Travel Plans

Since I will graduate this May, my parents will come to visit me! So excited! And the most fun part is that I can start to make travel plans for them.

I love make travel plans. I can start to look at every famous cities of U.S and decide which of them are more attractive to my parents. I am planning we can starts from San Francisco and pass through Los Angeles, and down to Las Vegas. Then we still have time to go to the east of U.S and to see how beautiful Washington DC is and also New York city!  But who knows, plans can change very quick.

Chocolate fondue in office!

We had chocolate fondue in the office this week and it was awesome! This is my first time to try a fondue like this. Everyone in the office brought one bag of chocolate and we melt them in the pot. When you eat strawberries or bananas with the melt chocolate, I should say it taste so good. But after this, I need do more workout that night because of the calorie！

Career fair in Tempe

Two weeks ago, there was a career fair in Tempe campus and I asked my supervisor to give me half day off that I can go to this career fair.

I thought this career fair may afford me some opportunities to find a job after I graduated. But turned out the companies and organizations in this career fair were more focused on the undergraduates and the STEMs. So I even did not have chance to send my resume out.

But I still waiting for the career fair on March in Downtown campus. There may be some organizations related to my major.

Chinese New Year's Eve!

This year is the Chinese year of ship (or goat, ram). In Chinese tradition, if this is your year, you gonna have the most lucky year ever! And my amazing Brook already prove that.

Actually the new year's eve could be a little difficult for me because I cannot join my family  to celebrate it. I haven't seen my family for almost two years and I really miss them!

But thanks for the "chief", one of my friend, I had a very good eve this year! She cooked all the delicious meals and made me wanna cry.
And the most excited thing is that I got 44 red envelopes! So lucky!

Wanna go back to Renaissance !

It is the first time to know that we have the Renaissance Festival in Arizona! Thank to amazing Brook told me about this festival.

I am so excited and can't wait for joining this festival. The dress from that period attract me a lot and I aways dreamed one day I can dress like that.

But for some personal reason, I can't go there until March. So sad. But I will definitely rent a costume like this and have a fan in hand. It will be so interesting.

Amazing Brook!

When I got the internship and told there is another intern who also from MPA, I was so curious about who she is. Finally, in the first day of our internship orientation, I met this girl and she was busy texting with her cellphone. I even had no chance to say hello.

However, after we started the internship, It is so lucky to have Brook with me in the Office. At first, she may seems a little serious, but when we begin to talk, she is funny and can always come up with some interesting ideas!

She likes draw some interesting stuff on anything just on hand, like the notebook, the Starbucks coffee cup, half slice of paper and so on. She loves Hello Kitty and cute animals. She would really cry if you tell her a sad story.

Brook just got her dreaming car and she was so excited about this! Unfortunately , I haven't have chance to carpool with her new car! Still waiting.

This little milk box was from Brook and sitting on my office desk, I like the smile of this cute box! Make me happy everyday!

One day of my internship

One day in the Office

Started the morning with my new coffee maker! 

I had two meetings this morning. One was about the policy and procedure and another one is the seal of the Treasurer’s Office.

Policy and procedure meeting was really impressed me. This was the first time I met all the managers in my office, the Treasurer, deputy treasurers and the managers from other five departments.  They talked about the activities of the office and tried to update the policies relating to those activities. 

The second meeting was interesting and I had fun with it. The office tried to design a new seal which can represent the Treasurer’s Office and also can be easy understand by the public. The seal designed separately by other intern, Brook, the girl full of creative and fun ideas and I has been both picked to combine together! Yeah!

And this day was also a pink day!  All my stuff around me were pink, even the highlight of the documents! I love it!

Introduction of my office

Since I already worked for almost a month, it is time to talk about the place I am working.

Firstly, background of the office. Maricopa County Treasurer’s Office was established in 1891 and has been the ex-officio tax collector and the treasurer of all school and special districts with Maricopa County. According to the statute, the County Treasurer is charged to collect, invest and disburse taxpayer funds. So the mission of the office is to provide receipt and safekeeping of all taxes collected upon real and personal property of the county, all public monies arising from any source to accruing under the provisions of the law to the county and so on. The office try to provide the residents convenient accessibility to pay their fair share of taxes using online technology to access real-time information and make payments.

And my mainly duties are:

·         Create and update policies to address ambiguity, improve efficiency, or fix business processes.

·         Serve as a gatekeeper for access, update with deliverables as needed, and create task lists to track project statutes.

·         Identify funding sources and possible uses of dollars, research fees and create an inventory explained in statute, conduct annual forecasting.

·         Track legislation affecting the Treasurer’s Office, analysis possible impacts, coordinate with Government Relations Office to advance office initiatives.

It is a really good and interesting place to learn how the office operate and gain more experience of doing budget and analyzing policies. People in the Office are very nice and friendly and I really enjoy working here.