Advice For Students Next Semester

I really enjoyed Angie's Business Writing Class. She taught us so much about business writing and I am sure I will use this information once entering the teaching profession. In this course, we learned how to write resumes, write different types of letters, and how to do a client based project. The client based project is the biggest assignment you will have in the class. For this project, I recommend getting a good group that you think you could work with well to accomplish the tasks. If you get a group that cares about the project, then it makes the semester much easier. I had a good group! I recommend that you and your group work very hard on the proposal for your second portfolio! If you do this, then you will just have to make small corrections to the proposal to put in portfolio 3. When all of your other classes will be getting crazy, this class will be almost completed.

I advise you to do all of your assignment, including your blogs. These are simple grades, but you must do them in order to get credit. You should not be lazy when it comes to these types of assignments, because you want all the daily grade credit you can get. The blogs are usually on topics covered in class and Angie just wants you to write a small refection on the information. If you have listened in lecture or have read the powerpoints, you should do great at blogging.

Angie is a great person and I am sure you will enjoy her as an instructor. She makes class very interesting and has some great tips to prepare you for entering the business world. I hope you will enjoy this course as much as our Business Writing class did!

Ethics Research

The other week our class spent time discussing ethical lapses. We learned about what they are and Angie showed us an example of an ethical lapse. The example she showed was a letter written during the time of the Holocaust. Throughout the letter the writer used terms that referred to the bodies of people being killed, but did so in such a way that no one would have known that he was talking about bodies. The writer probably wrote like this for fear that someone would find the letter and he would get in trouble. Also, he probably did not want to accept the horrible things he was doing.

Our class was told to get a partner and discuss an ethical lapse on our own. Johnsie and I started looking at different events that have taken place around the world. We finally found an ethical lapse that deals with the Challenger explosion. The ethical lapse with the Challenger deals with the O-rings and the engineers deciding to take off even though the challenger was not in proper condition to launch. We had a difficult time finding memos that talked about the explosion. We think we have found one now to share with the class on Monday about our ethical lapse.

Response to Ethical Lapses Article

I found this article to be very interesting. I was appauled at all of the statistics and percentages throughout the article. I can not believe that 73% of full-time employed Americans have encountered ethical lapses on the job. It says that 36% have been distracted by these ethical lapses. A job can be stressful enough without additional incidents such as these taking place! I also found it interesting when the article say only 36% of Americans report unethical behavior in the work place. I can definitely see the reasons why some people may not feel comfortable reporting such behaviors. Some companies probably have failed in telling their employees ways to report these unethical behaviors to management. Some people may feel that reporting specific cases will cause more drama and distractions in the workplace. Other people probably simply do not feel comfortable with getting involved. I can not imagine this type of thing taking place and my workplace and me not reporting it. It is a shame that certain situations in the workplace can cause a person to feel so distracted that they can not do their job accurately. Hopefully companies will start seeing the problems and begin showing their employees how to handle these types of situations when they take place.

Writing on the Web vs. Writing on Paper

Writing on the web and writing on paper have a lot of the same characteristics. In both styles the author's voice and opinion come across to the audience. Naturally, the author will have a specific goal he or she is trying to communicate to the audience. Whether the web or paper document is an argumentative piece or a persuasive piece there is some message being presented along with a substantial amount of information. Both of these types of documents need to be organized and not contain grammatical or spelling errors. The most important thing for both types of pieces is for them to be proofread.

Writings on the web need to be very concise. The audience also needs to be able to navigate easily through the document. In other words the author needs to be able to get the main idea of the document in the first few sentences. The hyperlinks should enhance the reader's ability to fully understand the presented information. Writings on the web should also contain white space so that the reader will be more interested in the document. Writings on paper need to be more formal and require extensive organization. Unlike writings on the web, writings on paper do not need all of the white space within the piece. Writings on paper also do not need to explain the main idea in the first part of the piece.

When transferring a document on paper to the web, it is important for the document to be formatted correctly. The author must also take into account how the reader will view the document. If all possible, the author must take into consideration what type of computer or technology the audience will view the document on, so that it will not change from how the author views it. To solve any formatting issues, I suggest that the author transfer the paper document to a PDF file before before putting it on the web.

