Today is a wonderful and a horrible day, because it is official end of my senior project. It is wonderful, because the project has been absolutely exhausting. But I think that it is even more horrible, because I have so enjoyed learning and performing everything. Since this is my last journal entry, I have decided to do a small recap on my project as a whole.
Originally my goals for my project were very different from what they are today. I had planed to have oysters inside and outside and create two business models for the two methods of culture. My original plan became a moot point, once I actually began to learn about the oyster culture.
(My idea of writing a business plan based on oysters grown inside would have been a total waste of time because: oysters are never grown inside since they filter too much food, having enough tank space would make the costs unbelievable, the electricity bill to grow food for them would also be sky high. The list goes on.)
As my project evolved it became a lot more focused on the business side of oyster aquaculture. I think I was really draw to that side of the project, because it was something that I really did not know anything about. I had vague notions of business being really boring and uninteresting, however I found it to be the complete opposite. What I enjoy most about businesses is that there are, in fact, so many different components that go into a business. It is like having a giant puzzle, where all the pieces are items that are costs, revenues, assets, etc. and you are trying to get them all together to create an image of profit. It's really a lot of fun.
So my main goals in the second half of the project were the ones that have stayed. I really wanted to have a complete business plan and model. However, since I really did not know anything about either business plans or models, I spend most of my time learning, rather than doing. I do not have a business plan written, which is quite disappointing. I do however have a working model, that I created with the help of my mom, which is more than I ever though was possible.
In short, my project wasn't anything I expected it to be, it did not go as planed, and it didn't end the way I wanted it to, but I couldn't be any more pleased with it.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Thursday May 15, 2014
Today was a pretty productive day.
My first order of business today was retrieving my prom dress from Packaging and Receiving. I have been waiting for my dress for over a month, so it was such a relief to have it and try it on. (It fits well, except it is far too long. My mom said that she will get it hemmed over the weekend.) After trying on my dress, I went to my two classes of the day, Lifeboatmen and Physics. I still cannot believe that I did not drop physics for my project. I cannot even remember my justification for keeping it. I am pretty sure it was so I would understand more of the concepts when I went to college in case I need to take it again. But, since I never really understood physics to begin with, it seems silly. Anyway, aside from classes and my prom dress. I also had my last Tabor Dance Recital tonight. It was really sad, since it was my last one for TADC, but I think it was one of the best dance recitals Tabor had ever seen. Everyone did really well and I am enormously proud of our squad.
After yesterday's budgeting, I realized that I am in debt for each of my 5 years at the end of each year. My complied debt for the first 5 years is about $596,000. At first I was totally freaking out, but after talking to my mom and Mr. Meleo, I was feeling better about my debt situation. They explained to me that I only need to cover the essential costs of that year and the depreciation of my assets. I also do not need to worry about paying off my loan immediately, as it will most likely be paid of in monthly installments over a period of years.
Although their advice alleviated my worries, I am still not sure weather my business is a viable one the way it is currently set up. So what I want to talk about is Economics of Scale in businesses. Economics of Scale is "the cost advantage that arises with an increased amount of profit." (Investopedia) In other words, the more products I sell, the less the cost per product. In order for my business to become viable, I must either considerably reduce my costs or I must sell enough oysters to cover my costs. I am not yet sure which I will be doing.
My first order of business today was retrieving my prom dress from Packaging and Receiving. I have been waiting for my dress for over a month, so it was such a relief to have it and try it on. (It fits well, except it is far too long. My mom said that she will get it hemmed over the weekend.) After trying on my dress, I went to my two classes of the day, Lifeboatmen and Physics. I still cannot believe that I did not drop physics for my project. I cannot even remember my justification for keeping it. I am pretty sure it was so I would understand more of the concepts when I went to college in case I need to take it again. But, since I never really understood physics to begin with, it seems silly. Anyway, aside from classes and my prom dress. I also had my last Tabor Dance Recital tonight. It was really sad, since it was my last one for TADC, but I think it was one of the best dance recitals Tabor had ever seen. Everyone did really well and I am enormously proud of our squad.
After yesterday's budgeting, I realized that I am in debt for each of my 5 years at the end of each year. My complied debt for the first 5 years is about $596,000. At first I was totally freaking out, but after talking to my mom and Mr. Meleo, I was feeling better about my debt situation. They explained to me that I only need to cover the essential costs of that year and the depreciation of my assets. I also do not need to worry about paying off my loan immediately, as it will most likely be paid of in monthly installments over a period of years.
