My motivation is my family. For my entire life, my dad has been working himself too hard to take care of my family and ensure the best for me and my siblings. He moved us from a small townhouse in San Jose to a comfortable house in the suburbs. He made sure that we were enrolled in good schools and were able to participate in extracurricular. My dad owns his own business and it hasn’t done very well in a long time. He has tried again and again to find good salesman to work for him and each of them end up screwing him. Someday I want to build the knowledge and resources to be able to make my dad’s business extremely successful. I want to be able to give back to my father with the knowledge that he worked so hard to give me. This also goes along with my more personal goals of being an event planner. I not only want to do what I love but I want my business to be successful so that I can care for my family and give them the best like my dad did for me.

I work with determination, I lead with confidence, I think with perspective.

I work with determination. When I am working to obtain a goal, nothing can stop me. If I have my sights set on getting something done, it will get done. While working on the hair and makeup crew with theater, I learned how important it is to get a job done correctly and on time. I had call times that I had to ensure that actors were ready, even if, for whatever reason, I had less time than allotted. I learned how to work under stressful conditions and high expectations of my performance. I lead with confidence. When I became the Senior Shift Leader at Kaiser I learned how to speak in front of a group and how to lead meetings of over 20 people. I also learned how to gain the respect from my colleges by treating them with respect and showing genuine care towards them. I think with perspective. When I was a coach for teenage boys soccer I had to think outside of the box as to how to create drills that will target their specific areas of necessary improvement. It was also difficult to hold the attention of 16 adolescents so using my perspective was crucial in thinking of creative ways of how to speak to them and what to say in order to motivate them to want to work hard.

My short term goals are to obtain a business related job on campus for next year and junior year so that I can make some money and also gain some great experience to contribute to the success of my long term goals. It is also a goal of mine to become a BBL mentor and influence incoming freshmen to succeed the way the mentors did for me. Then I would like to become a part of the Business Honors Program to make myself stand out within the business school. I later hope to obtain an internship my junior year summer so that I will hopefully have a job lined up for when I graduate.

My mid-term goals as far as an entry level job out of college includes having a job lined up before I graduate that is catered to what I’d like to do later on. I want to open my own event planning service so as my first job out of college I hope that it will have something to do with event planning. I would also be interested in a job with management or marketing as well, considering these will also be crucial aspects of establishing my business.

My long term goal is to eventually establish my own, extremely successful, event planning business. I am interested in the glamour of planning weddings and high-end events so I am excited for that but I also look forward to planning philanthropy events. I believe the best way to market a good cause is through the use of a successful event and if I can contribute to a cause by doing something I love, that would be the ultimate goal.

During this class we did a scavenger hunt of the resources we could utilize in Lillis. I had been to a couple of the spots but I had no idea we had certain resources available to us. I remember vaguely hearing about the computer room with free printing in the beginning of the year but I didn’t remember details, nor did I have any idea where it was, so that was helpful. It was also interesting to find out about the accounting study rooms because I heard accounting is really difficult and that will be very useful. My team and I even noticed a balcony that we took a picture on and which I will now be visiting between classes. I think this activity was great because I know how to navigate Lillis a lot better than I did before. I always wanted to wander around and look for the places I know are there but I didn’t want to look like the stupid lost freshman that had know idea how to get around (which I was) but now I feel a lot more comfortable.

The Diversity Career Fair was a huge learning experience for me. We started off the day with an inspiring presentation by Apple. It was great to see such a large cooperation put so much effort into and support a cause like that. I spoke to two women from a recourse company who immediately dismissed me because I was a freshman and they were looking for juniors. It set me back for a moment because of the way they said it but I still got a lot of good information from them and their experience. We then started our seminars. The first one I attended was the Breaking down the Culture of a Company. I got a couple interesting tips out of it but I talked to the woman who’s company sponsored it and she wasn’t very happy with the delivery of the seminar. The next seminar I went to was a panel of graduates about what they wish they knew. It was interesting to see where they are now in the amount of years since they graduated. It was also comforting to know that the road isn’t always so straight and narrow and that it is okay to stray, in order to reach your goals. I always worried about what I would do out of college because you don’t always get your dream job right off the bat and it was interesting to hear their journeys and how they’ve struggled but ultimately succeeded. The presentation about body language was the seminar I found especially interesting. I never noticed the thing she mentioned about head bobbing because I was totally a head bobber and it shined light on why I was having such short conversations. Then after the seminar I worked on shaking my head slowly and I noticed myself having longer and more meaningful conversations while networking. With that presentation and the multiple networking events that I have been to since coming here I am becoming more and more comfortable while networking. I wasn’t that nervous going into the networking portion of the day and that really helped me make some great connections. I got a lot of business cards, some people took my resume and I added many of them on Linkedin later that weekend. This Career Fair was such an incredible opportunity and I learned so much, I can’t wait to go next year!

