A look at Professional life and our Philosophy

We are all inclined to develop work habits that are both negative and positive. These habits will stick with us and become our professional philosophy's. There are various philosophy's when it comes to the professional world and finding yours will really give you the ability to highlight your strengths in your resume. So without further delay here are our views.
I have always viewed my professional life as something that must be taken serious. My philosophy is if you put your head down and work you will wreak the rewards of your hard work. As an employee I have already benefited from this philosophy in two various jobs. The first was while working at a hospital, as a secretary, I got moved up from front desk secretary to E.R secretary. It entitled me to a higher pay as well as more responsibility. I worked hard in my original post and was able to handle a desk alone that normally required to secretaries. My hard work paid off. The other job was working in a restaurant. I started as a food runner but I worked hard and was moved up to the server position where I have the opportunity to make a lot more money. I did not do anything special I just followed my work philosophy of being the hardest worker. This philosophy is one that is not very interdisciplinary but more focuses on perfecting the idea of being a hard worker. From here the other skills needed to be successful can be obtained. This philosophy has allowed me to alter my career goals and reach for higher positions in every field of my life. I don’t see myself as a bottom of the chain worker because I work to hard for the lower levels.
Tying this into last weeks topic my work ethic is something I highlight in my resume. I make sure my future employers know that I have been rewarded for this dedication, and the work ethic I am bringing to their companys. I even have applied this into my law school applications by highlighting in my personal statement the success I have achieved through my work ethic, and how this ties into school. What is your work philosophy? Do you think that the habits you have at a part time job now will hurt or help you in your future carreer? These are the questions you should ask yourself and once you figure out you will be able to easily write a resume and cover letter that explain you as a worker.

Professional Life is Tough

Obviously, since Peter and I are very different people, we've had a lot of different professional experiences.
Personally, although I am not yet involved in the professional field of art, humanities, or political science, my personal philosophy in term of work does and will continue to apply to the job I hold and my future jobs. First, I think you have to accept that regardless of your job, at some point or another you are going to have to do work that you're not passionate about or don't enjoy. I also understand that my superiors, while in a higher position than me, are not always the bearers of knowledge as expected- like every other human, they are fallible and make mistakes and aren't perfect. In general, I look at every job or every situation that occurs at work as a learning experience. As tired as I am of my current job, I carefully consider all the skills that I am gaining. It totally sucks having to kiss up to customers all the time, but it teaches you how to communicate and listen more effectively, it also reinforces the necessity of empathy. I believe this approach is interdisciplinary because I am trying to integrate the skills I have gained from various fields and combine them in an effective way. Finally, my career goals have altered significantly since I started college, to the point that I feel a little unsure about what I want to do at this point. I'm still working on finding myself, too!

In contrast, Peter's Perspective:
I have always viewed my professional life as something that must be taken serious. My philosophy is if you put your head down and work you will wreak the rewards of your success. As an employee I have already benefited from this philosophy in two various jobs. The first was while working at a hospital I got moved up from front desk secretary to E.R secretary. It entitled me to a higher pay as well as more responsibility. The other job was working in a restaurant. I started as a food runner but since I worked so hard was moved up to the server position where I have the opportunity to make a lot more money. This philosophy is one that is not very interdisciplinary but more focuses on perfecting the idea of being a hard worker. From here the other skills needed to be successful can be obtained. This philosophy has allowed me to alter my career goals as to reach for higher positions. I don’t see myself as a bottom of the chain worker because I work to hard for the lower levels of business.

Resume and Coverletter.

In terms of highlighting your interdisciplinarity, a resume can be an important tool in terms of conveying the relationships between your different areas of study. In presenting a resume to a potential employer, you can convey the skills acquired from your various areas of study and how these skills combine to make you a desirable candidate.
In terms of content, I feel that while it is necessary to showcase your academic record, it is equally as important to highlight your professional experiences, be it internships, a job(s), or even volunteer work. On the same note, I feel that listing volunteer work and your skills acquired therein can highlight one’s character.
One of the biggest keys in getting hired is your resume. As interdisciplinary students we have to take advantage of being able to show diversity in our schooling history. In my resume I highlight the skills I have gained as an education minor. I talk about my increased communication skills and the way I have utilized these skills. Then I reach into my other discipline social science. From social science I have taken skills of organization and a general view of the world and how it works. Together these skills highlighted in my resume show my interdisciplinary education and give my future employers a view of me as a well rounded educated future employee.
I think cover letter is another aspect that as IDS students we can really take advantage of. The point of a cover letter is to tell information that gives you a competitive edge over others trying to get the job. Its not about reiterating information found in your resume but giving the employer a better view of you the person and what makes you different then other applicants.

