Wisdom from Dr. Seuss

The end of the semester is always a little bittersweet for me. It is nice to be finishing up classes and getting finals over with, but it also means that I won’t be seeing the same people as much. I always enjoy making new friends in my classes, so it is always a little sad when those classes end, because you just don’t run in the same circles anymore. It happens every semester, even when I try to tell myself that to won't.

I also have a few friends that will not be at BYU next semester. Some are leaving on missions and others have internships for winter semester, so I will not get to see them at all. It is really sad that I won’t get to see them, but there is this one quote that I love that always helps me feel better. It is from Dr. Seuss, and it says:

 “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

Throughout my life, this is a quote that I have been able to look back on and help me have a better attitude. Endings are always sad for me, but if I remember to be grateful for what I have had instead of focusing on what I won’t have, then I will be able to be a happier person. This is something that I have to learn again and again, but I feel like I am definitely getting better at just “smiling because it happened.” I’m so grateful for the opportunities I have had to meet such amazing people, including many of you. I hope you all the best with finals!

Remote Meeting

Group projects have lots of pluses and minuses. It is nice to be able to divide up the work and share ideas but it is very difficult to find times when everyone in the group can meet together. With so many different schedules, it is hard to coordinate meetings where we can all be present. So out of necessity, our group has had a couple of meetings where we have had people Skype in. It is not as easy as it would be if we could actually meet in person, but it allowed us to still get things done even when we are in different places.

Google Docs were also very helpful in compiling and organizing our ideas. We were able to see what our other group members had written and get a general idea of what we should write. Although it was not perfect and we still had to do a lot of group editing, it was nice to have all of our information in one place where everyone can access and see it.

So despite the difficulties of group projects, we were still able to get things done thanks to the help of modern technologies. And even though group projects are not always the most enjoyable, I know that I need to get used to working in them because the business world is full of group projects. I want to be a contributing member, so working in group projects helps me to become better.

Thankful for Family

This week I got to be a mother of five … and it was an interesting experience. My parents went to Italy for Thanksgiving break so they flew me home to babysit my siblings for the week. It really was a lot of fun, but also I a lot of work! I noticed that there are lots of little things that my mom usually does that I don’t usually notice, and I now had to do them – like making sure everyone brushed their teeth and figuring out meals three times a day. It makes me really appreciate all that my mom does.

It was even more difficult to figure out meals with it being Thanksgiving! Good thing my siblings are young and easy to please because I do not know how to make a turkey (or really cook at all) …. So we had chicken nuggets and they were just as happy! I was worried it wouldn’t really feel like Thanksgiving with a chicken nugget dinner, but we were able to make it feel like Thanksgiving in our own little way. It truly is the spirit of the holiday that counts.

So I guess what I learned this week is that I am so grateful for my family. With my parents being gone, it was a lot more work around the house, and we all missed having them there on Thanksgiving. But I am also grateful for my siblings and how they make the best of things and still have tons of fun. I am so grateful for all of them, especially during this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Because family makes the holidays better! 

Individual Presentations (2)

This was week two of individual presentations, and I was surprised by how many programs and apps there are out there to help you to effectively manage both your personal and business life. I didn’t even know about things like Evernote, Asana, Hootsuite, Todoist, and countless other applications. It was nice to get to learn a little bit about all of these programs so that if I ever find myself needing to organize, or plan, or collaborate anything, then I know where I can go to get that help. That is one of the most wonderful things about the internet – you can always find the help you need as long as you know where and how to look for it.

I also learned a lot of helpful things about using social media. It is something that I can use to help myself, but it is also something that is helpful in evaluating the social media presence of our business for our final reports and recommendations. For example, in my group project, I am in charge of evaluating our business’s use of Instagram, and thanks to one of these presentations, I learned that one of the best ways to use Instagram is to “tell your story.” I love that what we learn in this class is so applicable and useful.

