Research

I research online.  I didn’t know how to research online properly until this class.  I have learned to really appreciate our library access from home to thousands of journals and other articles via JSTOR and Academic One File.  I have relied so much on these two resources over the semester; never again will I aimlessly wander the internet via Google.  The searches can be so much more targeted and useful by using one of these databases.  I’m not the kind of person to pour over stacks of books in a library.  These databases meet my needs perfectly while providing equally reputable sources for research.

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Written Off (Week 3 Question)

In my last store as a manager, I went through the most difficult time in my career.  Our company reorganized, in this case meaning that they were eliminating half of the roles at my level.  Emotions and anxiety were high throughout the experience for everyone.  Fortunately I was kept at a management level, but my team grew from 12 to 36 employees.  I was overwhelmed, and there was no guidance from my superiors because the “playbook” hadn’t been written yet.  We were the experiment, we were the guinea pigs.  I was forced to step down six months later based on my performance.  The higher management tried to spin it as my choice for political purposes, but I was essentially offered termination or a lower position.  I had given my best efforts, and it wasn’t enough.  Soon after, statistics were posted that over 70% of individuals given this role “failed” and were terminated voluntarily or involuntarily.  They added another position for stores of my size six months after I was demoted.

Naturally, the entire process was traumatic for me.  I wasn’t pleased with how things went.  I was very vocal about my disagreement with the way the situation was handled, but the quality of my work wasn’t affected and I was sure to limit discussion with my peers.  My General Manager targeted me.  He started seeking out (i.e. inventing) reasons to document me.  He wanted me out, and badly.  He badmouthed me to all of the other managers.  Peers that I thought I was close with no longer approached me even to say hello, walked by without acknowledging me.  After all the investment I had made in that store, I was not even treated like a person.  Politically, at some point, I had to let go of the entire situation.  I had to just accept it for what it was.  I started to look for further extracurricular work that I could gain something from.  I eventually, after posting some serious results, was starting to make traction with my reputation.

My career was essentially destroyed by this General Manager and his dramatization of my behavior.  I was unable to get positions as a manager elsewhere as I applied.  Finally, he moved to a new store to grand open it, and I decided to apply with him.  I felt that he owed me, and surely must have seen that the person he replaced me with had yielded significantly worse results.  Fortunately, when I described what I had learned through my previous experience, the other managers on my interview panel fought for me.  I got the position, and went on to open my new store.  My departments are top rated in the district, and I am regarded as the best manager in the store.

I have, since moving to this store, watched the same man destroy three different people.  Three different people whose failure was that of a General Manager’s poor choices and the failure of the rest of the management team who should have supported them when they saw a peer struggling.  I know now that it is about this man, not me, and I will never let him break  me again.  I am better than that, I am better than him.  I will go on to show this company how to manage people correctly, how to develop them and guide them, and how to persist when obstacles seem insurmountable.

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What the world needs now…

This won’t be the most popular opinion I share, but I believe it necessary to ensure our continued survival as a species on this planet.  I think population control needs to be expanded worldwide, and not only executed in countries like China (although perhaps in a different way).  I value all life as equal.  When I think about the insurmountable damage we have caused to the ecosystem that supported so much life, the species that have blinked out of existence at our hand for various reasons, I think humans are terribly detrimental to this planet.  To the chagrin of our ancestors and our future descendants, I often muse that this planet would have been better off without homo sapiens. I don’t wish suffering on any of us – the people, the mosquitoes, the rabbits, the trees.  I do see limiting reproduction as the most humane means of controlling human population growth.  When a hunter feels justified in killing deer to maintain their population because they have become a nuisance, I can’t help but think what it would be like if the roles were reversed.  I am not suggesting that we start killing off populations of people; can’t you imagine, though,  that if the rest of earth’s fauna were carrying guns and human intelligence, they would pick us off for all the nuisance we’ve been to them?  Surely, they wouldn’t allow us to pave the entire planet.  I think limiting households to a certain number of children is a proactive and fair way of mitigating the exponential negative effects of human population growth.

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Middle Aged…

One thing I think everyone should learn by the time they are middle aged is personal finances.  Honestly, they should learn it earlier than that.  My personal experience, however,  is that finances are something most people will screw up a few times before they get the hang of it.  By the time one reaches my age (late twenties), they will likely be in the process of settling down.  Settling down, to many, equates to marriage, children, homeownership, and good old American debt.  Better financial planning at an earlier age can mean the prospect of actually retiring at a reasonable age.  Moreover, a middle aged individual should know better than to overextend themselves with revolving credit.  Sadly, some people just don’t learn (my father, for example).  It’s one thing to disadvantage yourself because of poor decisions, but it’s quite another to affect your spouse or child’s quality of life because you don’t know how to manage your funds.  I fully believe that these lessons can be taught by parents or consultants, but the learning happens by getting burned once…twice…thrice…

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Spring Break?

Were I able to take a real Spring Break (I wasn’t this year), I would have traveled to my friend’s orphanage in Nepal as a volunteer.  His recently opened non-profit is one piece of a future volunteerism-as-tourism non-profit incorporation.  I feel, as he does, that when one has the additional resources to travel, it is both rewarding and appropriate to give back in some way.  Perhaps to some that means tipping well at every opportunity from bag boys to room service.  For Eric and myself, it means aiding others in need for the pleasure of having an impact and gaining insight into another culture.  He is a role model to me, as he has traveled much of the globe giving back.  He received a moderate inheritance a few years ago, and in reflection felt very fortunate for his lifestyle.  In thanks for the life he has been able to lead, he set out on a mission to spread his good fortune and effort.  I can only hope that one day, when my finances align with my dreams, I will make work of my Spring Breaks to improve the world I live  in.

