MY SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

HELLO THERE! I'M GERANK FOK.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

I am looking to secure a position where I can put my professional knowledge to good use, while simultaneously developing my skills in a business environment. With lots of practical experience to back me up, as well as an extensive skill set, I’ve got the flexibility and necessary experience to get things done right. Want to know more about what I can do for you? Get in touch today.

PERSONAL ESSAY

About Myself and at ACLC

My name is Gerank Fok. I’m a Senior at ACLC, and I’ve been here for 4 years. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned simple things about myself like what kind of music I like, or that I still hate homework and projects. I’ve learned what hobbies I enjoyed and learned some new skills. But I also learned about myself subconsciously. I developed a lot about my own thoughts and feelings, etc.

A few of my own personal qualities include honesty and responsibility. Whenever I make a mistake on something, I’ll be responsible. I’ll talk to my group or leader. I’ll say what I did wrong, and try to work out ways to correct the issue in the future. Unfortunately, I wish my work habits were half as good as my personal qualities. I’m a chronic procrastinator, and I get distracted so easily, I might as well go get tested for ADHD. My attitude towards things is alright. I give it the old college try until I get frustrated (or more likely, distracted). Then I’ll take a break and come back to it, usually with advice from someone else.

Going to ACLC for four years has taught me a lot about core subjects such as English, Math, History, etc. Since I started babbling noises out of my mouth, I’ve been able to speak two languages. English out in public, and Cantonese at home, as well as in my nearby community of Chinatown. I’ve also taken two years of Spanish at ACLC during my freshman and sophomore years. My English classes have helped me learn how to understand, interpret, and communicate ideas from the paper, into my head, and back onto paper. Sometimes during English, we would have Socratic Seminars, where learners can listen to one another, ask questions, voice opinions, and draw conclusions about what we’ve read and learned throughout the class. ACLC has prepared me by teaching me 4 years of math, which include, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, and Calculus. I’ve also taken 4 years of History. I’ve taken Geography, Modern World History, American History, as well as Government. The disciplinary system at ACLC has given me a taste of what real American justice is like. When someone misbehaves, they get called in before a group of peers, just like a real court. Innocence and punishments are also decided this way, like a real American jury. However the jury duty, is just as real

ACLC’s also prepared me to be an adult living in the real world. I am able to gather new information that I’ve received and be able to piece it all together and be able to learn from it all. Speaking of gathering information, it’s a crucial skill that leads into another crucial skill, decision making. Making well-informed decisions is incredibly important, taking time to gather info is better than rushing a decision. I can think creatively, and my mind will come up with a lot of ideas. Thinking creatively also lets me create creative solutions to problems that I need to solve, albeit in my college classes, or in my day to day job. Visualization and using reasoning is also quite crucial in both creativity as well as problem-solving.

Being able to interact with other people is also another important skill that I’ve learned here at ACLC and will certainly help me in my own schoolwork at college. Interacting with other people here at ACLC includes cooperating with others during projects, helping one another doing community service, as well as having a sense of community during school events such as our CCC. Helping friends learn is also important, as I’m teaching others valuable skills that I could repeat for my fellow co-workers that might be having a little bit of trouble getting their work done. In addition to helping out others, I can exercise leadership, direct people in where they need to go. An important part of exercising leadership is negotiating with others, and compromising on ideas.

Technology. Ah, my expertise.. My whole life I’ve been very interested in tech. My love of video games brought me over to a whole world of computers and phones. Fixing PCs, building PCs, yelling at Android OEMs to update their phones... But that’s for another day, what’s more relevant is applying tech to my educational career here at ACLC and into college. Whenever I have a big task such as a long essay, I know that I need to take out a computer and start typing. Best if I open two windows and do research while typing. I am completely aware of what computers I should choose to complete whatever task I am given. Typing will require a desktop or a laptop, while something like CAD would require something with a touchscreen like a 10 in tablet. Setting up computers is no big problem either. Setting up a computer for the first time, I know what to plug in and what all ports are called. Troubleshooting is pretty easy too, it’s mostly just a flowchart of what worked and what didn’t. I can go a little more in-depth by taking apart a PC and solving the problem that way.

All in all though, I’m pretty much just a big nerd, trying to get into college and trying to live a happy life. ACLC was a great 4 years of my teenage years, and I’d like to spend another 4 studying in college. It’s been fun ACCL, but I'm off to college and going to be an adult.

PERSONAL VISION AND ACTION PLAN

My Dreams and Plans

I dream of having a happy job working at a tech company, screwing around with co-workers, testing programs, etc. That or I’m off designing video games for a living. The point is that I enjoy my job. I don’t mind commuting back and forth work, I stay a bit longer to socialize and have fun.

