Last week, my focus was on reflecting my Original Work. If there is one thing I spent the most time on this past week, it is on my Original Work Assessment. It gave me time to look back what I have created and given me to an opportunity to explain it and the process I took to make it. For my Original Work, I created infographics to spread information in a convenient and accessible way. While writing this assessment, I realized that I have finished this end of semester project and it is time to move on to my next one. My first mentor visit has ago and the idea of a Final Product reminds me that the only way to get somewhere on your journey is to keep moving.
Along with my Original Work Assessment, I wrote my fourth Interview Assessment. This interview was conducted about a month ago and it was a bit difficult remembering every single detail that happened. The importance of taking notes during an interview stood out to me and helped me complete that assignment. After completing my assignments for the week, I knew I had to start looking ahead. My schedule is only going to get busier as we dive into the next half of the journey. Coming up, I have an Original Work Presentation. My first thought was, “another speech? Already? We just had one recently.” However, that speech was three months ago. I knew this speech is gonna be a bigger challenge for me since the time frame increased and I have a lot more information to talk about. Listing out the things I need to do to prepare, I made sure to put making flashcards first so I can start practicing immediately. Public speaking is absolutely one of my biggest fears. One of my long-term goals for this year is to overcome this fear in the future. By having these many presentations in ISM, I believe by the end of the year, I will be very close to achieving this. This is the last goal I have left to accomplish from my list of S.M.A.R.T. Goals I have created at the beginning of the year. Having these goals set helped me not forget them and I will probably continue using them in the years to come even after I finish my ISM journey. Since I started school, I was mostly a very organized individual. However, by taking this opportunity to join the ISM program, I see clearly that I have been slowly improving that skill. With all this in mind, I will not be surprised if I notice an improvement in the future due to this program.
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Even though the week was not too long, it felt like one of the longest weeks so far in ISM. We had our first major event this past week. The ISM Winter Research Showcase took place and I did not know what to expect. Before the event began, I walked around to other tables. While walking around, I noticed how many people had similar topics and there were few boards that completely stood out. As I was walking around, I was talking to students from other schools and it reminded me of the networking station at business symposium back in October. I met some of my friends as well as new people which helped me expand my networking.
Once the event started, I did not know what I would say once someone came to my table. Do I explain my topic? My Original Work? Why I chose this topic? Do I let my guests just ask me questions? I was unsure. However, after a few guests came by to talk to me, I sort of got the hang of talking to them about my topic. While doing this, I got more comfortable speaking to strangers who randomly popped up. My guests had a wide age range, from 5th graders to retired individuals. I had to change my presentation each time to my audience’s level which improved my public speaking. Overall, the whole event was a major success in my book. However, I was not completely done with my semester’s research. My Original Work still remained unfinished. Since that was also another major assignment I had to finish, I felt like time has been flying but still imposing a heavy presence. After hours of work, I still was not done. But one I finished creating my four infographics, I noticed how much work I got done in such a short amount of time. It made me feel accomplished and the time and effort I put into it actually felt worthy. Looking back on this semester and specifically to the work I have finished through assessments or through other means, my journey through ISM in Chemical is already half over. By reflecting on my work, I realized how much improvement I have made in multiple things such as public speaking. With all this mind, I am excited to see where I will be going next for this new semester. Over the past week, my major focus in ISM has been on my digital and binder portfolios. Since the Winter Showcase is coming up soon, we have to have our board and portfolios ready. I have nearly completed my board last time so I did not have much to add to it this week. I have found some pictures to add to my board so there are some visuals on my board.
My portfolios were somewhat put together before the week started but it was not Showcase ready. I had to go back and print all my Assessments because I did n0t have my annotations in the margins. After downloading everything into a Word document, I printed them out and all the other documents such as my SMART Goals, Weekly Report, logs, et cetera. I had to set up my dividers as well to organize all my work. My dividers come with labels which I need to print the section names. I had a bit of trouble with printing on the sheet of labels since I did not know how to do it. However, I managed to get the labels to print the way I wanted them to after a couple of tries. Just preparing for the Winter Showcase showed me how much closer I am to the next part of my journey. I am very grateful for the opportunity I have gotten to be part of this Independent Study Mentorship program. With the showcase coming up, I realized how much I have improved my social skills in the professional world and my daily atmosphere. Over the past five days, things have been a bit hectic. With the Research Winter showcase coming up, I have been trying to piece everything together. However, the main thing I have worked on regarding the upcoming research showcase is my board display.