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What I learned…

This class might have been challenging, but it was the good kind. I learned how to properly cite sources in this class. Yep, that’s right. All those years in English and I have not been 100% sure on how to do so. Not only was I introduced to different websites that show you how to so, but my teacher told me what was the right and wrong way. I now know that they must be in alphabetical order and depending on what the source is (website, website with no author, blog, etc), there must be a specific layout. I used to just put them all or the place and it was a mess. Now the next time I am writing a paper, I can properly organize my sources. Even if i forget I now know some sites I can go to, to refresh my mind on how to cite. Its perfect and this class taught me a lot as well as challenged me.

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Learning while you’re learning…

In my case, this semester I’m learning to reverse-engineer some habits that I picked up from my many years in the workforce.  As a manager, I’m inundated with tasks, very few of which I personally complete.  Both a joy and tribulation, I must delegate significant portions of my responsibility in order to perform my job.  I also have learned over the years to prioritize tasks effectively and in many cases that means that insignificant tasks fall by the wayside while I tackle the more significant or impactful projects.

As it relates to school this semester, I have learned that in some cases prioritizing is still useful.   However, those smaller tasks can only be delayed, not omitted.  This is very different for me.  In high school, I skated by on high test grades and brilliant projects, but didn’t complete most homework because I didn’t need it to learn and retain the material.  Going into college courses, I expected differently and set out in the beginning of the semester with the best of intentions.  Somewhere along the way this semester I began to omit by prioritization some of the homework due for my classes, with very different (and less lazy) reasons than my high school tactics.  I was overwhelmed with things going on at work, keeping our apartment clean, financial obligations, and three classes worth of assignments.  I defaulted to my failsafe from the corporate world – extinguish the largest flames first.

I read the Syllabi for my classes in the beginning of the semester.  My understanding of the weight of my various grades became distorted by my imperative to survive the semester intact.  I learned the following things about homework throughout the semester, sadly too late to have a significant effect on my grades:

• College math after 10 years out of the game is insanely hard.  Homework is the best way to study this subject, and can be salvation for your grade in a class where the tests are weighted heavily.
• Similarly for math, if I am struggling I need to get a tutor EARLY in the semester!
• In courses involving writing, I am no longer graded against my peers – I am graded against my progress over the semester.  This is a new format for me.  I not only have to “step up my game” on projects, but I need the insurance of smaller assignments.
• I’m still very good in language courses, and I picked up Spanish without difficulty thus far.  The homework may have been inconsequential to my performance over the length of the course, but materials I learned in the last two weeks of the semester didn’t involve the same amount of in-class practice.  For the purpose of retention for future classes and for final exams, I should have put more of an emphasis on the regular homework.

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth beating myself up over.  The most important thing is that I have learned from this experience and will make time for more homework in the future.  I committed to sacrificing whatever necessary in order to go to school.  This semester, that went from to-the-letter execution to a pleasant ideal as the weeks passed.  As my first successfully completed semester in college, it hasn’t ended quite the way I wanted it to, but I’ve learned invaluable lessons.

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Audience Analysis

I’ve never had the flair or interest as regards anything related to English or paper writing but just do it for the credit. This was my mindset when signing up for ENGL 121 for the present semester. I still had that opinion going into the first week of class right up till the point of the first essay to be written. Thinking upon what approach to start to with and through the help of the instructor, I realized the importance of identifying one’s audience. Audience Analysis is one major concept that helps you determine how you want your message to be interpreted. By understanding the audience you writing to, you get a clearer picture and layout of how your message will be conveyed. This concept I plan on using continuously in interacting with others and in other classes or field I find myself.

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Question of the Week 10

Excuse me while I act like a nerd and answer the question of the week the same day it was posted… but c’mon, it’s the last one! Show some enthusiasm people! WOO 😀

Anyway:

What’s one NEW thing you learned this semester in this class? Identify what you learned and how you imagine you’ll apply it to some other aspect of your life.

Before I took English 121, I did not now the first thing about a “rhetorical situation”, let alone the importance of my audience. When Professor Ludeker stood in front of the class and asked us what we thought a rhetorical situation meant I was confident that I had the answer. But then she said it had nothing to do with rhetorical questions. Oops.

As Ms. Ludeker explained to us, a rhetorical situation is pretty much any circumstance that involves one person using any sort of communication to influence or change the perspective of another person (or persons). That means that a huge portion of our own communication can probably be categorized as a rhetorical situation.

Of the four elements that make up a rhetorical situation (author, text, audience, and context), I think the most important one is audience. If there is one thing that I could take away from this class, it would be the importance of identifying my audience and knowing how to reach them. When you are trying to communicate, you have to know who your audience is in order to figure out what exactly they are expecting out of you.  Otherwise, the whole purpose of your message will be useless. For example, if you write an essay to PETA members telling them to buy the new premium steak you offer at your restaurant, your inbox will probably fill up with hate mail pretty fast.  

I think understanding who your audience is will be beneficial in all circumstances that require communication. Anytime I need to persuade, argue, or define a certain topic to people, I can do it properly because I’ll know how they (my audience) will want me to communicate with them and I’ll also know what their expectations are in regards to the topic at hand.

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Question of the Week 10 (last one!)

What’s one NEW thing you learned this semester in this class? Identify what you learned and how you imagine you’ll apply it to some other aspect of your life.

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