I plan on doing this by retaking the SAT and getting a better score. I’m going to finish High School with the best grades I can. I’m going to sign up for financial aid through FAFSA, and sign up for tons of colleges. Hopefully I can get into a great college and graduate from there. After that I’ll interview for jobs and get on with my life.

MY BEST WORK

TRANSCENDENTALISM ESSAY

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SHef6VNAbK63-cimVEaDnztS7x26QauE16cYMW2O-pQ/edit?usp=sharing


An essay about Transcendentalism for my English 3 class in 11th grade

PROPOSITION PROPOSAL

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1W_Adyri89iaIQDfQ14AA7kWW4-1p4ZC_FNcn4AUV8Bk/edit?usp=sharing

For my 12th grade Government class, we had to make a powerpoint for the 8th graders discussing a proposition that could be passed in California.

OTHELLO SCRIPT

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XXdEF7aF49pjjU1_mkfnVyt5-4a4hZ23Hv_rWku5iGc/edit

This is a script for the Othello play for my English 3 class

INTERNSHIP
SEED-TO-TABLE

Hours Log:

March 1st 2017: 2 hours

March 8th 2017: 3 hours

March 13th 2017: 1 hour

March 15th 2017: 2 hours

March 22nd 2017: 2 hours

March 24th 2017: 1.5 hours

March 27th 2017: 2 hours

March 29th 2017: 1.5 hours

April 5th 2017: 3 hours

April 10th 2017: 40 mins

April 12th 2017: 2 hours

April 17th 2017 2 hours

April 21st 2017: 1 hour

Total: 23 hours, 10 minutes

​

Weekly #1: Today was my first day interning for the Boys and Girls Club. My supervisor is Ms. Gretchen. I’ve met her beforehand, and she’s very nice. Since she’s given me this opportunity, obviously the interview went well. Today, I was in charge of 2 3rd grade boys that didn’t behave very well. Gretchen asked me to weed an area that was close to the fence. The boys decided to weed out a little corner over by the parking lot, and I let them. It was my first time working with children so young, so I thought that it would be OK to just let them loose a little bit. I thought that we bonded alright. When it was time to go, Gretchen got upset at the boys for misbehaving and weeding the wrong area. I thought I was going to get yelled at as well, but Gretchen let me off the hook, claiming it was my first day. I did apologize to her, that I should have kept the boys on-task, and I did learn that lesson.

Weekly #2: Today was a very different change of pace. Instead of working with the kids, Gretchen asked me to take pictures of each the garden beds in order to track the progress of the plants’ growth. She gave me a map of the garden and a Nexus 7 to start taking pictures. Taking the pictures was quite simple, keeping track of where I should go was a little more difficult, but it was mostly just tedious. After I finished, I went back inside to organize all of the photos into bed-specific albums in Google Photos. This was the REAL tedious work. Manually clicking on each photo and dragging it into a folder. About 30 times. I felt so bored that I would occasionally lose track and would have to manually recount which photos went into what folders.

Weekly #3: Ms. Gretchen had something very different for me today. She asked me to come in on Monday instead of the predetermined Wednesday. But today, there was a guest: Geoff. This man had grey hair and looked quite strong, perhaps in his 40s to 50s. Gretchen needed a new filter in order to create compost, so Geoff was here to help. Together we put together a wooden frame and stapled some chicken wire to it. I didn’t have much practice with a cordless drill, nor had I ever used a handsaw before. But I’m glad that Geoff showed me how to use both and that I got some quality work in using both tools. In the end, we made a functional compost filter that did a good job of creating compost

Weekly #4: Today we didn’t do much in the garden. Instead Ms. Gretchen asked me to help her tidy up the Kitchen. Spring cleaning! I took tools out of boxes and rinsed them out. There’s a lot of old food and grime that’s built up in those boxes and the lids. The lids have laminated sheets to organize the tools. The tape underneath and the sheets had both accumulated a lot of grime and was quite gross. I took off the tape, cleaned the box, lid, and sheet, dried it off, and then retaped the sheet back onto the lid. In addition, I also sweeped the floor, and helped clean the bottom shelf of the main preparation table. A couple of elementary school kids walked in mid-way through, and they were quite helpful. One girl got on her knees and wiped the table down as I sprayed the surface with window cleaner.