The board display at first appears as an easy task. You just have to print out everything and paste it on a board, right? Essentially, that's pretty much it but it is not a simple, effortless task. I went to Hobby Lobby and Target to get my supplies and just buying the supplies showed me how indecisive I am. For my topic, I selected large gold letter stickers for hassle-free application. To put them on my board, I used a ruler to make sure the letters are evenly spaced. It is important for everything is neat and precise which made the process longer. Going back to my display board plan, I realized that even though I had many items on my plan, I had a lot of space left. On the actual board, the paper took up more space than expected and it caused me to make changes and rearrangements. I want everything to match my color scheme so I specifically bought light blue supplies. While searching in the stores for these supplies, I came upon gold letters and tape which went with my theme. Because of this, I decided to add gold to my color scheme and my digital portfolio. After putting together most of my board, I realized how fast this semester has gone by. The ISM Winter Showcase is quickly approach and so is the due date for my Original Work. I still have a lot more to work on in order to complete my Original Work. Due to all the work, I still had pending, I created a calendar to ensure I get all my work done on time with apparent effort. There is still more left on this journey but after making the board, I realized how much more I have actually already completed. Over the course of the past three weeks, I have been mainly focusing on interviews, my board display, and my Original Work. I had my Fall Conference on December 15th and it allowed me to reflect on the work I have done this semester as a whole. My work is helping me synthesis my Original Work. My Original Work idea is to analyze the different methods of DNA Fingerprinting. I have decided to create a guide on the pros and cons there are for each type and which is more efficient for the case at hand. My plan is to have this ready with my board display for the Winter Showcase. The ISM Winter Showcase is on January 17th. Since the date is slowly coming up, I have printed all my invitations and started to hand them out.
For my board display, I started my layout by following my board display plan. My main focus so far has been on the color scheme aspect of my board. Along with this, I have started to add more to both my portfolios and create the labels for my tabs. The main thing I have done that has pushed me further in my journey for the past few weeks are my interviews. I had two interviews during this time period. The first one was with Dr. Balkus, a chemistry professor at UTD. He gave me a great insight on his impact with his patents and research. He explained to me why it is important to have a passion for your career so you have a job you love. My second interview was with Dr. Ballengee, a chemical engineer at Frito Lay. He is part of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). During this interview, Dr. Ballengee informed me how broad chemical engineering is. He works in the food department and showed me how he contributes to making a difference. These three weeks have had a big impact on my ISM journey and showed me how much I have already progressed. Over the course of the last week, I focused my ISM work on my Winter Showcase Invitation, both portfolios, and my Original Work. I had multiple designs picked out but I wanted to have one that matches my color scheme. While working on my website, I decided to have a city/industrial theme. This helped me decide on what to choose for my invitations. I ended up being very satisfied with draft turnout. While finalizing the draft of my invitation, I created a title page on Canva for my binder portfolio. After making the title page, it motivated me to work on my binder. It was satisfying to go through all the work I have done this year and build my binder. It was difficult at first but after putting everything in order, it made sense and helped me plan for the future on where to put the extra stuff.
For my research assessment this week, I wanted research a topic that would help my Original Work. A type of DNA Fingerprinting I research was restriction fragment length polymorphism. This research assessment was beneficial for my Original Work because it informed me of what kind of preparation I will have to make. This week has been very beneficial to my Original Work. It gave me a big step forward in my Original Work process. I noticed I would help create a schedule for my work over break since I have a lot of going on and want to be on top of my Original Work. In the past two weeks, I have been mainly focusing towards my Original Work. My Original Work idea is to analyze the different methods of DNA Fingerprinting. I want to do this because I want to create a guide on which process is more efficient for the case at hand. Since I did not know the all the types of DNA Fingerprinting, I picked the most common ones and started to look into each of them. It made me do my Research Assessment on a specific topic of DNA Fingerprinting: Polymerase Reaction Chain.
