Overview of the Year

Tia Nayar, a volleyball athlete, completed the Independent Study Mentorship program during her senior year. She studied physical therapy under the mentorship of Lance Walker at the Michael Johnson Performance Center. During her mentorship she was given the opportunity to sit in on dry needling and cupping certification programs, work as a PT technician, and help with the 2015 NFL combine class. "It has been incredible working with all different types of athletes. From olympians to younger athletes, there was never a dull moment,” Tia remembered. Tia Nayar had a truly unforgettable year in the ISM program. Her only regret is not taking ISM her junior year so she could participate two years in this amazing program.

Weekly Report #31

I have been practicing my 20 second "thank you" statement which I will give in front of the entire auditorium, like a religion. I have printed it out and taped it to my restroom mirror, fridge, and car steering wheel so I practice it at least 15 times a day. I really want to nail it. In fact, I might be more nervous about giving that 20 second speech than about giving my 30 minute speech. Actually, who am I kidding? I am just nervous about the whole night. :)

MY PRODUCT IS FINISHED!!!! I met with Thomas on Wednesday night and had him download the app on my iPhone, iPad, and my mom’s iPhone.  Unfortunately, the app will not be ready for the app store in time for FPN. Having the app on three devices will allow the audience to pass them around and view my work, during the presentation.

This whole week has been repetition, upon repetition, upon repetition of my speech. The nerves are starting to settle in and, I hate to admit it, but I already had 3 breakdowns. However, I found the more I workout the less energy I have to stress. I can't believe FPN is in five days. Where did the whole year go?

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 10 hours on ISM work this week.

Weekly Report #30

April 27th- May 4th

         I went to staples and ordered my printed programs. While I was at staples I put in an order for a cute little thank you present for Lance. I do not want to document what the present is on here because he reads these updates regularly. However, I will add a section after Final Presentation Night explaining what each item means and its significance. Also this week I created my door sign for my FPN room. I made my design quite simple because I think signs and posters should not overwhelm the viewers. 

         This week has been a week full of anticipation. The NFL draft was this past week and, like many others, I was watching. There were a total of 10 out of our 15 MJP athletes that got picked. Some of the athletes include, Ty Montgomery, Ameer Abdullah, Try Flowers, Darius Philon, Jarvis Harris, Kenny Bell, Hauoli Kakaha, Breshad Perriman, and Tevin Mitchel. It was a VERY exciting weekend because this time, I wasn’t just a person watching TV. I was watching and hoping "my" people would be picked. It was a totally different feeling. This upcoming week is that last week for us to plan for FPN. Final presentation night is less that 2 weeks away!

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 5 hours on ISM work this week.

Weekly Report #30

April 20th- April 27th

This week I finalized my invitations. I put each of them in an envelope and finished handing them out.  I have been very happy with the number of people who have sent me an RSVP.  Once the invitations were taken care of,  I met with Mrs. Lauck (Liberty’s Anatomy and Physiology teacher) before school on Monday morning.  We confirmed me previous email requesting to use her skeleton for display at FPN. Also on Monday morning, I went to Ms. Krug’s classroom and practiced my speech. My Wysong said it would be wise to “practice the speech in the room you will present in because it is much easier to adjust the lights and chairs to fit the room style”, as opposed to adjusting the room style to fit the background of the presentation.

I am happy to announce- I FINALLY finished taking notes from the external manual Lance gave me a few months ago. I re-wrote all my previous notes from the external manual and accumulated them into a nice notebook. I plan to have this notebook on display at my booth at FPN so people can see everything I have learned in my internship experience at MJP.

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 10 hours on ISM work this week.

Weekly Report #29

April 13th- April 20th

         This week I submitted the last 15 minutes of my Final Presentation Speech. I also worked on my Final Presentation Night printed program. The FPN printed program is something I will hand out to try and promote people to come to my classroom. The program will also be outside of my classroom. The brochure will include my field of study, mentor information, an outline of the presentation, and an acknowledgment page.  

I am not very comfortable with the application Pages, but in order to create a unique brochure I needed a software to allow me to be creative. I played around with the formats in Pages and found it was much simpler than I originally thought.

Also this week, I used some of the MJP athletes as models for the exercises in my app. After the  photo shoot, I now know I do not have any desire to be a professional photographer.  Taking professional photos is difficult.  Too many details, too many variables. However, after several shots I got the pictures I needed.  I uploaded the shots and added them to an email which I then sent to Thomas for him to incorporate into the app.   Unfortunately, the email was 400mg and it failed to send. I tried to send many smaller emails, but that was taking too much time. Thomas suggested I create a dropbox and then upload my large file to and share it with him. Of course, since he is the tech wizard, he was right and it worked!  The app building process continues!

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 15 hours on ISM work this week.

Weekly Report #28

April 6th- April 13th

First, I created my invitation list. Mr. Wysong told us we needed to invite at least 20 people to ensure at least 10 people sit in our room during our presentation. Second, I sent out my “save the dates.”  Third, I created my invitations and sealed them. I decided to go with a very classic design. I chose to eliminate color and pictures from my invitation unlike many of my classmates. I plan on handing them out next week. 

After weeks of preparation, I finally submitted the first 15 minutes of my FPN speech.The assignment was to record ourselves giving a speech and then upload to youtube so our classmates could give us critiques. I plan to submit the last 15 minutes at the end of this upcoming week. I thought it would be impossible to talk for 30-40 minutes. Instead, I am having a difficulty narrowing down my information.

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 4 hours on ISM work this week.

Weekly Report #27

March 23rd- April 6th

This week I worked on preparing my ISM portfolio for Lance. I submitted it to him and he plans to return it to me this upcoming Friday. Also this week I began working on my final presentation. I worked on the outline but then realized the majority of what I plan to present on Final Presentation Night is basically a combination of all my previous speeches. I plan to use my information from my Original Work Speech and my Research Speech along with my Introduction Speech to form my final presentation speech.

I checked with Thomas about how the production of my app is going and he said everything is on track. There are only 39 days left until Final Presentation Night and I can already see how the stress is getting to my peers.  Before FPN I need to go in Mrs. Krugs room and practice presenting. I need to check and see how the lights work in the room and make sure everything is bright and clear. I want to rehearse as much as I can so I can really display my knowledge.

-Outside of the classroom I spent approximately 6 hours on ISM work this week.