I hope that by having this class, I will be more confident about writing on the web and writing formally on paper.

Free Write: My Weekend

On Friday, I hung out with friends and relaxed a little bit. Saturday was my busy day! I woke up at 6:00 am and got ready to go to Carolina Cup. It took me awhile to get dressed and to get everything ready to go. We left about out about 8:00 and started heading towards Columbia. (We probably should have left earlier, so that we would not have got into so much traffic). A small drive ended up turning into about a 5 hour drive due to traffic. We had a great time while we were there. The fun all ended when it started pouring down rain. and we left. We made it back to Clemson late last night and grabbed a pizza to eat. Today, I slept in and then met my Business Writing group so that we could finish up our proposal. I have to admit, our proposal looks pretty good. We spent a long time this afternoon revising and going back over our project. Tonight I hope to watch TV and go to bed early!

"Lying on Your Resume" Article

After reading this article, I am blown away that so many people actually lie on their resumes. The article said somewhere around 50% of people lie when writing a resume. I was really blown away with the story about Mary at the beginning of the article. She got fired from her job for saying that she had a master's degree. Mary obviously did not think the scenario out very well. It seems to me that it would be fairly easy for a company to find out what your degrees are in and if you have actually received these degrees. I do not understand the reasoning behind someone wanting to lie about their academics, work experience, etc. I grew up in a home where lying was not the right way to reach goals. I feel that by people lying on resumes, the qualified people for the job are actually the ones that suffer from the bad decisions of the people lying. This is not fair! I do hope that employers start cracking down on people that lie on resumes. I feel that people should not only lose their job for this type of dishonesty, but that there should also be legal action taken for certain situations.

Class Presentations

Approximately two weeks ago our class did powerpoint presentations on any topic we wanted. There were a few presentations that really stood out to me during that week. Johnsie did a powerpoint presentation on waterfalls around the area. I love the outdoors, so I thought this one was very interesting. The pictures really grabbed my attention and made me want to go see the actual waterfalls. I also thought Rene did a good job with his powerpoint topic of traveling to Mexico. He gave us some good tips to avoid running into trouble. I thought it was very crazy when he talked about giving money to "bad cops" in order to get out of situations with them putting something illegal in your car or saying you did something you did not do. The presentations in our class taught me a lot about many different things. I feel as if every person in our class had at least one positive aspect to their presentation. I thought this was a memorable assignment and I am gradually starting to be less nervous while giving presentations, due to assignments like these.

Mock Interview Reflection

On Wednesday I attended my mock interview with Mrs. Rogers. I believe the interview went well. I was definitely nervous when I arrived at the interview. I should have arrived on time instead of getting there early. Since I arrived early, I ended up becoming even more nervous than I already was by waiting. I should have listened more to the information/advice we read about at the beginning of the semester on interviews, and maybe I would have been less nervous.

Mrs. Rogers made me feel very comfortable throughout the interview. She asked some questions that made me really think. I was not able to answer one of her questions, I believe, as well as I should have. She said overall I did a pretty good job. There are a few things I still need to work on before going for a real job/graduate school interview. She gave me some suggestions to improve my resume and my cover letter. She also gave me some more information on the graduate program that I would like to get into at Clemson. The interview was a great experience and really helped to prepare me for upcoming interviews in the real world!

Free Write- Spring Time

Spring is just around the corner! This semester has went by so fast in one aspect, but the school part has been so slow. About this time every year is when I start getting burnt out from the school work in all of my classes. With next weekend, being the first of March, there is one thing on every college student's mind and that is SPRING BREAK! All I want to do over Spring Break is get a tan, sleep a lot, and have fun. Hopefully after Spring Break, I will have a boost of energy that will help me get through the rest of the semester. Then, it will not be that long until summer. I always feel that the Spring semester is the most difficult. In the fall, we have had the whole summer to catch up on sleep and are more motivated to do our assignments and study for our exams. Then, we have the big break in December, but that is just not enough to get us through spring. The sunny, hot, beautiful weather during the spring makes it so much more difficult to get stuff done!