In high school I had my own hair and makeup styling mini-business for things like proms, weddings and special occasions. My busiest day of the year was the Senior Ball for my high school. That day I had five back to back scheduled appointments, not including getting myself ready. I even had two other girls working with me, both also completely booked from early in the morning to the moment we had to take pictures. That morning, my 10 o’clock appointment,Carly, called me a half hour before her appointment, in a panic; she had a rash all over her body and had to go to the doctor. She was frantic and didn’t know what to do because she was going to miss her appointment with me but still needed someone to get her ready for prom when she was finished at the doctor. I told her I’d figure it out and to rush over as soon as she was finished at the doctor. I immediately called another one of my friends from my theater hair and makeup crew to assist me and she was prepared to come over and help. I rearranged my schedule so that my assistant could start curling Carly’s hair while I finished the updo that I had already been working on. Then, I had her start my next appointment so that I could complete Carly’s updo. It was a big mess of rearranging and running around but ultimately everyone looked perfect and was happy with their appearance, which is a successful day to me. I am not the kind of person to let a problem get in my way. I almost expect problems to arise, because no matter how hard you try, things will never go exactly as planned. I know that anything can happen, and with this attitude it is a lot easier to accept what is happening and find a solution quickly. I believe there is no problem that can’t be solved as long as you stay calm and lean on those around you. It also helps to have amazing people around you that are willing to come to your rescue on their own prom day.

I mostly wrote about this class in my last post but I forgot a couple of things so Ill add them here. We talked about non business breadths and mine is going to be Italian. I was planning on taking Italian because I wanted to learn the language and study abroad in Italy. I really want to become fluent and I think it will really help me to be bilingual in my future. I am considering making it a major since I will be taking classes into the 300 level and probably even some cultural classes while I am in Italy over the summer. I also talked to Jenn about my schedule for next term. It was very beneficial talking to her as I learned I can take some general education courses at my local community college over summer to save money and get ahead to make sure I graduate. If I can do that and follow the schedule I created while passing my classes I should definitely graduate in four years.

During class 5 we talked about our academic direction: our four year plan, electives we’re taking and what kind of concentration we want to seek. My dream is to open up my own event-planning business someday. I know this will not happen overnight so I need to find a good job until I can get on my feet, sturdy enough to establish my own company. For this reason I am not completely sure if I should concentrate in marketing or entrepreneurship. I was thinking I would concentrate in entrepreneurship but recently I have been having doubts and thinking it might be benefitial to have a specialty in marketing. I need to do a lot more thinking but if I were to concentrate in entrepreneurship, I would take electives like Management 321, Marketing 311, Marketing 445 and Management 335. I suppose I would be taking marketing classes anyway; maybe for my other 3 open electives I will take electives meant for Marketing. I have a lot of thinking to do but as long as someday I reach my ultimate goal, I will be happy with whatever the journey. In just my few years of thinking about my future, my plan has changed and molded many times, and I assume it will continue to mold more and more specifically so for now I will stick to those electives and if I change my mind then so be it. This is the four year plan that I have so far:

Spring 2015:

Ital 103

Math 242

Anth 165

Fall 2016

Ital 201

Econ 201

Ba 240

Science

Winter 2016

Ital 202

Math 243

Econ 202

Actg 211

Spring 2016

Ital 203

Actg 213

Ba 352

Arts&Letters

Fall 2016

Mgmt 321

Dsc 330

Fin 311

Winter 2016

Actg 340

Mktg 311

Dsc 335

Mgmt 335

Spring 2017

Mktg 445

Dsc 340

Ba 453

Mgmt 455

For this class we talked about learning styles and their relation to the leadership styles. As a front runner, I typically work through trial and error, practice problems, flash cards and working on whatever is due first. These are actually extremely accurate. Trial and error is always my initial technique no matter what I am doing. For some reason, I suck at following directions. I am going to assume that also has something to do with being a front runner but I never follow directions; I’d rather try and figure it out myself. This is also how I study. I try a practice problem and then look at the answer and see how the work is supposed to be done. I work better this way because even though I may be throwing myself off a bit by doing it wrong, I am doing the work, and then physically fixing it-which helps me learn better. We learned that you should absorb first, like in lecture, then review alone, then practice, then review again in a group. I like this technique a lot. I have used this cycle without realizing it and I think it really benefits me every time. Typically I don’t use this technique when I don’t have enough time and that’s usually when my grade suffers. I think if I want to succeed, though I need to make time for this cycle because it will really help me. It also helps to know what I need to work on like outlining my study schedule, which is more of a planner thing to do. I think that will help me with the time issue. Knowing my strengths and “blindsides” will really help me with studying and improvement with anything in general.

For our 3rd class period, we first went over the leadership styles once again. Then we got into groups and decided on which project we wanted to participate in. My group wanted to do the BBL Recruitment project. We were deciding how we wanted to present ourselves to the mentors in order to get the project and they asked if anyone was a front runner. I said I was and they looked to me and asked how I thought we should start. It didn’t bother me to be put on the spot, and I already had something in mind, but I was going to let others speak first if they wanted. It was odd how I was labelled as a front runner so they expected me to act in a certain way, a way in which I wouldn’t necessarily always act. The true phenomenon was that once I knew they expected me to react in a certain way, I started to fall further into that category. We went to a recruitment presentation that very next day and I found myself falling deeper and deeper into my role and I wasn’t sure that I liked it. I feel like I almost hogged the microphone and was talking too much because I felt like I was supposed to. Granted, a lot of the times my teammates would hand me the microphone when they were done talking and I felt obligated to speak. I have no problem whatsover doing a lot of the talking but I just don’t want to be that front runner that bulldoses anyone. I think knowing what kind of leader you are can be very helpful when creating a team but I’m not so sure I’m very fond of it, I feel like it’s almost a leadership stereotype.