Along with conducting research for my Original Work, I started to prepare for Winter Showcase. I created a draft of my invitations and had many redos. It was difficult for me to actually pick a template on Canva which resulted in me making numerous invitations. In the end, I ended up picking the best one that matches my color scheme. This week, I also started to look into more contacts to conduct interviews with. My goals have been set for me to achieve before the break and I realized that I need a mentor. In order to have a mentor, you need at least three interviews but so far, I only had two. I am pretty sure I will end up asking Mr. Doke to be my mentor but I have to wait and get an additional interview. Finally, to wrap up the week, I started to look at my speech from early November. The video of my speech showed me all my strengths and weaknesses and how I actually appeared in front of an audience. I was given informative feedback which I truly believe it will help me improve for next time and the video helped me understand exactly what my audience was referring to. A lot of work is piling up but I believe that all our preparation like this speech is guiding us on the right path to success on this ISM journey. This past week was speech week. In other words, it was a super busy week. Public speaking is something that makes me nervous. For this presentation, I was required to present the research I have done thus far throughout my journey. Along with this presentation, I was required to create a presentation. While making the presentation, I had to focus on making it match my color scheme. It was quite difficult for me since everything has to be perfect for me. I decided to make a Prezi so it is more lively. However, Prezi did not have a template that matched my color scheme so I had to create a background on Canva. It pushed me to start creating designs till I made a background that I liked. While making this, I started planning how I wanted to present my research. I decided the best way to do so is to break everything down to make it more interesting. Also, I added small pictures to make it visually appealing.
My main achievement this week was successfully giving my speech within the time frame. I was really unsure how this speech would go because I never gave a presentation by myself for that long. I was given informative feedback which I truly believe it will help me improve for next time. In the end, I realized that I need to practice my speech more frequently. This will help me slow down and appear calmer before an audience. Most of all, talking about my journey thus far appears to have pushed me the most. I still have the rest waiting and am excited to see where it will take me. This past week has been one in many. It started off with an interview with Dr. Bruce Gnade. This interview was very different from my last one. Instead of focusing on one specific topic during my interview, I learned about the different roles each job Dr. Gnade did. This interview gave me a new perspective on passion. Along with this interview, I began brainstorming ideas for my Original Work. It is usually difficult for me to think of something creative since I tend to be more creative when I am not trying to be. While making a list of some ideas, I decided to start my interview assessment.
With this assessment, I ended up noticing many things. My interviewee this time was a retired research chemistry professor. He told me it’s very difficult to find a chemical engineer program in Dallas. It sounds reasonable since this career is not well known in the area. It made me realize that if chemical engineering was marketed better in the Dallas area, more programs for chemical engineering would be available. This idea sort of gave me something to start thinking about to decide what I want to do for my Original Work. The passion Dr. Gnade had for helping students was the other thing that stood out to me. It was clear he loves his job and wouldn’t want to do anything else. During my first interview, Mr. Doke also had a great passion and it emphasized that one thing I should have to pursue anything is passion. This proves to me that the first step to being successful is finding passion. Over the past week, things have started to piece together. I started to work on uploading my work onto my digital portfolio. While doing this, I decided to start planning my Winter Showcase invitations. The main thing I ended up doing this past week was adjusting colors to match my color scheme and browsing templates to find a few I like so I can go from there. Towards the second half of the week, I researched semiconductors to decide whether or not I should really change my topic specificity to semiconductors from biochemical engineering.
With much thought, I realized it is time for me to catch up on uploading my work thus far on this journey on to my digital portfolio. I came to the conclusion that it will take me a while to adjust it to what I want it to end up looking like. In the meantime, our research presentation days are approaching. During this presentations, we talk about our research assessments and interviews and what we have learned from them so far. So, I started going through all the thing I have researched on this journey and started jotting down key things to mention and going over my interview assessment pushed me to do a research assessment over semiconductors. With the new information I gathered on semiconductors, I was quite pleased with my decision to go through and research this topic because it fascinates me. The challenges and new advancements that go along with semiconductor showed me how this topic is still innovation to help the world step into the future. Overall with this research and all the things I have done so far, I have seen improvement within myself and believe this will help me decide on my original work that is coming up. |