Writing Cover Letters

After reading the tutorial, I learned a lot about writing cover letters. I learned that businesses usually skip past the cover letter and read the resume first. I found this to be very interesting, because I thought the first thing potential employers looked at was the cover letter. I do disagree with the fact that the cover letter is usually skipped unless the employer is interested with the person's resume. I believe that this may be the case in a few situations with large businesses, but I feel like many companies may look at the cover letter before making any hiring decisions.

The tutorial explains that a cover letter should not just be about you, but instead how the business or customer can benefit from hiring you or buying your product. It is very important to research both you and the company. A person must always find ways in which they excel and can include this information in the cover letter, so that they will be seen as an asset to the company. It is also equally important to proofread over the cover letter because employers sometimes use this as a way to see a person's written communication skills.

I believe the section called "Cover letter checklists" was most useful to me. It clearly states everything that the cover letter should include. I believe that this will be a big help in writing my cover letter for the upcoming mock interview. Before reading the advice, I was never aware of how adding a "P.S" at the end of the cover letter, could make an impact on employers. The tutorial clearly shows the importance behind writing this part in the cover letter and explains that it is extra special if it is handwritten. Although I may not handwrite mine, I am thinking about adding a "P.S" at the end of my cover letter for the mock interview. These sections in this tutorial gave great advice that I will be using very soon!

The Interview Process

For this week's blog, I chose to read "It's Your Turn: What to Ask an Interviewer" and "How to Deal With Interview Stress". I wanted to read these two articles, because I thought that they would help me the most to prepare for future interviews. The first article, "It's Your Turn...," the writer shares appropriate questions to ask any type of interviewer. I have always heard that when the interviewer says, "Do you have any more questions?", that you are suppose to say "Yes". To me, it seems very difficult to have to come up with question right there to ask. This article gave specific questions to ask certain people in the interview setting. I have always wondered what type of questions that I can ask while interviewing for teacher positions. I already know what type of skills you have to have for the profession and what a typical day is like on the job. Some of the questions this writer discussed particularly dealt with businesses and companies, but I did get some questions out of the article. I could ask questions like, "How would you describe your ideal candidate?"

The second article, "How to Deal With Interview Stress," actually helps me the most in preparing for an interview. I am the type that gets very nervous before big events. After reading the article, I learned great ways to avoid this nervousness. Some of the tips the article gave were to arrive at the interview 10 minutes before it begins. It talked about how if you were to early or too late that you may become more nervous. I thought this was an interesting point. The article also talked about how you need to have pauses in the interview and not to panic. The article talks about not crossing your legs or arms during the interview. I can understand this point, because if you cross your arms or legs it may seem as if you are not a very open person or not interested in the interview The most important thing of the whole interview process, I feel, is to be confident and imagine yourself doing well in the interview. By reading these articles, I picked up a few tips that will definitely help when I start interviewing for my career.

Persuasive Communication

In class we discussed MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In this letter MLK used ethos (appeal to the speaker), logos (appeal to logic), and pathos (appeal to emotion) very well to get his point across. I feel as if he proved his credibility by stating all types of information. He stated in a clear way, his purpose for writing the letter. I would have to say that his letter was much more persuasive than the Army speakers we had in class.

The Army speakers did a good job of telling us how to write and speak persuasively, but I was a little disappointed that they did not do their persuasive talk about getting people to join the Army. I think that the class would have gained a little more insight to persuasive communication if they would have spoke that way themselves.

The piece of persuasive communication that I found to share is George Bush's speech on Hurricane Katrina. This article really stuck out to me, because Katrina hit New Orleans during my freshmen year in college. I had a girl that lived beside me, on my hall, that was from the New Orleans area and she had a very difficult time. On Thursday, September 15th,2005, the president addressed the nation about the recovery efforts taking place during that time. I believe he used logos when he said, "Congress has provided more than $60 billion in federal aid so far that has been used in part to help more than 500,000 evacuee families get emergency food.." I feel like this data along with many other statistics really proved to Americans that something was being done for the victims. He used pathos throughout the entire piece while talking about the compassion of our nation and discussing the amount of lives taken during that horrible disaster. He used appropriate language throughout the speech to get across to the nation his sincerity. Although this speech is not the best example of persuasive communication, we can definitely see his use of ethos, pathos, and logos to give the nation hope.

