The Journey Begins!

Blog Post #1 - 09/28/20

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I'm excited to say that the ISM journey has officially begun! So far in this program, I've already learned a lot about my topic, which is business entrepreneurship this year.

Up to this point, I've already learned a lot about the specifics regarding my topic. We did a career forecast, which taught me the basics of this field, including salary, education and coursework required, degrees, the career outlook in the future, and more. When I did the forecast, I did it on social entrepreneurship, which is a sub field of the general entrepreneurship field, but quickly changed my topic to accommodate the entire entrepreneurship field.

Shortly after the career forecast, we started to do our research assessments. This involves finding an article related to our topic that we thoroughly read, annotate, and assess how what we learned changed our thinking or made us feel. After completing two full assessments until now, I can say that reading these articles in-depth allowed me to learn more business jargon that I hadn't known of before and also intrigue curiosity and evoke questions in some areas. There are many questions regarding this field that I would love to get with a professional and ask about.

Additionally, we just finished our topic proposal! This assignment was to assess what field we chose to study, how we came about choosing that field, and why it would be a good fit for us. We took the Myers-Briggs personality test, which assesses our character type, provides some strengths and weaknesses, and even assesses what career choices would be good for that specific character personality (hint hint - I got recommended to be an entrepreneur!)

Now coming to some of the challenges regarding my journey so far - the dreaded resume. As a well-rounded person, I always see the beauty in every aspect of things and can never choose a favorite when it comes to anything in life. So come to an assignment where we have to create a professional resume that will be used throughout the rest of the year... yikes. The thing with building a resume that's personally the most challenging for me is how the resume is so open-ended and free, meaning you can literally put anything in. It must be organized in a nice format, aesthetically pleasing, filled with useful activities, wordsmithed in the perfect way, and come together all throughout. Some people in my class have great resumes built already, with so many useful bullet points that it worries me I'm behind. But then I have to remember that everyone's journeys to success are different, and it's ok if someone is ahead of me. I have had Mr. Pirtle critique it two times now, but it still isn't perfect. While building my resume is proving to be trying, I am still going at it headstrong and constantly trying to take critiques to improve.

Well, that's all for ISM updates for now. Coming up is the Business Symposium (which I will probably talk more about in the next blog post) and some important assignments and events such as interviewing professionals in search of a mentor. I must admit, this whole process is a little out of my comfort zone, but altogether I am beyond excited to see what my ISM journey has to offer. Until next time, see you!