So I want to become better at utilizing all of the resources at my disposal – both these “help” applications and my own social media. If I can effectively use the things that I have learned about in these presentations, then it could give me an advantage and I will hopefully be better organized and prepared.  

Individual Presentations (1)

For class this week, we had our individual presentations conference. It was a good experience to practice presentations where we are heavily graded on how we give the presentation as opposed to what we give the presentation on. I really had to remember to be more aware of what I am doing because there are a lot of things that factor into a presentation besides just the content. It’s good practice because all of those things of how we give our presentations is what can make it successful or not.

I do wish that I could have gone the second day though, because I feel like I could learn a lot about presenting from watching my classmates. There were so many good presentations! I loved all of the creative hooks and interesting ways to remember the topics. I think that a good hook is one of the most important things of the presentation because if you don’t hook your audience, then they aren’t going to pay attention to you and it doesn’t matter what you do during the rest of the presentation if they aren’t listening. But overall, I feel like everyone did such a great job at doing that. Because even though some of these topics are not the most interesting to talk about, I was still engaged during all of the presentations.

Next time I give a presentation, which will probably be in the class, I want to makes sure that I am sending out all of the right nonverbal cues to keep the audience interested. It is an important part of presenting that I don’t usually focus on, so I’m glad that we do that in this class! 

Here is a link to a blog that has some good tips for non verbal cues during presentations. Enjoy!

http://24slides.com/blog/communicate-non-verbally-presentations/ 

Be a "Supremely Happy" Person

Every day in class, my finance professor gives a spiritual thought. It is nice because it breaks up the lecture, and I always really appreciate what he has to say. This week he sent out an email with title, “Too long for a spiritual thought in class.” I wasn’t going to read it because of the “too long” part, but I decided to just take a quite look at it, and I'm glad that I did. It was a link to an article titled The Surprising Science Behind “Supremely Happy” People. It was really interesting to read and I definitely want to apply some of those principles in my life. Here is the list that they gave of “The Habits of Supremely Happy People.” Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Happy people surround themselves with other happy people. Joy is contagious. People are four times more likely to be happy in the future with happy people around them.

2. Happy people try to be happy. When happy people don’t feel happy, they cultivate a happy thought and smile about it.

3. Happy people spend money more on others than they spend on themselves. Givers experience what scientists call the “helper’s high.”

4. Happy people use laughter as a medicine. A good old-fashioned chuckle releases lots of good neurotransmitters. A study showed that children on average laugh 300 times a day versus adults who laugh 15 times a day.

5. Happy people use the power of music. Researchers found that music can match the anxiety-reducing effects of massage therapy.

This was a really good reminder to me of what really makes us happy. My very favorite is the first point of surrounding ourselves with happy people makes us happy. It makes me really appreciate all of the wonderful people in my life and remind me that I need to be that happy person in other people’s lives as well. I hope you enjoyed this little insight! 

Online Interview

This week I was able to practice and online interview. It is a very different interview experience than having a normal meeting or even a phone call, so it was nice to be able to practice this before I had to do it in a real interview situation.

My partner was very good at giving feedback. One of the things he suggested was including an interesting or distinguishing factor in my “tell me about yourself” so that the interviewer has something to remember me by and make me stand out. That is something that I definitely want to incorporate in my future interviews. I also feel like I could be better at using the PAR stores as the format for answering the questions. It is easy to tell about experiences but if feel like using a PAR story just gives the interviewer a better answer than just an experience. It is something that I need to be better at preparing beforehand because it is hard to think of a PAR story on the spot. 

A few things that I felt were helpful that I had done for this interview was making sure to answer questions and to use the same wording on my resume as listed in the job description. Having questions makes you seem like you have prepared for this interview and that you are really interested in working with the company. Also, using that same wording make it easy to identify if you are a god candidate for this job.

Overall, I feel like I learned more than I thought would and I would definitely say it was a beneficial experience.