went to show that with hard work and dedication you can make it far in life. A main problem that I encountered while working with my mentor was trying to understand the way that he spoke with his coworkers. They didn't speak a different language, they spoke English but they did use big words. I came to in to this project on my first day at Rocket Fuel scared and not sure what to expect and by the end was a lot more confident with what I was doing. By the end of my time with Jeff I was beginning to be given more responsibilities which was really building my confidence. Overall it was a great learning experience and if I had the chance to do it again all over I would jump at it with no hesitation.

Final Hours

Over Spring Break I managed to meet up with my mentor for one last time. It was exciting and a little upsetting. To know that I was finally going to be done with my 25 hours not only was it a huge relieve for me but it was also very very accomplishing knowing that I'm that much closer to finally graduating. All though I am still completely against the project and highly highly dislike it, it is a very good feeling to know that I have managed to get through it. Anyways on my final meeting with Jeff it was very relaxed I showed up did the usual went to his office and we talked for a bit. He asked for my input on a few things and I did some paper work for him. Then when I was done with all of that he sent me to his bosses office so that I could talk to her about what I had learned through this experience. We talked for about an hour about what I did with Jeff and how it helped me and the overall experience. After she told me that in the summer they would love to have me back on a paid internship to be Jeff's sort of assistant. I politely said that I would love the opportunity and we agreed to stay in touch till then.

Total time blogged for this session: 4 hours 30 minutes
Total time Blogged: 25 hours 75 minutes

5th meeting

Saturday I went to a meeting with my mentor Jeff  and boy was it a wonderful experience it was unbelievable. To be able to experience the way business men all come together to talk about a particular conflict. I can't disclose the information that was talked about at the meeting because of some paper work that I signed with mentor earlier. I will be able to hopefully explain the meeting if everything comes together by my presentation. Something that I found extremely interesting was how well prepared everyone in that room, everyone answered every question as quickly as possible. For 5 hours we were in the conference room talking about the situation they have before all of us took a quick 45 minute lunch during which my mentor gave me some paper work to further understand the situation. After lunch we went back to the conference room for another 4 hours before my Mentor Jeff concluded the conference. They did not come to a mutual agreement however they will be holding another meeting in May which I will likely not be apart of.

Total time Logged for this session: 9 hours 45 minutes
Total time Logged: 21 hours 45 minutes

4th Meeting

Yesterday I got to meet up with my mentor Jeff once again at his office in Redwood city. Now that I've got a better understanding of what I'm doing there and how the whole process of getting my hours is going to be done things have become a lot easier and less stressful for me. I arrived and did the usual checked in with the secretary and went to his office. We talked about what he's done and he informed me that Saturday I would for sure attend a meeting  from 8am to roughly around 2pm. After talking to Jeff about that he sent me over to work with Ari one of his collegues who I had already met. I did that for awhile and then went back with Jeff where he told me to do some research on politics and advertisement so I could have an understanding on what they would talk about at the meeting this coming Saturday.

Time logged for this session: 3 1/2 hours
Total time logged: hours

So I did in fact end up going with my mentor Jeff yesterday mid afternoon. I find it amazing how I am well known there now having only been there once. I walked into the front gate a secretary saw me and I simply showed her my badge and I went through. Anyways I got to the legal floor and was informed that he was in a meeting and would not be out for another hour maybe two depending on how it went but that he had left me a few simple task go do in his office. I went into his office only to find a stack of papers about 3 feet high with a sticky note that said please organize so I got right to work. I finished them and he was still not done with his meeting so I did the next thing he had wanted me to do. Opened up on his computer were a few legal contracts he wanted me to read them over a bit to see everything that a legal contract should have to make sure the company can't get into in trouble. I only got half way through that when Jeff came into his office. He told me that a few complications had happened with his meeting and that he would have to go back and instructed me to go home when I was done with that. It seemed to me like he had a situation so I'll probably give him a call on Monday to see when we could meet up again.


Time logged for this session: 3 1/2 Hours
Total time logged: 8 1/2 hours

2nd Meeting

I once again finally got to meet with my mentor finally yesterday in his office in Redwood City. I drove out there to his Rocket fuel headquarters where I was greeted by a Secretary at the front door before she handed me my badge and a Rocket fuel note pad so I could write any possible notes. Following that she directed me to the elevator to go to the 3rd floor where they handle all their legal manners. Once I got there he began by once again giving me a brief summary of what he does and apologizing for not getting back to me since the last time we met. After that he showed me the whole compound from the legal floor to the engineer floor and ending the top floor where the CEO and all the big guys are. That took about 1 hour because it is a huge building but we finished just in time to attend his meeting of which I can not speak of because of the legal forms that I signed. The meeting took about an hour and a half and was really intresting to be able to hear such a conversation. Followed that we got lunch before I met with one of his collegues Ari who talked to me a little bit about what it is that he does which is deal with privacy laws. I will be meeting again with him probably later today in order to help sort out some paper work.


Time logged for this session: 3 hours
Total time logged: 5 hours

Last evening I finally met up with my mentor for the first time since I asked him to actually mentor me. Any who I arrived at his house at around 7:00pm and we got right to work. We worked for about 2 hours he showed me some paper work and we talked about some of the things that he does as a lawyer. He also gave me a little understanding on how exactly I would finish all 25 hours. In two weeks I'm going to be attending a 3-4 hour meeting with him at Rocket Fuel and take some notes. Lastly he gave me a book in order to get a deeper understanding of law and what he does for a living.