Brian Blackiston

Week 3 was a blur…It started off with a trip to New Orleans where I fortunately got to interact with some high up professionals in ESPN and USA Today where I truly learned about the importance of building relationships with a team and people you come into contact with.  These employees told me the importance of understanding every member of the team’s feelings and their reasoning for the decisions they make.In addition, they also shared stories of how certain decisions were challenging and ultimately made through trusting their instincts.  I learned a lot about emotional intelligence through these individuals.

During this week, we met as a group numerous times and during these occasions, I made a great deal of effort to encourage every member of the group.  Whether this was through compliments on their ideas or constructive criticism, I made it a goal to work on this aspect of my leadership ability when it came to working with the group.  With the group work as a whole, well that is a different story.  It is very difficult to make something specific and then make it broader again.  The problem statement is such a tricky idea because it ultimately needs to be the perfect balance between being specific and but not overly specific.  After multiple meetings about the problem statement, I feel like we are in a great spot to move forward with the interview stage of the project.

Finally, I attended the two tutoring sessions during Thursday and Friday for both the memo workshop and resume workshop, and both were equally fascinating and informative.  Although I did receive a fairly low score on my first draft of the memo, the tutors really instilled confidence in my ability to write a better draft.  I was too busy trying to walk the line between a solution and a problem however I needed to simplify the process as a whole.  After the session, I was excited to write the second draft and improve my score tremendously.

Finally, with the resume workshop, I understood the W.H.O. acronym  about the what, how and outcome of each sentence you put into your resume.  I felt that I already had a very strong resume but after this workshop, I know I can refine it and make the whole product even stronger.  Not only for the assignment due Thursday, but also as a job searching tool to help me find a great job for once I graduate college.

Week 3 was a lot and very busy from start to finish.  I learned a lot and cannot wait to see what Week 4 has in store for me.