Caitlin Jackson Ms. Lei Lani Michel
English 1001-109
Profile Essay
Have you ever had the responsibility of being in charge of a large sum of money such as $240,000? Most 18-24 year old have not been given a chance to bear such responsibility as Ryan Marten. When Ryan was little he never thought about handling such big amounts of money as he does today. Back when he was little he would much rather play around pretending to be a cop. He lived in Baton Rouge with his mom and step dad and attended middle school. He attended high school in Hammond, Louisiana with his Dad and step mom for four years before coming back to Baton Rouge to attend college. He now attends college at LSU, one of the best universities of the Louisiana community, and has a job at Chase Bank, one of the most popular banks in the country.
He wakes up just every morning bright and early to head to LSU campus for class. He chose to take the 7:30 AM classes in order to get a full day in at work. Like many students at LSU, he has the challenge of walking across campus to make it to each class on time. He strongly expressed his anticipation for cold weather to get here by stating “I can’t wait for winter to come so I don’t show up for my classes drenched in sweat every day.” He doesn’t enjoy all the long walks to class in the heat and humidity of Louisiana. It takes him at least 15 minutes to get to his second class but his break allows him only 10, therefore his long walks become more of a sprint to make it there on time. He gets out of class at times ranging from 9:30-11:30. I asked what classes he was taking and he paused for a while before answering. He explained to me that he just changed his major from Civil Engineering to Construction Management so he has fallen behind. He now has to make up for the time he spent in Civil Engineering in order to graduate at a decent time. While I spoke to him about his change in majors he seemed to be nervous and had an awkward look on his face. I didn’t ask him any further I assumed that he is worried he won’t graduate on time and didn’t want to make things so stressful. Although he did say he remembered having to write something like what I have to back in his freshman writing at LSU. He didn’t say much about his college carrier other than the fact that it is a challenge for him to compromise studying with working.
After arriving home from class he has enough time to shower, grab some lunch and pack his workout bag before having to leave again to head to work. He works at the Chase Bank on Siegen Lane which is quite a drive when he lives in apartments off of Brightside Lane. It is a big reason why he has such a short break in between class and work. He arrives to work on time everyday in his black slacks and a blue long sleeve Chase Bank shirt. He portrayed the bank to be empty when he gets there but later to be quite chaotic. Because he has class he is usually the last employee working that day to arrive. He mentioned his managers to be very reasonable so this didn’t seem to matter too much. Although he knows when he arrives to work there is no time to play around because he has a lot of work ahead of him. These responsibilities include greeting customers and helping them with the transactions that are needed, maintaining the ATM, and closing the store properly. From what I was told these tasks seemed harder than it appeared to be.
Every day many customers use Chase’s ATM machine. There is an ATM machine outside in the drive through as well as one inside. These are made in order to make simple transactions quicker for customers in a rush. Although it is quicker for the customer, it doubles the work the employee taking care of the machines. Ryan has to go through and organize all the transactions from the ATM plus all of his transactions that are not made by the ATM. He balances the ATM by counting all the money received and depositing it to each individual customer’s bank accounts. Because he has been there for almost a year they expect him to be able to do this and keep up with his customers that come inside the bank also.
Helping a customer is not always an easy task. He greets everyone who walks in the door helping them run transactions that they need. These transactions can consist of depositing money, making withdrawals, transferring money from one account to another, buying or selling foreign currency, making change orders, and answering customer’s phone calls. It seemed like he wouldn’t have much time to rest after explaining all that he has to do. Seeing how he has so many responsibilities while he in on the job you wouldn’t think he had much to do when they closed but that’s not the case here.
Because he is taking care of people’s money he has to be very careful in what he does. Money is a big deal to most people and they don’t want anything to go wrong or come up missing in the accounts. When Ryan closes down the bank he has to make sure all of the customers information is picked up and stored in the vault. After doing so, he has to gather all the money from the tellers’ drawers and put it away. Next he locks all the drawers carefully making sure none go unchecked. Next he locks and secures the vault. After doing all the security work he cleans all the desktops and takes out the garbage. After making sure his job is done he goes down the road to the YMCA gym to get a good workout in before dinner.
By looking at him you can tell he is a person who likes to stay healthy and keep in shape. He explained this into more detail that made me understand why he was in such good shape. He works out after work every day for about one to two hours. He tries to eat as healthy as possible but this is hard living in an apartment being in college. The one thing that surprised me is when he said “I haven’t have McDonald’s french-fries in over 5 years.” At first I doubted him but he was too defensive not to believe. He is one of the very few people that can say that and I admired his self control. After working out, he drives all the way back to his apartment, eats dinner, and then begins studying. He did mention his classes for Construction Management were a lot less time consuming than his Civil Engineer classes because there was a lot less studying. He only stays up until around 12 o’clock studying now. Then wakes up and starts his day all over again. After hearing about what he does form day to day I wanted to know a little bit about how Hurricane Katrina affected him.
He was living in Hammond at the time Hurricane Katrina hit. He didn’t really have much to say on this subject other than how devastating it was. He wasn’t in the middle of all the chaos of it all and wasn’t affected like most of the Baton Rouge community was. He heard stories from his mother who was still living in Baton Rouge at the time and saw what had happened on the news. He went on to explain that it didn’t really affect him personally. When he moved back to Baton Rouge a year later is when he began to notice the change. “There was a whole lot more people living in Baton Rouge than before and traffic sure did slow down more.” He made some comments about how he can’t get anywhere without getting stuck in traffic. He didn’t seem too happy about the population rising but he was sympathetic in understanding why it did. Like many can relate, Ryan is just a teenager trying get through every day as easily as possible. If you thought you had it tough think of Ryan and the responsibilities he has as a 19 year old full time student and part time employee trying to graduate and find himself a good job for his future.
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