Before I get into things, I have to confess that I'm so unbelievably tired that I just ate Chic-Fil-A instead of coming home and fixing food. But at this point, I don't really care.
Day three of interning was, of course & as expected, AMAZING! I seriously have the best internship. I already kind of feel a part of the Museum Services family. I would totally love to run a museum or be apart of museum services forever. But then again, only at USHMM, nowhere else. I've already met so many amazing people and the list keeps growing.
FYI, there is a Museum Services staff from GATLINBURG. His name is Matt Fisher (maybe someone out there knows him). I explained to him exactly where I live. Not Knoxville, not the TN-KY line. I said: I live down the Valley going towards Knoxville, and he said ohhh yeah, like you're going towards Laf. So freaking cool. And he was super nice as well, but I'm getting used to that.
Training today involved groups. USHMM has a reservation link on their website so that bigger groups can make sure they can get in to see the PE (Permanent Exhibition). Group reservations are already booked up for the rest of the year, so you can kind of understand how popular the museum is. Groups can make reservations a year in advance, and the slots fill up pretty quickly.
Groups use the back entrance of the museum, so we were technically "15 Street" today, but we're not totally comfortable running the show by ourselves, so they had us shadowing museum staff. Basically, 15 Street touches base with the chaperone, gets a head count of chaperones and kids, then gets one chaperone to stand at the end of security, hand out a question card, then direct the kids to either a female student or male student holding an ID card of someone's Holocaust story, then they head down the stairs where the second chaperone is lining the kids up on the steps 2-4 across (depending on group size). After everyone is thru, we go downstairs, take them to the groups elevator lobby, give them a brief orientation, then send them up to the PE.
Another position we will be working is "15 Alpha" or "14 Alpha" which means we don't make contact with the chaperones. We are only out there to help security. We tell people to start taking things out of their pockets, get their bags ready to go thru the scanner, take phones out and put them in the bowl or bag, etc. There are two entrances to the museum, 15th St and 14th St, so you're alpha position is according to that.
We also learned how to run films today. We give a intro, show the film, conclusion, done. First we toured the Wexner Center, which is an exhibit on how to take the lessons learned in the PE and apply them to what is going on today. It covers two past genocides, Rwanda and Bosnia, and Darfur, which is currently going on. As we were walking down from the Wexner Center for film training, things were hectic. We didn't realize it at the time but a 10-91 had been called. A 10-91 is an unattended bag. It wasn't a big deal; some kid had just left his bag laying on the floor without realizing it. But we still had to clear everyone out of the main lobby over to the side or down the stairs. It was kind of chaotic. Especially because groups wanted to find one another and that wasn't possible at the time.
As we went up to "rove" and close the floors, we could clearly smell fire on the 2nd floor. Some lovely children had used their museum guides to light some candles in the Hall of Remembrance. That started an entirely new ordeal because the guard and some MS staff had to confront the school leader and deal with that. It was kind of crazy to see a 10-91 and that all in the same day!
I think that pretty much hits the high notes for the day. Tomorrow morning is more training, but tomorrow afternoon we officially start working alone. We won't technically be alone because now that the interns have arrived, there are more staff, so we can team up in needed areas. BUT we are not longer in training! There will still be some days where an intern is running coach check alone or is Alpha 14/15 alone or another position. Things are bound to get interesting.
More tomorrow!
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