Final Thoughts

I have learned a lot in this class, more than I actually thought I would. So my advice to the incoming classes would be as follows:
~DO YOUR BLOGS! they take little to no time to complete and if you don't do them they could hurt you real bad in the then
~PAY ATTENTION when it comes time for the resume and cover letter parts! that lesson helped me get a job... pretty impressive.
~HAVE FUN with the proposal! get creative with it, its one of the only times in school that you will be doing something that may actually help people and you have the chance to be as creative as you want with it.

Its not much, but that's what I think will make you class expeirence better and more productive.



ps. sorry its late angie. :(

looking for ethical breaches...

I found that trying to find dehumanizing language about a ethical lapses was a lot harder than one would think. We first tried to find documentation on the Japanese internment camps during WWII but none of the memos we found were dehumanizing. They were straight forward about what they were doing. Then we looked up cloning and found nothing helpful at all about that... guess the jury is still out on that being ethical or not. FInally we settled on finding things that Milosevic said or wrote during his genocide reign on Serbia. But all we could find is info on his trials, and nothing conclusive on that either.

So i think it's almost imposible to find this stuff... unless you have a key for some secret file that only special people get to look in. I'm sitll looking thou, so here's hope.

Ethics in the work place

It's no surprise to me that there are many examples of poor ethics in the work place. Too often is the road to a bigger paycheck taken in spite of who it hurts, esp in todays office. But what did surprise me is that only a third of those envolved in ethical lapses were actually distracted by them. With all the political and even grass roots talk of helping the little guy out and doing the thing thats right for everyone, I'm a little shocked that there isn't more guilt about not following through on the big talk. But it makes perfect sense that once ethical lapses occur, office relationships are strained. People talk too, it's hard for someone who has done something unethical to keep it to themselves, it has something to do with the guilt of it all. The article mentioned that 46% of ppl admitted to telling someone else, which only increases that office strain. My one thought though is why can't ppl just do what's right?!?! I hope that once I'm in the real world that I can always just say no to ethical lapses.

Screen vs Paper

I think the most important thing to remember when writing for a website is brevity. You have to consider who you are writing for and that they are probably looking on the web for quick information. You need to get to the point with in a small paragraph. It's also important to have well explained links that visitors can navigate easily and quickly.
If you are writing for somehting going into print, you can be a little more liberal with the length. You can get in to more background before making your main points. People who pick up a publication are most likely in it for the long run, but just to make sure it is often good to have an abstract that those doing research can scan to get a good idea if they should stay tuned or not.
When you are uploading a published document on to a website, that abstract becomes even more important. It will also help if subtitles are created if they are not already there. Again anything that makes a long document easier to navigate on a website is better.

I'm $50 bucks richer...

I have been saying that I've been looking for a job for the last couple months, but this week I started making phone calls. Two to firms in Charleston and one in Chicago. So far nothing has come of them, which is to be expected I guess, But at least my name is out there. I will be spending the week in the mac lab in lee hall completing my portfolio. whoopee...

But the more exciting thing that happened this week would be the studio charrette that we did. A couple of architects came in with two different sites and told us to do research on them and then design a gallery for each site. My group was not working well together as of Wednesday at 3 when our bosses/clients came around for our desk crit; so we were given 30 mins to come together and figure out what we wanted to do. We did and everyone was happy. Friday we presented and turns out it was a competition. Everyone voted our design the best out of the group.... I've never won anything especially for any thing I've worked on, so this kinna made my weekend. So now i have to update my resume to include award winner. :-D

Cover Letters

I thought that the advice for the cover letters was helpful. To me thats the hardest part about trying to get a job. Your resume is either impressive or it's not, and if they like your resume then its up to the cover letter. The hardest part is the balance of how much of you to put in the letter and how much of them to talk about. Finding a graceful way to show off how much you know about what they do is difficult. I guess its like a sales pitch in writing - why i would be a good addition, look how much i already know; that kind of thing.

I also liked the advice of no mass letters. Thats hard to do when you're looking at entry level positions, but if it puts you above the rest then thats a good thing. It also makes the selection of where you want to apply a more important thing. You don't just apply where they are hiring, but where you want to work, a good thing if you get the job,but then you also may just get your hopes up....

the whole process is very tiring, which is why the cover letter advice is incredibly helpful!

Real Interview Notes

Thankfully I was able to do my interview via phone this weekend, which was nice. I can't decide whether i would be more compfortable with a face to face interview than one that i could do in my pj's... i think that it being on the phone had a slightly "word-y" effect on me. I felt like i rambled on a little too much, and i don't know if being face to face would nip that in the but or not. Other than that I think it went ok... the real thing is going to be a little different --- and be different i mean much harder. oh well


as for the topic at hand i thought that everyones presentations were really good... the ones that stick out are the football one, the chicken one, and the pastry one. the football one was awesome cause i really had no idea just how intense being a player was, so it was cool to have an insight like that. The chicken one was awesome cause girl brought a chicken in to the class room!! and thats just cool! and then of course i loved kyle's cause a) he's in my group, and b) he made really tasty pastries! so i think he wins over all!



ps..... spring break is in 6 days and nothing is better than that! until tomorrow when it will be 5 and so on and so forth!!!!!