Although their advice alleviated my worries, I am still not sure weather my business is a viable one the way it is currently set up. So what I want to talk about is Economics of Scale in businesses. Economics of Scale is "the cost advantage that arises with an increased amount of profit." (Investopedia) In other words, the more products I sell, the less the cost per product. In order for my business to become viable, I must either considerably reduce my costs or I must sell enough oysters to cover my costs. I am not yet sure which I will be doing.
Tuesday May 13, 2014
Today was a good day.
I still haven't quite gotten over my stomach bug from yesterday, but fortunately I feel much better. Because I did not eat yesterday, due to the bug, I was starving. However, I still felt too sick to eat, so I was having a huge internal struggle with weather or not to kick the bucket and do it.
Aside from my bug struggle, today was very important because it was the last day I did water quality. I decided today would be my last day, for a variety of reasons. The first being the temperature of the water on the surface. It was a whopping 65.7 degrees, which means that there is definitely going to be considerable growth through out the week. The other reason I decided to stop was that I was feeling crunched for time with my project.
So, since today was my last day, I decided to do a recap on my findings. At the beginning of the project, the water quality sampling was going to go towards my research, but as my project evolved, it has changed in its function. Now water quality tests are more to answer a question I was curious about.
Will there actually be growth throughout the oyster growing season (April-November)? I had been wondering, since most people say that the oyster season is from April to November, but people also say that algae doesn't grow enough before June to have any significant growth. While of course this does depend on the weather patterns of the year, I was still curious, because a two month difference in growing periods really affects the total sales of a farm.
I am not sure that my results were completely accurate, because the weather this spring has been fluctuating a lot. However, I believe that I can conclusively say that the growing season for oysters runs more mid-May-November than it does April-November. From my results, I noticed that the majority of the growth occurred over the last two weeks of the project (weeks 6 and 7). This correlated with the more constant warm weather and lack of wind in early May. Something I found interesting about my results is that for the last two weeks my cell densities were much lower than I expected them to be. At first I was quite worried, but then I realized that they were probably much lower than before, because they oysters were filtering the algae out of the water and using it to grow.
I still haven't quite gotten over my stomach bug from yesterday, but fortunately I feel much better. Because I did not eat yesterday, due to the bug, I was starving. However, I still felt too sick to eat, so I was having a huge internal struggle with weather or not to kick the bucket and do it.
Aside from my bug struggle, today was very important because it was the last day I did water quality. I decided today would be my last day, for a variety of reasons. The first being the temperature of the water on the surface. It was a whopping 65.7 degrees, which means that there is definitely going to be considerable growth through out the week. The other reason I decided to stop was that I was feeling crunched for time with my project.
So, since today was my last day, I decided to do a recap on my findings. At the beginning of the project, the water quality sampling was going to go towards my research, but as my project evolved, it has changed in its function. Now water quality tests are more to answer a question I was curious about.
Will there actually be growth throughout the oyster growing season (April-November)? I had been wondering, since most people say that the oyster season is from April to November, but people also say that algae doesn't grow enough before June to have any significant growth. While of course this does depend on the weather patterns of the year, I was still curious, because a two month difference in growing periods really affects the total sales of a farm.
I am not sure that my results were completely accurate, because the weather this spring has been fluctuating a lot. However, I believe that I can conclusively say that the growing season for oysters runs more mid-May-November than it does April-November. From my results, I noticed that the majority of the growth occurred over the last two weeks of the project (weeks 6 and 7). This correlated with the more constant warm weather and lack of wind in early May. Something I found interesting about my results is that for the last two weeks my cell densities were much lower than I expected them to be. At first I was quite worried, but then I realized that they were probably much lower than before, because they oysters were filtering the algae out of the water and using it to grow.
Wednesday May 14, 2014
Today I didn't have any classes. Instead, I worked with my mom on my senior project during the school day. After school, I had a a full dress rehearsal for my dance recital on Thursday. The dress rehearsal was good, but I was really tired, especially since I hadn't eaten or slept much due to my stomach bug. I was also dancing on and injured knee and hip, which didn't help at all. (I am also really annoyed because I ruined a pair of tights, because I dropped to my knees during a dance and bled through my tights.) Also, on a completely unrelated but very exciting note, my prom dress arrived today.
