May 18th

Another activity I did at Gordon was taking care of some of the inventory that had to be done. To say the least, Gordon was not very organized. The concession room, which is closed after the basketball season ends, was a complete mess. There was leftover food such as skittles, snickers, M&M's, and popcorn still clogged in the popcorn machine. Apparently, this room was not a part of the janitor's responsibilities because it looked as if it had not been touched for several months. I was given the task of vacuuming the floor, cleaning and wiping down the popcorn machine, and finding a way to make everything appear neat. This took me roughly an hour and a half. When I was finished, I was under the impression that would be the extent of it. That turned out not to be the case at all. To the left of the entrance to the Bennett Center there is a small classroom. In the back of that classroom there is a door which leads to a storage room. This storage room could not have been more stuffed to the brim full of miscellaneous junk. The intramural sports at Gordon had thrown in all of their athletic equipment, and seemed to be battling the Athletic Department for space. There were two shelves which were completely full of championship and mvp trophies from throughout the years. My job was to categorize them by sport, year, player, and type of award. This was a lot easier said than done. The toughest part was lifting the top trophies down from the highest shelf and then carrying them out into the classroom to be sorted. They were really quite heavy. The part that took the longest was writing down each category of trophy. It did get quite monotonous but that was where I had to learn the lesson about continuing to push through when things got tough. It would have been easy to just give up, but I kept sorting the trophies. I approached it by putting myself in the mindset that I was getting paid to this job, even though I knew very well that I was not. It made it somewhat easier that way. The only other inventory issue that I had to take care of was in the storage room up by the turf field, the Brigham Athletic Complex. I had to count how many bottles of spray paint they had (the spray point that they used to line the field). This seemed to be a little bit pointless to me, as all the sports seasons had already ended, and there was really no need for the fields to be lined anymore. But this was another opportunity for me to learn another important life lesson, and I think I did just that.

May 13th

I am currently in Mr. Tymann's office working on several different things. He wanted us to take another look at the websites of other schools and find a list of things out about them. Such as who the President is, the Athletic Director, find a list of sports, find out how many full time coaches there are working there, a list of club sports, and the name of the website provider. This took me probably about twenty minutes or so, considering he gave me four schools to research. Some of the websites were better than others. Eastern Nazarene easily had the least accessible one. All I was looking for was the name of the President but they couldn't even show me that. Instead they had a 44 page online handbook about the faculty. There were sections that were pretty much just defining the word faculty. Very much not helpful. In other news Cory Ward has been giving us attitude all day long. For some reason he decided to dress up today, in a long sleeved, button up shirt with a pair of slacks. This is after yesterday when he gave us another one of his impossible missions. He wanted us to go out to the baseball field and count all the individual blades of grass or something like that, I'm not exactly sure because I wasn't really listening.

May 10th and 11th

The past two days we've gone back to a lot of the marketing stuff that we started previously. Last week we were asked to create a recruitment flyer by a couple of the coaches. It was kind of confusing to know what sort of content they wanted so we basically just had to make it look good. But more recently we've been asked to create a marketing plan for Gordon College. We have to decide what kind of things are appealing about the school and what aspects aren't so great, but focusing on the athletic side of things. We came up with a plan that identifies Gordon's strengths and weaknesses, their competition, and the kinds of students that they should be targeting. My fellow interns and I decided that Gordon College would be best off targeting Christian students from around the East Coast area. If they happened to have some connection to Gordon College such as a relative that attended then they should obviously be targeted in the recruiting process. We were also asked by Mr. Tymann why we ourselves did not consider Gordon. We all answered that it was far too close to home. He also asked for suggestions on how they should approach recruits. I said that personally I would prefer a more personal touch. Regular phone calls and or text messages etc.

Scrubbin Part 2

The next day we got to scrub pretty much the entire bottom floor of the Bennett Center. To be truthful I was less than pleased about this particular activity but you know me I'm a warrior. Garin and I just sang some songs and pretty soon it didn't feel so terrible. Apparently the walls hadn't been cleaned like that in thirteen years or something. So someone had to do it. We did the whole lobby and all the racquetball courts before we found out we weren't supposed to use the sponges on glass. Oh well. It looked shiny to me. There were lots of little marks on the white concrete or whatever it was. Not all of them wanted to be removed. A lot of the marks that did come right off appeared to be blood, which was nice. We really took one for the team, which some members of the team recognized, mainly my main man Jon Tymann who gave us the rest of the day off. Can't say enough good things about that man. But Cory, don't even get me started on Cory. He enjoys seeing us in pain. Our pain brings him joy. And I KNOW he's going to read this. Hey Cory. You're mean.

Scrubbin

Two days ago we were sent out to Brigham to clear out any sports equipment that was still up around the turf field. There were a few lacrosse balls and various other items like hurdles from the track meet. Sam had to go back to school for english so Garin and I were left alone to walk around and pick everything up. It was still pretty early in the day but the sun was beaming down upon us and I felt the need to get some rays. So the shirts came off and we picked up a little early morning tan. It was a nice change of pace. Pretty relaxing. But all good things must come to an end and this was no different. We ended up back at the office folding more invitations for the golf tournament and flyers for the summer camps. It was then our job to bring these to the mail room to be MAILED. The mail room is an alright place I just wish they didn't ask so many questions. They felt it was necessary to check every single envelope that we handed them. No, don't do that. They're all from athletics. And they all have to be mailed to the little addresses that are written on the front. You're the mail room you should know how to mail things. Grinds my gears.