Professional Opportunities and Job Skills

Hey guys welcome back! We both hope your having a great semester, and we both look forward to reading your posts. Now without further delay here are the views of your favorite Mentors Mary and Peter.

Marys view...
While we're all (I hope!), accustomed to interdisciplinarity within our academic lives, interdisciplinarity obviously plays a role within the professional realm. Despite the fact that universities tend to overwhelmingly emhasize the necessity of a single track of study, thus enforcing the idea of specialization, most careers utilize skills from various fields. While my professional experiences have been limited to the service industry, even within this thinking in an interdisciplinary way is still relevant- as a server my job is not limited simply to taking orders, I'm also responsible for creating a positive experience, interacting with my fellow staff, cleaning, and sometimes preparing desserts. It basically comes down to understanding that even within a specialized job, there are going to be aspects of a job outside that specialization.

My strongest professional skill, because I use it every time I work, is my ability to communicate- not only do I communication with the back of house and my co-workers, but also customers, and prospective business partners. Multi-tasking also plays an essential role in my job, because there are always tasks to manage and prioritize. In terms of my weakest skill, I would say that my motivation sometimes need a kick up, but I don't see this as being as much of an issue when I'm involved in a career that I feel passionate about. If anything, I need to find motivation by looking at my current career as a stepping stone towards another job and try and learn as much as possible where I'm at.

Although I wish I had taken advantage of the internship opportunities available at UCF, I did not utilize this because I couldn't find one area I felt dedicated to. However, I would definitely encourage participation- working in a professional environment, in your desired field, can offer a lot of useful information and important professional contacts/mentors.

Peters view...
The benefits of the track we have taken, Interdisciplinary studies, are felt in all aspects of life. They are affecting our daily lives even today. As I near graduation, I am being effected by and utilizing. One of the most important skills I have taken from IDS are nonverbal conversational ones. I have learned the habits I have that give a negative connotation and now I am able to avoid them.
Along with this I have been able to take the positive attributes and allow them to exceed the negatives. This is a great benefit for me as in my current work. I am in the service industry and the last thing you want to do is offend your guests! You always have the goal to entertain and leave them satisfied. I think the benefits of IDS really shine through there. I really have always been a hard worker but now to accompany this I have a comfortableness talking to strangers and engaging them in conversation, something I attribute to my education courses, that without the IDS programs flexibility I would of missed out on. Another strength that I have derived from IDS is my attention to detail. When you are serving people a clutch skill is to notice the little details and make sure they are taken care. Doing this is really beneficial. I am not impervious however to weaknesses. The first one, even though it’s strength, can also be a weakness. It’s my communication skills. Sometimes I find myself conversing too much. As a server sometimes you need to just put your head down and get work done. This is a skill I am trying to improve but rather then working directly on it I am focusing on time management. I think that my internship was a great chance to practice these skills and really recognize which ones were my strengths and which were my weaknesses. I was forced in here to communicate with a classroom but I couldn’t get stuck on one thing ad talk about it for fifty minutes. I had to make sure I managed my time efficiently while still covering subjects enough to education and amuse my class. The question for me even today is, What skill is going to be the most important twenty years from now?

Critical Thinking is Critical!

We are all flooded with information on a daily basis, from magazines and books, to the television, and especially the internet. Critical thinking is key, not only in terms of an IDS major, but in terms of everyday life. Consider when any one of us have done a research paper- one of the major stipulations is limiting internet sources and maximizing use of academic articles and books. We've all see websites with extremely questionable information, it's a source where almost anything can be posted regardless of its inherent truth. Furthermore, even within academic resources, there is room for bias or simply a limited perspective. We have to utilize critical thinking to decipher what knowledge to take with a grain of salt. There's too much information available to simply take it at face value, in addition to that, there is also the nature of the media. Advertising and economic stakes play a huge role in what information is freely dispersed versus more critical information that is often subdued.

Furthermore, critical thinking thinking relates to our being interdisciplinary because we are forced to combine and integrate knowledge from different fields. Part of being critical is looking at the minute details, seeing the underlying relationships between subjects like art history and relating it to not only the cultural but the political aspects of a society in a given time period. As future holders of an IDS degree, we also need to be able to explain to other people the relations of our academic areas and how, at a critical thinking level, they relate.