Working with my mom went really well. We revised my budget and inventory spreadsheets and created gross sales and income statement sheets.
In my budget, we added several categories, including deliveries, marketing, and business taxes. Deliveries were a pretty large cost to be added. It added about $15,000 to my budget, with more in the second year, since that is the year I am investing in the refrigerated trucks. Marketing added around $10,000per year. It was funny, because although I had been doing a lot of reading last week about serving and entertaining with oysters, I completely forgot about all the costs of doing so. In my budget, I have only accounted for marketing trips and the occasional business dinner. However, many oyster farms have large festivals to advertize. I decided that in my first 5 years, I would not be putting up anything so extravagant. Finally business taxes were thought of by my mom. According to her they are calculated using total revenue and are very important, because not paying them equates to tax evasion. For the inventory spreadsheets we changed the year from January-December to May-April, since May is the month in which I will get my seed.
My gross sales spreadsheet is one that shows my sales per month, per year, monthly gross sales, annual gross sales, and annual gross sales including inflation. It is helpful for calculating the most amount of money I could possibly expect to earn that year. My income statement is a simple spreadsheet that charts my annual costs, gross annual sales, and gross annual revenues for each year. It shows me whether I am making money or not.
Aside from adding categories and items that I had previously missed, we also bean creating formulas and linking my different spreadsheets, so that I could manipulate the numbers and totals. Here is a video of me doing some formula manipulation in Excel. (I am sorry for the length.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPhjtTPfAnM
Working with my mom went really well. We revised my budget and inventory spreadsheets and created gross sales and income statement sheets.
In my budget, we added several categories, including deliveries, marketing, and business taxes. Deliveries were a pretty large cost to be added. It added about $15,000 to my budget, with more in the second year, since that is the year I am investing in the refrigerated trucks. Marketing added around $10,000per year. It was funny, because although I had been doing a lot of reading last week about serving and entertaining with oysters, I completely forgot about all the costs of doing so. In my budget, I have only accounted for marketing trips and the occasional business dinner. However, many oyster farms have large festivals to advertize. I decided that in my first 5 years, I would not be putting up anything so extravagant. Finally business taxes were thought of by my mom. According to her they are calculated using total revenue and are very important, because not paying them equates to tax evasion. For the inventory spreadsheets we changed the year from January-December to May-April, since May is the month in which I will get my seed.
My gross sales spreadsheet is one that shows my sales per month, per year, monthly gross sales, annual gross sales, and annual gross sales including inflation. It is helpful for calculating the most amount of money I could possibly expect to earn that year. My income statement is a simple spreadsheet that charts my annual costs, gross annual sales, and gross annual revenues for each year. It shows me whether I am making money or not.
Aside from adding categories and items that I had previously missed, we also bean creating formulas and linking my different spreadsheets, so that I could manipulate the numbers and totals. Here is a video of me doing some formula manipulation in Excel. (I am sorry for the length.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPhjtTPfAnM
Monday May 12, 2014
Today was an experience. (I'm just going to leave it at that.)
My day started with a 24 hour stomach bug. (I originally thought it was food poisoning from the dance team trip to IHOP; a move that I strongly disagreed with. However the nurses later diagnosed me with a gastrointestinal bug that had been wandering around the school.) I won't go into details, but it was a rough start. So, not only did I have a bug, I also had to take my AP Biology Exam that day. Needless to say, by the time my exam let out, which was around 12:00 PM, I felt like I was dying. Luckily, for the rest of the day I did not have classes; just one make up quiz, which was quick. Since I did not have classes and could not move without feeling sick, I went to the health center for the rest of the day (rest of the day being rest of classes and sports).
Even though I was sick, I actually managed to accomplish a lot. From my mom budgeting time on Saturday, I had a lot of "assignments." The first was to do some research to fill in various costs. For example, under the insurance heading, how much is property insurance and crop insurance. (SIDE NOTE: I actually never found out specifically how much either would be, since one involved calling an insurance representative and the other involved calling the USDA.) The second task was to finish a spreadsheet of my inventory of oysters for the first 5 years. As you can see from the picture below, I have each year broken down into my my deliveries, loses, demos/samples, and sales. Using this spreadsheet I can see exactly how many oysters I can expect to have on hand at any given month during my first five years. I can also use it to show the change in total inventory per week. (In the picture, I have my years going from May to April, rather than January through December. This is a change I made later in the week.)