Weekly #5: Weeds are really annoying. Today Ms. Gretchen had me put on a pair of gloves and just weed one bed for the entire day. Now this was a pretty big bed. It was about 5 feet wide and maybe 30 feet long with a nice, big, wooden sign on the front. There were a lot of smaller weeds that were out in the open. These were easy to spot as they didn’t look similar to all of the other plants that were in the bed. Pulling them out was quite easy, dig up the wood chips a little, try to get out as much root as possible. Seems easy enough. However, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the larger weeds were the ones that were more difficult to spot and remove. The first problem is spotting them. The larger weeds were about the size of the good plants, so it was hard to tell which plants to pull and which to leave according to my untrained eye. Luckily the larger plants resemble the smaller plants, so I had a rough idea of which plants I had already identified. The other problem is that the weeds like to camouflage inside of the normal plants. I didn’t know this and didn’t think to look inside the good plants. Upon closer inspection, there was another plant inside, and it looked eerily familiar to the ones that I’d pulled out previously. Pulling out the larger weeds was also annoying. The roots had become much more embedded into the soil and had more anchor. The weed’s body was much more fragile in comparison to the amount of grip of the roots, so rips were pretty common. All in all, not my favorite task. Quite tedious, hard to spot, and my knees really did get dirty.

Weekly #6: Today I worked with some kids, and they made signs for the garden. The first step for them was to sand the wooden blocks down to smooth edges and sides. It’s a very simple task, just rub the sandpaper up and down along the rough edge until it smoothed out. I did a wooden block myself to show the kids how to do it and to help them make one. I was really worried about someone getting a splinter, but everyone wore gloves and splinters were unheard of that day. My other fear did come to light though. It was a very windy day and sawdust was getting blown around everywhere. Despite my efforts to try to teach the kids about downwind, one kid still got sawdust in his eye. I ended up having to take him over to the faucet, and having to guide him through the garden and helping him turn on and find the water. Luckily he was the only incident and things went well from then on. After all of the blocks were sanded, Ms. Gretchen took out a whole bunch of paint and the kids started painting signs. It was really nice, but by that time, I needed to leave.

Wrap-up: To be honest, at the beginning of the internship, I looked down upon it a little. I thought it was going to be tedious and boring. And while there were certainly moments like that, I had moments of fun, community, and me actually doing something that really mattered. I think that if I really have nothing to do, perhaps I’ll poke in and see what I can do to help out.

One very important skill used, that I should improve upon, was communication. Me and Gretchen talked to one another in order to figure out when to meet, if there would be a schedule change, and what my task would be for the day. How difficult my task would be, any tips or instructions on what to do or how to do it. Another skill I practiced was perseverance. Yes, there were plenty of boring moments. Weeding a bed for 2 hours on end isn’t the most thrilling experience. But I just kept weeding, put my mind at ease, and I made through it well enough. Another boring activity was getting rid of Aphids. They are these black or yellow pests that live on the stems and leaves of certain plants. Ms. Gretchen asked me brush away the Aphids and coat them with a hunger-inducing syrup in order to kill off the pests. The brushing was tedious, as was the spraying. The syrup’s smell was not something that I would describe as “pleasant”. But you know what? I still did it. I got through it, and I did what I was assigned. Because I persevered, and I remembered that there was a job to be done.

My duties throughout the internship could have changed from day to day. Some days I might work with the kids and help them do whatever task that Gretchen had assigned for them. Other days I might build something with Geoff and our 4 hands and some hand tools. I could have taken pictures with the tablet of the garden, or I could have weeded a bed. My duties throughout the internship changed, I never knew what I was going to do each day until I walked in and talked to Gretchen. None of these tasks demanded my 100% effort into it, but you better believe I stayed focused and did my best to accomplish the tasks.

To be honest, I don’t think I learned a whole lot of new skills. Instead what this internship did, was it reinforced a lot of skills and ideas that I had about the workforce. The first idea that this internship reinforced was commitment. A job demands that you show up at the same place at the same time. If you can’t show up, you better communicate with your supervisor why, and how you can make up for it. I’ll admit, there were times that I didn’t fulfill this commitment. Sometimes I would be late by 5 minutes. Rarely I didn’t show up, because I had another assignment to fulfill such as an essay for my college class. Perhaps I forgot to reply back to Gretchen about what was going on. But I learned from it. I started showing up on time, I told Gretchen in advance if I wasn’t able to come, I did my best to always show up when she expected me to. I think that commitment was the largest thing that was reinforced in my mind. Sure there are a few other skills that I’ve mentioned before like communication and perseverance, but I think those 3 are the main working skills that were reinforced in my mind. Most of the other skills that this internship reinforced were pretty minor. I didn’t work very much with power tools, and Geoff really helped me out.

All in all, this was a great experience for me. I thought that I might not have enjoyed an experience like an internship. It was something that I was going to put off. Something that I groaned and rolled my eyes at. But after working for so long, I can see that this experience was very helpful in reinforcing skills that I’ll need when I apply for a proper job. And now that it’s over, I can think back to myself and realize “Hey, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’ll do some more of it for the community”.