August 25th-September 8th
It is hard to believe the first two weeks of my senior year are complete! These first two weeks were a bit stressful in trying to manage between two different schools and where no two days have the same schedule. However, starting the Independent Study Mentorship program, ISM, has been very exciting. Over the summer students had access to the syllabus of work that would be required the first six weeks. I have taken advantage of having those assignments and tried to work ahead of schedule. ISM has started off strong with numerous tasks including a career forecast, speech, blog, and mission statement. A career forecast consists of questions that I answered about the subject I want to focus on in college and what I want to learn this year, my final one at Liberty. Although I have thought a great deal about what I want to major in at college, to go through the exercise was surprisingly difficult as I realize how much I have to learn and how fast my last year at Liberty is going to go. The second task was to write and give a speech without reading it. The speech had to be about what makes me who I am and my goals for the upcoming school year. I found it is hard to define myself and what I want to do in a speech others would find interesting and not boring. There is definitely a talent in holding the attention of the room and making what you say important yet entertaining enough people want to listen. Our third task was to set up a Google Blogger account. I didn’t realize how many details it takes to set up a blog. I now have a greater appreciation for professional bloggers! Beyond setting up the skeleton of the blog, I added the color scheme and uploaded my first post. At this point, I have also developed my mission statement and found a quote that is an extension of me. Again, like the blog page, it was more difficult than I originally thought to come up with a statement that succinctly describes what I want to do how I want to get there. In trying to stay ahead of my ISM assignments I have come up with a list of questions to use when I interview professionals. Beyond the obvious questions like, "What did you major in?" and "How many years did it take to get your degree?" I have done research to come up with questions they may not expect. I'm hoping to get the comment "That's a good question" at some point during the interview. Next week I plan to compile my contact list. This list will consists of names, phone numbers, emails and approximate travel distance of possible mentors I could work with this year. Whew!
- Outside of the classroom, I spent approximately 6 hours on ISM work this week.