Although, my stomach bug was an obstacle that I didn't need or want at this stage of the project, it actually allowed me to have more time to work and research. I still haven't gotten over my GI bug, but I am hoping that by tomorrow I will.
My day started with a 24 hour stomach bug. (I originally thought it was food poisoning from the dance team trip to IHOP; a move that I strongly disagreed with. However the nurses later diagnosed me with a gastrointestinal bug that had been wandering around the school.) I won't go into details, but it was a rough start. So, not only did I have a bug, I also had to take my AP Biology Exam that day. Needless to say, by the time my exam let out, which was around 12:00 PM, I felt like I was dying. Luckily, for the rest of the day I did not have classes; just one make up quiz, which was quick. Since I did not have classes and could not move without feeling sick, I went to the health center for the rest of the day (rest of the day being rest of classes and sports).
Even though I was sick, I actually managed to accomplish a lot. From my mom budgeting time on Saturday, I had a lot of "assignments." The first was to do some research to fill in various costs. For example, under the insurance heading, how much is property insurance and crop insurance. (SIDE NOTE: I actually never found out specifically how much either would be, since one involved calling an insurance representative and the other involved calling the USDA.) The second task was to finish a spreadsheet of my inventory of oysters for the first 5 years. As you can see from the picture below, I have each year broken down into my my deliveries, loses, demos/samples, and sales. Using this spreadsheet I can see exactly how many oysters I can expect to have on hand at any given month during my first five years. I can also use it to show the change in total inventory per week. (In the picture, I have my years going from May to April, rather than January through December. This is a change I made later in the week.)
Although, my stomach bug was an obstacle that I didn't need or want at this stage of the project, it actually allowed me to have more time to work and research. I still haven't gotten over my GI bug, but I am hoping that by tomorrow I will.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Saturday May 10, 2014
Today was a really BIG day.
I woke up early to a totally filthy room. Of course I only noticed it was filthy, because my mom was coming that day. I was actually really impressed, because in the 30 minutes I had before dance practice began, I was able to shower, dress, and completely clean my room. Dance practice went for around two hours (10-12) and then I ran off to go complete some community service (12-2). Community service was really fun, I helped out at an Arbor Day celebration at Washburn Park. There were tons of kids, a petting zoo, and a lot of free ice cream and pizza, so I was pretty happy. After community service was mom time.
My mom drove down, as promised, to help me with the budgeting portion of my project. I think we worked from around 2 to at least 6, on the budgeting and spreadsheeting alone. Somehow or other, I managed to learn more about Exel during this afternoon than I have ever learned before. (I did not realize it was possible, but I have fallen in love with a computer programming system.)
So the first thing we did was set up my budget for year one. We ended up splitting my categories into my culture system, facilities, permits & licensing, insurance, labor, and professional services. As you can see from the example above, each category was further split into items, unit prices for the items, inflation, the number of units, a description, and the total cost of the item. This organizational system helped me a lot, since many of my frustrations came from not being able to figure out how to organize my information.
The other main source of frustration came from not knowing how to mathematically model my information. Of course my mom and Excel had an answer to that as well. It's called a formula. When you click in a box, you can either type in a number, words, or a formula. (There might be other things, but I am not sure. Those are the ones I use.) Before my mom showed me how to use formulas in Exel, I had been doing all the math on my own, on a dinky four function calculator (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Instead of using Excel, as a glorified table, I can instead make it do all my math for me an more!
I will try to post a link to a video of me building my budget.
I woke up early to a totally filthy room. Of course I only noticed it was filthy, because my mom was coming that day. I was actually really impressed, because in the 30 minutes I had before dance practice began, I was able to shower, dress, and completely clean my room. Dance practice went for around two hours (10-12) and then I ran off to go complete some community service (12-2). Community service was really fun, I helped out at an Arbor Day celebration at Washburn Park. There were tons of kids, a petting zoo, and a lot of free ice cream and pizza, so I was pretty happy. After community service was mom time.