Of the 3 different pieces discussed in this blog, I feel as though MLK's Letter is much more persuasive than both the Army recruiters or Bush's Hurricane Katrina speech. MLK had a way of communicating that was/is so impressive and his letter will probably be looked at for years and years to come when discussing persuasive writing!

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169512,00.html

10 Years From Now

Oh, man where do I start? Ten years from now seems so far away. I will be 31 years old and my life will be much different then it is now. Although 10 years seems far away, it will be here before I know it. I can remember 10 years ago when I was 11. Things have really changed since that time.

In 10 years, I hope to own a brick house with a huge yard. I hope I have a big front porch and that the house will be close to where my parents live, but not right beside them. I hope to be a 2nd or 3rd grade teacher, teaching in a school located somewhere in South Carolina. Although I am not completely sure what school I would like to be at, I would like to be somewhere close to Fort Mill, SC (where I grew up)! The Fort Mill area has many elementary schools. Hopefully I will be able to get a job at one of them, after graduation. By the time I am 31 years old, I hope to be married (hopefully to my high school sweetheart...since we have been dating for so long- but only time can tell). I hope to also have 3 or 4 children. I do not really care about whether the children are boys or girls, but I just want them to be healthy! It would be nice to have both a boy and a girl, but I can only wait to see.

In 1o years from now, I hope to have at least my Master's Degree. This degree will probably be in School Counseling from Clemson. Next year will be the deciding factor on where and when I get my Master's degree. My parents have always tried to show me the importance of getting an education, so I plan on fulfilling my education goals before having children. I have awesome friends both from here at Clemson and from Fort Mill. I look forward to all the vacations and reunions we will have with one another in the years to come after graduation. I hope in 10 years we will still be having "get togethers" except then with our families! I have many goals to reach by the time I am 31 and these are just a few of them!!!

Response to the Web 2.0 Video

This video opened my eyes to how technology is changing the world, in which we live. The video was a little fast for me to comprehend fully the first time, but I think that it is just a representation of how fast technology is changing. The YouTube video took me back to what we discussed in lecture about whether technology has made communication more or less effective. I thought it was interesting how the video clip started out with a pencil and paper and made its way to the Web. The Web allows us to do so many things that we could not otherwise do, but we are the ones that have made life this way. As the video stated, we are the ones pressing the buttons, so that the machine will learn what to do next. Web 2.0 can majorly affect someone who is trying to enter the work place. The Web is a great way for potential employees and employers to communicate back and forth through e-mail, online meetings, and contact one another. They can send job applications and resumes all with just a click on the computer. Although the Web saves so much time, it can also be harmful to people entering the workforce. By people listing large amounts of personal information on websites, it can make it much harder on someone to get hired or promoted within a company. The Web makes tasks much easier for people already in the workforce, but sometimes things are done better the "Old-fashioned way". The Web does not solve all of our problems, although it sure does help in most situations. When the video says that we must rethink everything, I believe it is referring to how we must change with technology. The technology we use today will be much different in 10 years from now, because look how much it has changed from the 1990s. We must continue to rethink everything, so that we will be capable of using the technology that is available to us.

Introduction

Hey Guys! My name is Amber. I am a junior studying Elementary Education here at Clemson. I was born and raised in Fort Mill, SC. It is a small town outside of Charlotte, NC. Most people think I am from somewhere else due to my thick, southern accent. I hope to one day go back and teach where I grew up. Fort Mill is a great place to grow up with its location being so close to the North Carolina border.

I am an only child so I am very close with my parents. I have a Dachsund named Abbey. She is the sweetest dog and has become the baby ever since I left for college. During my free time I enjoy working at Clemson Elementary's After School Program. This job has great hours and works nicely with my course schedule. I could not ask for a better group of people to work with. Hopefully being a part of this program will help me gain experience for my future career in teaching. I have already learned a lot from the students there and probably will continue to learn more. Besides working, I enjoy cooking, shopping, working out, and hanging out with friends and family.

I am looking forward to this semester. I am beginning to take more Education classes, so most of my day is held in Tillman. Although, we have only been in school a few days, my classes look very interesting. It looks as if I am going to have a semester full of group projects. I always enjoy group projects if people pull their weight! I am pretty organized and love meeting new people!