Advice

Be ready to take charge and work hard if you are planning to take English 311. This is an awesome class that will help you bring out the creative ideas that you may be hiding inside. Great work takes time and dedication, so don't wait until the last minute to complete your work. Have fun with your projects and look at them all as a challenge and reward yourself when you complete them on time. I did say on time. Put all of you in your projects, but make sure you follow directions. The projects in the English 311 course help get you ready for your career and just help you out in everyday life. I learned so much, my favorite part of the course was the online identity and the service learning project. I liked the online identity project because it really helped me understand that I needed to be aware of what potential employers may see on the Internet about me. The SLP was truly a blessing, I was able to give some of my time to an organization who really appreciated my hard work. I also learned about activities and clubs in my community that I will be having my children participate in.

New Skills

I have learned to truly listen to people stories. While doing my SLP I had the opportunity to speak with students, staff, and parents of New City Academy. The conversations with the students taught me so much, we sat and reminisced about their experience while at New City Academy. I really enjoyed speaking with the younger group about what they will miss about New City Academy, for many of them this was their first school. Some of the students have been with the school for 3 or 4 years and they talked about the previous teachers and school leaders that they had during those years. My service learning experience relates to profession writing, because it reminded me of having a professional image at all times while with my partner. I had to collaborate with my partner, to make the project work. I want to be able to give back to my community by being involved when I finish my studies. While I am employed I will have to use some of the same qualities used to complete my project such as working with others, creating and sharing my ideas. I also took the leadership role and worked on my project solo, because I was pretty ill and when I felt better the school was on spring break.

Small Group Projects

I enjoyed working with the teams on the small projects, it gave me an opportunity to see my classmates ideas. I usually prefer to work alone, because of my take charge attitude. With these projects I was able to provide my creative ideas and also some of my leadership ability and constructive criticism. My group worked well together on the collaboration project, because we all had the take charge attitude and were all very creative. That was one of our strong points, but it can be viewed as a weakness as well because we all could not be the boss so we had to just agree to disagree at times. It worked out well once we sat down and talked about our strong points and what we had to offer the team. That everyone needs to participate, and present every idea that you have. It may seem small to you, but it could make a big difference and could unleash more creative or innovative ideas that the team could benefit from.

What I learned during my SLP

I learned that I am a very patient person while completing my SLP. I had to contact area schools for information to put in my newsletter and some of the people were rude. They treated me as if I was a reporter or private investigator. There are so many activities going on in the community that I did not know about. I have children and I would love for them to be apart of the activities instead of being outside or just sitting home watching television or playing video games. There are activities and people in my community who actually care about the children and the community itself, that surprised me. I also never thought what I would do if my kids school closed or every had a plan for them to get acquainted with their new schools so that they would not feel so out of place on the first day. I learned that it is important to have a plan or some idea of what you are going to do to complete a particular task, rather than going in blind or being shocked or caught off guard when things don't go the way you planned. Before my service learning project I really never had this much interaction with the community and now I plan on spending my summer helping out the South Side Community Center.

Service Learning

I am partnering with New City Academy, a public charter school. The school is pretty small, it goes from kindergarten to eight grade, but the classes are small. This type of environment is key to being able to have more one on one time with students and is desired by many parents. New City Academy is a full of great students, staff, and parents, who love their school. The school has been in its location for 10 years and will be closing at the end of the school year. They are focused on nurturing and giving their children the attention they need. My project will be to complete an end of year newsletter that will include poetry from the students about change and transition. I believe the most valuable service I can offer to New City is to be committed to completing the newsletter to their satisfaction, because this is the last one the school will send out. Some students may want to keep the newsletter for memories and I will be excited and honored to be apart of the memories of the good times at New City Academy.