My mom drove down, as promised, to help me with the budgeting portion of my project. I think we worked from around 2 to at least 6, on the budgeting and spreadsheeting alone. Somehow or other, I managed to learn more about Exel during this afternoon than I have ever learned before. (I did not realize it was possible, but I have fallen in love with a computer programming system.)
So the first thing we did was set up my budget for year one. We ended up splitting my categories into my culture system, facilities, permits & licensing, insurance, labor, and professional services. As you can see from the example above, each category was further split into items, unit prices for the items, inflation, the number of units, a description, and the total cost of the item. This organizational system helped me a lot, since many of my frustrations came from not being able to figure out how to organize my information.
The other main source of frustration came from not knowing how to mathematically model my information. Of course my mom and Excel had an answer to that as well. It's called a formula. When you click in a box, you can either type in a number, words, or a formula. (There might be other things, but I am not sure. Those are the ones I use.) Before my mom showed me how to use formulas in Exel, I had been doing all the math on my own, on a dinky four function calculator (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Instead of using Excel, as a glorified table, I can instead make it do all my math for me an more!
I will try to post a link to a video of me building my budget.
Friday May 9, 2014
This Friday was much better than the last. I took my water quality in the morning and later I did my second to last weigh and measure. ( I say second to last, but it actually might be the last depending on what my scheduling looks like next week.)
After my disaster last week, I did this weigh and measure by hand. So, rather than putting my figures directly into Excel, I wrote them down on a post it note. It took longer, but after loosing all that data, I preferred to take the time. (Honestly I am still upset about loosing that data. It really isn't imperative to the success of my project, but I would have preferred to have complete data.)
I was pretty happy with this week because the oysters are really starting to grow. Obviously, since I do not have last week's data, I cannot say how much they grew in the week, but I am guessing anywhere from 0.3-0.5 grams and about 0.5mm. From two weeks ago, there is a 0.8 gram difference in weight and 0.91 mm difference in length, which is also really great. (I am hoping to graph the progression of their growth for my presentation.)
Here are some things I noticed about they oysters during this week's weight and measure. First of all there were no dead oysters. They all survived from last week, which was expected, but still gratifying to see. There was some growth around the exterior of the shell (length). This is the growth I had been worried about last week, so I was really glad to see it. Of course now that the oysters are putting on growth lengthwise the way I wanted, I am now worried that they are laying on too much shell and not enough belly. I dropped a couple of them and they sounded decidedly solid. I also noticed that there were several shrimp larvae jumping around the table that had been in the bags with the oysters. (I am not actually positive they were shrimp larvae, but for my own sake I'm going to just believe that is what they were.) Aside from the shrimp larvae, there were small bug looking things that were hiding in the slime of the oyster. I only discovered them, because I was trying to scrape the slime off of an oyster and about 20 of them came scuttling out. It was as though I had poked an ant hill. Needless to say it was absolutely disgusting.
After my disaster last week, I did this weigh and measure by hand. So, rather than putting my figures directly into Excel, I wrote them down on a post it note. It took longer, but after loosing all that data, I preferred to take the time. (Honestly I am still upset about loosing that data. It really isn't imperative to the success of my project, but I would have preferred to have complete data.)
I was pretty happy with this week because the oysters are really starting to grow. Obviously, since I do not have last week's data, I cannot say how much they grew in the week, but I am guessing anywhere from 0.3-0.5 grams and about 0.5mm. From two weeks ago, there is a 0.8 gram difference in weight and 0.91 mm difference in length, which is also really great. (I am hoping to graph the progression of their growth for my presentation.)
Here are some things I noticed about they oysters during this week's weight and measure. First of all there were no dead oysters. They all survived from last week, which was expected, but still gratifying to see. There was some growth around the exterior of the shell (length). This is the growth I had been worried about last week, so I was really glad to see it. Of course now that the oysters are putting on growth lengthwise the way I wanted, I am now worried that they are laying on too much shell and not enough belly. I dropped a couple of them and they sounded decidedly solid. I also noticed that there were several shrimp larvae jumping around the table that had been in the bags with the oysters. (I am not actually positive they were shrimp larvae, but for my own sake I'm going to just believe that is what they were.) Aside from the shrimp larvae, there were small bug looking things that were hiding in the slime of the oyster. I only discovered them, because I was trying to scrape the slime off of an oyster and about 20 of them came scuttling out. It was as though I had poked an ant hill. Needless to say it was absolutely disgusting.
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