Third Week

This is it ladies and gentlemen. I am currently in the middle of the first day of my third week at my internship with the Gordon College Athletic Department. We had a fairly slow start to the day. Garin and I were both fairly exhausted. I personally feel somewhat like a zombie. That's mondays for you I guess. Our first objective of the day was to create and deliver invitations to the Gordon golf tournament at Myopia... to the mail room. Our journey to the mail room was probably one of our best trips to date. Both Garin and I were both famished so we decided to stop by the cafeteria. There were so many options to choose from but the kind man who worked there suggested the Egg McGordon. The Egg McGordon is a delicious breakfast sandwich that consists of egg, cheese, and your choice of bacon or sausage on a tasty breakfast biscuit. I would strongly suggest it to anyone who ever pays a visit to Gordon College. It goes very well with a 'Naked' smoothie beverage. Literally zero sugar in this beverage. All natural, just straight juice. From six different fruits. Anyways, I digress. My partner in crime and I have been sent out to deliver more brochures to Rockport Middle School and to Saint Ann's school in Gloucester. Well, that's 250 words. I'm out. Peace Murph.

Week 3

On wednesday we all did some more deliveries together. Mr. Tymann sent us out to deliver some brochures to a few Christian schools including Covenant and another Christian academy. It was a pretty fun experience and we did get lost a couple times. In Lowell there were two streets that had the same exact name so that threw us off our route for a little while. When we returned to Gordon we saw the groundskeeper Cory out on the baseball field beginning to prep the field. We tried to sneak into the back door without him seeing us but apparently he still did! We weren't real excited about setting up the baseball field when we already knew that there was like a seventy percent chance that the game would be rained out anyways. But sure enough we were out there in the cold raking the entire infield. They wanted us to smooth out the clumps of dirt that had been forming over the past couple games. Cory told us that we had to do it manually with the rakes because he did not know where the guy with the tractor was. Well the tractor showed up and smoothed out the whole thing in about 5 minutes. So it did the same thing in about 5 minutes that took us almost an hour. Needless to say I was a bit peeved. Thats life I guess.

First Day After Vaca

Today was our first day back after vacation. We actually volunteered for a couple days last week because they needed some help to set up for their track meet. That was kind of a hassle. We mostly just set up the hurdles for the races, which is really inconvenient and annoying. Those things are heavier than you would think. I did not get to stick around for the actual races because I had to go to my REAL job but I was told that it went well. Which means we did a good job I guess. But getting back into the actual flow of things was good today. Previously we had helped him create a list of schools that the Gordon Athletic Department should send brochures to. Today Garin, Sam, and I had to call up each and every one of these schools. It was definitely a new experience. At first it was tough to figure out what to say. I did stumble over my words a couple times, but eventually I got it together and felt more confident about what I was doing. We had to talk to the secretary at each school and ask if we needed the approval of the superintendent in order to send brochures to the school. At most of them we did, while others just allowed us bring them over. Mr. Tymann sent Garin and I out to deliver a lot of them to different schools. It was fun but it did take a while.

Second Week

It's starting to feel as if Jon Tymann and the other members of the Gordon Athletic Department aren't really sure what to do with us. Mr. Tymann has said that he is trying to think of some long term projects that we could work on for him. I made sure to mention how much I enjoyed the marketing and advertising aspect of what we had done so far. He agreed that it would be valuable to use us in that way, because we are the age group that they are trying to target through recruiting. We can give him invaluable advice on how to create a web site/clothing that appeals to high school seniors trying to choose a college (from an athletics standpoint anyways). We've already given him some pointers on how to improve the Gordon College Athletic Department web site. We showed him how they can make better use of space. Basically their web site is too simple. It does have the needed information but it's not really grabbing anyones attention. On top of that, we threw together some potential designs for new shirts, sweatshirts, and hats. That stuff was pretty fun and I hope we can continue to do more with that.

a new chapter in the epic tale that is jake browns life. SCORE

I have now gone through four days of my internship at the Gordon College Athletic Department. Our first day there Jon Tymann (the athletic director) gave us a tour of all the athletic facilities. I should mention that "us" refers to Sam Christopher, Garin Sweet, and myself. After the tour we worked with the groundskeeper whose name is Cory. He showed us how to line the softball and baseball fields, and set them up in other ways for the games. He also brought us up to the turf field where we did a little trash pick-up and just cleaned in general. On friday and monday we got to do some work in the training room, like filling up water jugs and bottles and then driving them out to the various fields. But as Mr. Tymann promised we did get to do some more serious office type work. Today he asked us to compare the Gordon College Athletics web site and that of Endicott College. He asked us to write down what we liked and didn't like, and suggestions to make it better. Another project he wants us to work on is possibly designing a new logo, as well as various other clothing items, because everything in the book store is pretty bland looking. But it has been exciting so far and I look forward to pursuing these projects.