Service Learning Project

I am looking forward to working with my service learning partner at New City Academy. I spoke with Elaine Miles who is the office administrator. We are scheduled to meet on Thursday, March 25,2010 to start the project. I may be drafting a newsletter for the school, we talked about maybe a year end newsletter, but we have not set anything into stone. I am eager to complete this project to offer my services to my partner. My children used to attend New City Academy so I am very familiar with the staff and many of the students who attend the school. This project will be fun, because I will be able to see what fun activities or programs the school has planned. New City Academy will be closing so this newsletter is going to be very important because it will be the last one for the school, so I want to do my best work. I have some ideas that I will run by Ms Miles to see if she likes them, and I plan to get rolling on this so I want run out of time or have to feel rushed to meet deadlines.

Service Learning

From reading several articles on service learning I see it as a way to learn through doing. It seems as if it would be more exciting then traditional classroom study. I took from the article that it was a way to give back to the community while teaching civil responsibility. The high school's in Chicago, now have community service as a requirement to graduate and I think that is awesome service learning and it teaches them life-long civil engagement. Service learning should be incorporated into every school to help students understand the importance of sharing whether it be knowledge, time or love. I am excited about this project, because I have a opportunity to get out and work in the community. My only fear is that I might not be able to do certain things for the partner and me being unable to say no, might end up doing them anyhow. I will just have to make it clear in the beginning that this is a project for school and I must stick to it and not be sidetracked or talked into doing something more. Hopefully this could help with my networking and help me in the future.

Workplace Strategies and Language Choices

Being in the Public Relations field it is important to be an effective communicator. It is important to master both verbal and non verbal language that will help to convey your message. In today's world, simple communications is not enough. Companies, and associations need to know how to communicate in ways that cut through the clutter of the busy world, delivering effective messages that motivate your target audiences to action. To ensure that I make the correct language choice in the workplace, I am prepared to follow these strategies:

• I will know my purpose for speaking and master skills needed to move my audience
• It is important to act natural
• Know my audience
• Master communicating clearly and listen actively
• Keep something to take notes
• Be creative, keep an open mind
• Keep a dictionary handy
• Build my confidence
• 
  

Do's and Dont's of Social and Professional Networking

Social Networking has become the number one way to communicate nowadays. With everyone so caught up with being on top of the latest technologies, it can be damaging if you are not careful. I am a Facebooker and, I used to myspace for awhile. I don't have a twitter but I enjoy writing so one day I just might start to twit. You should always remember to use these sites with caution, because you never know who's reading what you say. There are people on Facebook who talks about everything that goes on in their lives in great detail. This is not cool, because not only can your friends see what you have on your page so can their friends. I would not recommend using these sites while at work, because the company you work for may monitor your computer use. Even with regular email, we should be cautious about things we send or say in these email, just in case they wind up in the wrong hands.

Developing Your Online Reputation (Indentity Strategies)

When developing your online reputation you need to know what message you want to send about yourself. If you want to have a professional image then start by keeping it clean and help it stay that way. It's hard to get respect back once you have lost it so why not work hard to keep the respect you have. Information that other people post on the internet can damage your squeaky clean profile and keep employers from hiring you. Managing your online reputation is just like managing your reputation out in the world. It can be tarnished by the people you associate yourself with also, because information or picture that they post of you as well could be seen by others. Be cautious of the information that you put on the web, because someone could take it and use it against you.

If there is some damaging information or some information that you are not proud of delete it as soon as possible. There are ways that you can disassociate yourself from people on these personal peer sites so if need be do so. I also read that there are ways to contact the website owners to have information removed, you could report abusive information and people. The best thing to do when on these peer sharing sites is to keep it clean do post anything that you don't want everyone to know about. Never bad mouth previous employers or coworkers because it does not say much about the type of person you are. Your image is everything it is what gets you in the door for that interview.

I do have personal sites like Myspace, and Facebook that I use to communicate with family and friends often. I was surprised by some of the things we actually put on the websites after knowing that perspective employers look on these sites. Now I am more careful and I have a lot of pictures I need to remove, I have even made my profiles private, and I set privacy settings to my pictures. It is hard work branding yourself and setting a professional image but it is all worth it in the end.

