Alexander Webb

ACLC 2017 Senior

SERVICES

RESUME

Alexander Webb

736 Lincoln Ave

alexander.webb@alamedaclc.org

Summary:

A hard working, flexible, independent, curious, and resourceful ACLC high school student that wants to help others.

Education:

11th grader at ACLC (January 11)
Has taken and passed a psychology course, a sociology course, a US history course, and an astronomy course at the College of Alameda
Have studied Spanish, American Sign Language, and Japanese

Experience:

Volunteered as an assistant for the curator of The Alameda Museum (April-May 2015)

Dusted jewelry and various metals
Handled money
Took out trash and recycling
Vacuumed the floor
Filed boxes and folders

Took an online class about technology and gaming for my mother’s boss (June-August 2014)

Took notes on videos and online passages
Created projects and games for the class on a computer
Summarized information I learned in a beginner-friendly way that could be easily understood

PERSONAL ESSAY

I came to ACLC from Nea in 10th grade. While I found that the two schools were ran similarly, the environment at Nea was very different for me than it is here at ACLC. Compared to ACLC, Nea felt callous and untrusting. While the workload wasn’t too much, the atmosphere at Nea made me less confident of myself and my work, and I believe that I did worse in school because of it. After being at ACLC for a few years, I can say that it is very different here. The atmosphere here is much nicer, which allows me to be more productive as a learner. Here, I feel more confident to be creative and try things, and am able to focus on my work without having to worry about being outdone others. All in all, I’m glad that I came to ACLC and owe a lot of who I am to this school.

I believe that ACLC changed my work ethic for the better. Before coming here, I didn’t think much about the assignments I was given. To me, work was just a dull roadblock I needed to get past in order to continue on the path of academic excellence. This philosophy caused me to feel apathetic towards school and learn less from the work I did. ACLC changed my way of thinking. I feel more attached to the work I do, and learn more from school because of it. The classes here are engaging, and all of the curriculum is in some way or another interesting and relevant.

When I first came to ACLC, my favorite subjects were math and history. I like math because it’s challenging and works my mind, and learning about the past with history is really interesting to me. While I enjoyed these topics, I was less enthusiastic about the other school subjects. I hated the essays we did in English, and while I did alright in Science, taking it was a chore. After coming to ACLC, I’ve found these subjects a lot more engaging than I ever have before. The texts I have read so far in ACLC’s English classes are fascinating to read and analyze, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the activities I’ve done in Chemistry and Biology. In fact, I’ve recently been considering taking what I’ve learned in English to the next level and taking a job as some sort of writer.

I use thinking and reasoning skills on a daily basis. Like I said before, math has always been one of my favorite subjects, and that subject is all about thinking and reasoning. That’s why I like math so much: it’s mentally rigorous. I also regularly make use of my skills in ACLC’s PiE Robotics club. In said club, it’s our job to create a robot that can compete with the robots of other schools at a specific game. Since the game changes each year, we have to be flexible and creative. It takes a lot of thought to create something as complex as a robot, and devising a strategy to win against the robots of other teams is paramount. In order to compete against the rest of the pack, we have to utilize thinking and reasoning skills.

In order to succeed at ACLC, you have to have interpersonal skills. Every class I have taken at this school has required me to participate in group conversations about the curriculum. This is especially true with the English and Science classes I have taken, where we talked in small groups daily. From these talks, I’ve learned how to be a good teammate by responding to the ideas of others, and I’ve learned how to be a good leader by starting discussions and sharing my own ideas. I also demonstrated interpersonal skills with PiE Robotics. Creating a operational robot from scratch in a club as big and inspired as the one we have at ACLC is a big task. Everyone in the club has to compromise, communicate, and be a good teammate in order for the club to run smoothly.

One of ACLC’s biggest strengths is how it utilizes technology. It has hundreds of computers that students can use for school/homework, and ACLC’s always looking for new programs and websites to help teach learners. After 3 years at ACLC, I can say that I took advantage what technology this school has. I have used the computers here at ACLC everyday I have been here to help me finish homework assignments. And of course, ACLC’s PiE Robotics club is all about technology, and I’m thankful that I was a part of it and have learned what I have. ACLC has provided me plenty of opportunities, and I am definitely a more tech-savvy person after coming here.

My academic life changed after I came to ACLC, and I can say without any doubt that the change was positive. The classes and facilitators here are top-notch, I was really able to get into the curriculum and focus on my interests. From nice, cooperative learners to extremely handy technical equipment, ACLC has given me everything I have needed to succeed. ACLC has been a great experience that I can honestly say bettered me as a person, and I’m glad that I was able to go there.

Our work

ABOUT US

CONTACT

MY VISION

My main goal for the future is to get a job that I am able to enjoy and do work that I can be proud of. I want to work with people that I can relate to and improve me as a person. I want to have the freedom to be creative and I want to feel like I am helping others. My first step is to graduate from high school and go to a high-quality, yet affordable college. Once there, I plan to study psychology and English. My current plan is to major in cognitive science and minor in creative writing. After that, I would get a job where I can apply what I learned.

Internship

Introduction

From June 2016 to August 2016, I was a marketing intern for the app Flippy. Flippy is an app that allows you to insert yourself into music videos, scenes in movies and TV shows, and other well known clips. I actually found about this internship through ACLC. One day when I was checking my email, I saw that someone sent out an advertised for this internship through the school’s listserv. Due to my curiosity of the marketing field and general interest in apps/technology, I decided that I should take this opportunity and fill out the application.

