The experience in Professor Johnston’s class has been great! I love learning about the psychological aspects of working with other students, and learning the context of their personalities so that we can all better understand their mind constructs.
The soft skills have been eye-opening. It’s incredible to see the dynamic of working relationships, and how we can improve out effectiveness. After all, time is money, and when we learn how to work with eachother, we can make the absolute most of our time.
9/9/19
On Thursday, we did an exercise with a deck of cards, myself and 4 other students. We had an objective to format the cards in such a way that would take time and planning. My group did pretty well. We established a plan right away, and got the job done quicker than we anticipated. We were asked to do this again, and again we had to estimate how long it would take us. It took us much, much less time the second around, as everyone knew their respective job. The communication was critical, and we all contributed considerably.
10/1/19 – Netiquette and Etiquette in the Professional Workplace
Today we spoke of the importance of communication in an efficient manner, especially regarding how we are to format an email to a client, coworker, etc. These are valuable skills, because your credibility is at stake with how you communicate with your contemporaries, i.e. grammar, proper addressing, proper content of message, etc.
Being articulate, concise, and as much to the point as possible is an essential skill to have, as it does not waste your recipient’s time.
We also spoke of how it is important to be an active listener and to engage properly in any exchange you have with someone, as it lets them know you are interested enough to absorb the information that they are conveying to you. Being able to reiterate what the person has said is also a crucial skill in this exchange, as it validates that you understand and can demonstrate knowing their needs by taking what a person has said and rewording it.
10/15/19
In Professor Johnston’s class, we were all given post notes and were told to write what makes an effective team. We stuck the notes on the white board and were asked to categorize the notes in columns. And then after that, a new group was asked to categorize the notes even further. This exercise helped us work as a cohesive unit to come together and work together, in order to structure our ideas.
11/5/19
My name is Brian Mullen. Strategic creative and technical skills are my strengths, I’m a skilled songwriter, something I’ve been doing for years. I’m very accustomed to the creative process, in that I am able to work thoroughly on creative projects. My ability to think abstractly allows me to apply non conventional aspects to applications that may have not been thought of as a relationship to the original application.
I have, in the past, been able to develop strategies to get my craft to outside my immediate geographical location. I have been able to employ both my technical and artistic skills to everything I do.
2/3/2020
Communication in a group has a lot of parts that have to be remembered in order to make progress as a whole
Something that resonated with me this last class period was remembering not to judge other members’ ideas. As an ENFP, my ideas can be very outside the box, as ENFPs are usually very ideal-driven people. And trust goes with this one pretty well. I have to TRUST my group members not judge my ideas.
Knowing your job is very important, as this can be most optimal in a time crunch scenario. Allocation of the job first hand and then delivering with your respective job will guarantee the best results possible.
It is always good to trust the process as learn to trust each other. If everyone on the team knows every member is efficient at their job, then the process will be favorable. Trusting the process gives the members more peace of mind to tend to their work with utmost confidence.
2/25/20
My constructive criticism feedback partner was Shane Johnson, and his site is called “Lights on Jupiter.” It is an event in which houses in the Mabelvale, AR area synchronize their Christmas lights to Christmas songs for viewers.
The sandwich model did help me look at the site in ways of hierarchy and order.
I felt comfortable being the evaluator because I felt as though I was helping Shane refine his site even more so, and he could have a more desirable product.
Working with Shane, I learned some techniques, especially in terms of building on other frameworks to get an attractive looking site. I learned to welcome constructive criticism even more so, because I want to have my product stand out as much as possible.
As the evaluator, I really did not feel I had weaknesses, as I understand that being in this position empowers me to be a part of the other person’s process.
Next time, I would like to be sent the site URL the night before so I can come up with a more thorough analysis of their work.
2/27/20
In our team, tower building exercise, we didn’t verbally delegate who was going to be the leader, but we naturally kind of just fell into roles. Savannah, in our group, was the leader. I felt I was the one offering ideas to consider- some were used, some were not.
No one appeared to be an expert and in retrospect, communication could have been much better.
No one appeared frustrated, it was more just a fun activity to see what the result would be.
No one really appeared to be an expert, we all just worked together the best we could, and I feel that was a good point of this exercise.
brianmullen.world 