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?
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Peter, I think your ending question is truly very important. It seems that with all of the technological advances of our time, it may be very important to master those skills for the near future. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI have used interdisciplinarity in varying degrees in my professional life. I used it least when I was bussing and barbacking at a restaurant, where independent thought of any kind was brutally squashed. It was probably used most when I was marketing director at my apartment complex. It was necessary for me to be creative and come up with ideas for marketing and leasing, and involved everything from psychology to ethics to computer science.
ReplyDeleteMy strongest skill is my ability to work well with a team of people, and I am easily able to make personal sacrifices for common goals. My weakest is that my own personal system of organization looks like chaos to someone else and is therefore not an easily transferrable system. In order to address this, I would need to find a way of organizing things that is easier for others, but without compromising on its efficiency relative to my personal idiosyncrasies.
I have been involved in International Medical Outreach and the United Nations Association on campus, and I have held (or hold) leadership positions in both. This has helped me to further my skills in delegation, teamwork, and coordination of many tasks. I have not had an internship or externship yet, but I plant to in graduate school next year.
I have used interdisciplinarity a lot in the various jobs i have held in the past few years. When I was a children's camp counselor I used my interdisciplinary skills the most. I had to have a not of communication skills in order to work well with my fellow counselors and also to work with the children. I used what I know about psychology to counsel the children with special needs. In addition, I used organizational skills to keep activities and responsibilities organized.
ReplyDeleteMy strongest job skills are organization, timeliness and communication. Like mary, I think my weakest job skill is probably motivation. Often when I dont have a particular interest in the job I am doing, I find it very hard to gain motivation to work. However, I too think that once I choose an occupation that appeals to my ineterests, I will have no problem finding motivation to work.
My membership in the National Society of Leadership and Success will help benefit me in my internship applications and further my future career. Also, my membership in the wwoofing organization (worldwide workers on organic farms) will shopw my well roundedness and willingness to learn new skills.
Mary, I know what you mean by not being able to find one area that your most dedicated to for internship opportunities. I am currently struggling with that problem myself.
ReplyDeleteI have used my interdisciplinarity in my personal life a few things. For example, my interdisciplinarity has benefited me in the simple way of just having an intelligent conversation with professionals. With my internship, I find myself conversing with professionals frequently, and being about to speak knowledgeably of many topics has proven to be incredibly beneficial. My professional history includes being an assistant manager at a boutique, as well as being the assistant to the Vice President of Relations here at UCF. My strongest job skill is my ability to communicate. I am very comfortable talking to people I've never met before, and making them feel open to talk to me as well. My weakest job skill includes working for people. I do as I am told, however I have a difficult time conducting a skill I don't believe is beneficial. My membership is my sorority has proven to be incredibly helpful toward my chosen career. I have been connected with many legal professionals that have been helping me throughout the years. Also, my membership in the Pre-Law Fraternity Organization has benefited me in many ways. My internship however, has benefited me more than I ever could've imagined. Experience is the best learning tool.
ReplyDeletePeter, I particularly liked what you said about your nonverbal communication. You're right that its incredibly important in the field of hospitality, but it got me thinking a bit. It's incredibly important in any career that deals with people. I believe kindness and good relationships can get people very far, and being aware of nonverbal communication absolutely can further your success in that aspect.
ReplyDeleteSamantha, I also like how you pointed out Peter's concluding question about what will be most beneficial twenty years from now. I think thats the great thing about our major, its going to teach us skills that will all equally be really be helpful for our future
ReplyDeleteMary, your comment about being good at multi-tasking made me think about why I made such a horrible server-- I have limited capacity to multi-task. That is absolutely an essential component to that industry, and can be very applicable to interdisciplinarity. It requires, as you pointed out, quite a bit of creativity!
ReplyDeleteI liked what you said about feeling passionate about something as a criterion. Your heart has to be into what you’re doing if it requires (at the risk of sounding like a pseudo-motivational saying at a job) thinking “outside the box”.
Peter, it’s interesting that you said that the IDS program of study resulted in greater attention to detail for you. I would have actually normally associated that with a specialization in a specific, mostly left-brained field, such as physics. It made me think about the amount of attention to detail involved in our IDS research project, and how those details must be shared with the group in such a way as to generate a cohesive and functional product.
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