This was an online internship where I interacted with other interns and the CEO of flippy, Misha Leybovich, in 1 hour video discussions every Monday. In each of these conferences, Misha started by talking about the current state of Flippy and how it was being marketed, and ended by telling us about the company's future plans and what we need to do as interns to help. Examples of some assignments I've done under this internship are creating clips that could be used to advertise the app, searching for the contact information of influential people that would like the app and potentially recommend it to others, and researching in order to find out how to make Flippy more engaging to certain demographics. Most of the assignments I got in this internship took a great deal of research and time, so we were given a week to complete each one.

Activity Log

Week 1: The first week of this internship began with a online video call with the CEO of Flippy, Misha Leybovich. The call served as a basic introduction to the program where we learned about Misha’s background and the app itself. At the end of the call, we were assigned to use the app to create two clips that Flippy could use to advertise with. I got one clip from my friend Alfonso and another one from one of my mom’s coworkers.

Week 2: Our assignment this week was to share a referral link that linked to the app’s download page. To motivate us interns, Misha made this into a challenge where whoever got the most people to download the app would win. As far as this contest went, I wasn’t anywhere close to winning. I tried sharing my link to my friends through Skype and Instagram, but many of them couldn’t download it because Flippy was only compatible with iPhones and iPads at the time. I wasn’t the only intern with this problem, and Misha assured us that they would be working on moving Flippy to other platforms in the future. Looking back, I should have shared my referral link on more social medias than I did, and I’ll make sure to in more effort in my future assignments.

Week 3: This week’s assignment was to select three celebrities who already have clips on Flippy, then find the contact info of fifteen people who casually interact with the celebrities and direct that information to Flippy for them to use later. The reason we chose to target the people who surrounded celebrities rather than the celebrities themselves was because they would likely be less busy and more likely to look at messages that other people send to them. Ideally, they would like the app and show a clip with the celebrity they personally know to the celebrity, and they would share that they liked the app on social media, which would increase Flippy’s popularity due to the large followings celebrities have. The celebrities I chose for this assignment were Ariana Grande, Brendon Urie, and Kanye West. It was surprisingly hard to find the contact info for their entourage, but after a few hours of detective work, I succeeded in finding fifteen different people.

Week 4: For this assignment, it was our job to find clips of music videos on YouTube that Flippy could put into the app. This was easily my favorite assignment from this internship, as we had a lot of freedom and could choose whatever clips we thought would be good for Flippy. One music video I chose for this assignment was Sia’s Chandelier. I chose this music video because it had a lot of movement in it and thought it would be pretty entertaining to insert your face in. Though there was a lot of freedom with this assignment, there were also certain rules we had to follow when selecting a clip. For example, the clip had to be between 5 and 15 seconds, and the face of the main person in the clip can only be obscured for short intervals, or else the app’s facial recognition won’t work. Due to this last rule, it became somewhat difficult to find a clip for my music video, as Sia’s face is covered by her hair for most of it. In the end however, I was able to get a clip from this music video and several others.

Week 5: This assignment was probably the hardest one that we’ve done thus far. It was similar to what we did in week 3, but instead of people that knew celebrities, we had to find the contact info of pop culture/consumer app journalists--their email addresses specifically. It was hard enough to find journalists that other interns haven’t already identified, and it was close to impossible to find all of their email addresses. I took me quite some time to finish this assignment; I’m slowly starting to realize how difficult and strenuous a marketing job can be.

Week 6: This week’s assignment was even more difficult than last. In order for Flippy to appeal to a more global audience, we had to pick three different countries, then three different TV shows that are popular with Flippy’s 13-25 year old demographic for each of those countries, and then find the contact information for three people per show: 27 people total. This took a very long amount of time, considerably more than any other assignment in this internship so far.

Week 7: This was the last week of my internship at Flippy. In our weekly video call, the rest of the interns and I reviewed everything we learned about marketing and how we helped contribute to Flippy. Our final assignment was to continue sharing our referral links with others. As I didn’t get very many downloads last time, I made sure to increase my scale and shared my link through more forms of social media. This ended up working and I got more downloads than I did in my second week with Flippy.

Reflection

The assignments for weeks five and six were easily the most challenging parts of this internship. For these assignments, we had to find ten popular culture/app journalists and twenty-seven different contacts that are connected to popular foreign TV shows, respectively. It proved to be extremely hard to get this information online. On top of it being quite difficult to find people that meet these specific niches, it was also very hard to find all the contact information that Flippy needed. Not everyone has their email address openly disclosed on their Twitter, for instance. In order to complete assignments like these, you have to be resourceful. If you can’t find someone’s contact information from one website, try another. Social medias like LinkedIn and Facebook were my best friends for these types of assignments. Sometimes however, even after searching what seemed like the whole internet, I was still unable to find people. When this happened, I had to find another person whose information was more publicly available.

Coming into this internship, I didn’t really know what to expect. I did download and use the Flippy app a little bit before I submitted my application, but that was all I knew. I was completely unfamiliar with the world of marketing and had no idea about what kind of work we would do. After completely this internship, I can say that I’ve learned a lot through Misha and independent research. This internship also helped me realize exactly how laborious a marketing job can be. While I can’t see myself going much further in this field, this internship was still an extremely valuable experience for me. It’s hard to find a job where the organization that you work for doesn’t market, and what I’ve learned in these seven weeks will really allow me to be a stronger asset for when I’m employed.