My 5 Toughest Interview Questions

I am usually pretty calm when I talk to people. I enjoy having conversations and have little to no problems fitting in with new people. My problems begin when it come time to interview, I always am nervous and are unable to speak. I speak in front of different people as a part of my job as a sales consultant and have no problem giving one hour to two hour presentations. It seems as if everything that could keep me from getting the job starts to run around the room like an impatient child. These are the five interview questions I have the hardest time answering.

1. What would you consider an ideal work environment? I wonder if they use this question to see if you are a lazy person who tends to slack if you say a carefree environment where you can work at your own pace. Or if you are lazy if you say that you prefer a more of a team environment. When answering this question I would start off by stating that I could adapt well to many different work environments and could transition well if and when changes are made.

2. What did you like best and least about your last job? When answering I would start off with what I liked best about my last job by giving an example and tell how that skill could be used in their company if I am hired. The I would give an example of what I liked least, and turn it into a positive by stating how that has helped me develop a skill.

3. Tell me about a time when you dealt with an irate customer and how did you handle it? I would start off by explaining that I understand that not all customers I come in contact with will be in a good mood. Then I would go on to explain that I have control over my own actions, so I would remain calm and listen understand exactly what the customer needs. The majority of the times they just want to vent to someone or just want someone to listen. Then I would go on to explain how once I listened to the customer I offered several solutions to the problem. By keeping calm and listening I found a solution to the customers problem and how they were appreciative and happy with the level of service they received.

4. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a co-worker who wasn't doing his/her fair share of he work. What did you do and what was the outcome? This question is tricky; I would make sure not to bad mouth anyone to start, because that would make me look bad. I would say something like if a co-worker was falling behind on their work it would affect the team as a whole. I would talk to group and not single anyone out. I would explain the goal and the importance of everyone pulling his/her weight. At the same time I would go the extra step to step up to help a co-worker if needed. This always gets me because I don't want to seem like I am unable to approach a co-worker who is slacking, but also I don't want to offend anyone.

5. What is the last book you read? Think about this one really good, make sure not to tell the interviewer you were reading a Zane novel or Harlequin Romance. I would think of something scholarly or something that was more professional. Please try to read something even if its a business magazine or something that in current new.

These questions tend to trip me up when I am interviewing. If anyone has any suggestions or comment I would love to hear them, Thank you and happy job hunting everyone.

Personal/Professional Mission Statement

I have always been a person who does makes her own decisions. I am very personal and don't like a lot of confusion, my motto is to keep it simple. My actions are based on my attitude, and I never let people or situations control my thoughts. Family is everything to me and I value the bond and closeness that comes with being a family. I enjoy gathering with my family where we eat and share thoughts and give praise and encouragement. Whenever I plan something I always know how I want or expect the outcome to be. This helps me to have alternate endings and also makes it easier to deal with obstacles that I may face on my journey. The most important of the seven habits of highly effective people happens to be habit for- think win/win. I am going to be duty driven in 2010 and only seek relationships were I can offer something to someone and they can give me something in return. I want to pass on my knowledge and accept the knowledge passed on to me.

Ravin Martin

Ravin Martin is a junior at Davenport University pursuing her Bachelors of Business Management. Being a Chicago native, who moved to Michigan she plans to move to a much warmer climate once completes her studies. Ravin is currently self employed as a senior consultant who does parties, she loves empowering and educating women on her products.

She is the third of eight children, who enjoys spending time with family and friends. Her hobbies include sewing and reading. Ravin also majored in fashion design at International Academy of Design and Technology in Chicago, IL. She loves to make outfits and use her sisters and friends as walking billboards. Once her business degree is complete she plans to work as a finance manager and open a boutique and be successful at the designing and business aspect also.