Journal 7

M: 8-5 T: 8-5 W: 8-5 T: 8-5 F: 9-5 Weekly: 44 hours Total: 233 hours

Brianna Fuller 3/2/19

Journal 7 This week was a week full of catching up and organizing what I have done so far. I spent the week preparing for my absence this coming week. I made sure to put in a lot of effort and work in each duty that I am responsible for in order to make sure everyone was set while I was gone. I restocked files, and our wish closet. I completed a big task that we have not had the time for lately. I made progress in my seed packet journey! I updated our tree for all of January and February’s wishes. I had my first breakdown over a welcome call. Next week is my supervisor’s birthday, so I completely decorated her desk and got her some goodies for her to find on Monday! As mentioned before, there are things I am responsible for restocking that are important for everyone in the office. This includes wish folders that wish coordinators will need when a family gets their wish granted, shirts, buttons, and luggage tags. This is very time consuming, but for the wish folders we typically keep 10 of each type (there’s 4 types). I did 30 of each before I left. They should be set for a while! Another big task for me and my supervisor is space for all of our files. We have been keeping our own little system, but anyone else would be so confused. With that being said, I rearranged and put the files she will need closer to her, and the ones I will be working to complete between the two of us. This freed up a lot of clutter we had and made it more efficient for both of us to access these files! I introduced my seed packet idea to our CEO and other supervisors, and they loved my idea to spice up our bereavement process. We do not do much at all, so this is a cheap, but huge improvement even if it seems like it isn’t. I had a meeting with the data tech, and she was able to

estimate just how many packets we would need for a given year. That number came out to around 50, so we got the approval to purchase 60 seed packets! This will only cost us forty-one dollars annually but is really thoughtful for the grieving families. We will order them when I get back in town. I also got all of the new wish files that we are completing and was able to update our tree to show how many wishes we are already granting this year! It is time consuming to be responsible for this tree and all of our new wish kiddos, but it is so cool seeing how many kids we are making happy, and seeing it flourish during my time here! This week I did do a lot of catching up, so I finished all of January’s welcome calls, except a stack of files we cannot get a hold of. This was a lot of files, because this included all of December’s referrals, so it was double what a normal month should look like. Maybe 50-60 files. My first welcome call on Thursday was really hard. When you begin a call you get into character, ready to surprise a family who has been waiting to hear if they got approved or not. I dial the number, being super cheerful and excited, and the mom lets me know she was already having a bad day and that her daughter had sadly passed, but I just made her day worse. I apologized and was completely caught off guard. I thankfully did not freeze up and tried to calm down the mom explaining that the physician did not inform us. I held it together until I got off the phone, and I was immediately hugged by one of my coworkers. I turn around and everyone is like tearing up, and asking if I was okay, and I just cried it out for a little bit. A couple of minutes later, we found out a rush wish that everyone had been working on very hard, the wish child passed that day too. So, this was a very sad day, but I learned just how hard it is even if you have been working there for a long time. Lastly, I went all out for my supervisor for her birthday. I decorated her desk with confetti, balloons, and left her a goodie bag with all her favorites! This brought a little bit of

sunshine to a very sad couple of days we had. I am really enjoying the work I am doing for Make-A-Wish. There are so many good days that outweigh the bad ones, but we are doing everything we can to make these kids wishes come true every single day. It is hard when you lose one you have been working so hard on, but at least we did everything we could for them, and our dedication shows every day!

Our updated tree compared to last weeks!