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M ILLION LEARNINGS IN THREE MONTHSSince I began to be conscious of my academic performance, I've been forced to fill in a blue or green paper with my strengths, weakness, and my goals for the end of the semester; it's ironic to say that I couldn't care less about that paper, I remember just filling it out to hand it in as soon as I could; I hated it. But it's never to late to figure out that the best way to reflect is by writing down all your learnings in a simple white piece of paper. For the first time, I've deeply reflect on what learnings I've validated for the midterm of senior year, and there's no greater feeling than showing them off.
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Valuable learnings is what first comes to mind when I reflect upon the first quarter of senior year in the IA. Although we’ve been investing time in one specific project, BlendZ, there’s no other phrase that best describes my experience: “I have a purpose in school”. It’s an innate feeling; I know that every single minute in the IA is worth waking up at 7:00 am, we’re not only learning, but we are assuring ourselves that those learnings are being validated. |
This semester we’ve dedicated time to improve in english. One of the most important learnings has been sentence structure, punctuation, and the correct use of verbs, which we have been practicing with no red ink. Although we might not need to use all the grammatical rules, I consider this opportunity extremely vital, because with it, I’ve been able to reflect upon my writing in my blogs and my articles, and that’s one of the best ways to learn. With the quick quizzes we constantly take, I believe that I’ve shown improvement throughout even though I’ve had some downfalls, and with all the valuable learnings, I’ve been able to improve my communication, and feel comfortable about it. Another learning which I consider extremely valuable is how I’ve developed an ability to craft a style in my writing. Thanks to the time we’ve invested in english, I’ve been able to compare my recent blog entries to the old ones, and every time, I feel that they are more consistent in terms of showing anecdote + reflection, showing a certain pattern in style and reflecting my voice as a writer. I’ve not only proved to myself that I’ve improved, but my peers have also mentioned that I have an interesting writing, and that my style is clearly reflected in my work. Finally, I find value in this learning because apart from adding a spark to my work, it allows me to set up my ideas and develop them in a clear and organized way.
Entrepreneurship is a class where I feel like an expert. I’ve learned so much since the start of the semester that I believe I have the ability to start my own business right now. There’s so much to share: from creating a business model, establishing a working system, advertising the company, designing the image of the company, or even working with money. I’ve learned the “behind the scenes” of creating a business, from pitching an initial idea, to getting a company up and running. Everything seems so easy from the outside, but no one is as fortunate as us to experience the amount of time it takes for everything to work perfectly. I’ve validated my learning in entrepreneurship because if I were asked a favor from any department I would know what to do. In other words, I’ve been able to acquire knowledge not only in branding and marketing, but as well in NGO planning, event planning, and even smoothie making. I believe that knowing a little bit about what your team members do is extremely valuable in order to help them in case there is an emergency, or simply because we are a company and we work together. Moreover, I’ve been able to notice the importance of communication in a business. From personal experience at BlendZ, having a specific way of communication for both customers and team members, allows you to organize yourself, transmit a certain emotion to your clients which certainly impacts the image of the company, and most importantly, maintain a functional system in the business. For instance, within the company we communicate through asana and Facebook, which allows us to keep everything under control and to have a clear visual idea of what everyone is doing. With our clients, we maintain transparency in our website, showing them the ingredients of the smoothies, the nutritional facts, and even information about where our money goes. Wrapping up with entrepreneurship, I just wanted to mention how in most startup companies there are no “follow the rules”. In BlendZ, each one of us is in charge of a specific area and we decide what to change and how to do it. At least in the website, I make the changes that I feel are best for the company, and once I have it done, I then ask for feedback, however, before feedback, as all entrepreneurs, we have autonomy over our ideas and most decisions.
Last but not least, media is a course which we don’t work specifically on, however we are constantly working around it. One of the most valuable learnings has been visual media in relation to customers. Now that I've been working on advertisements and the website I’ve not only been able to make the visual aspect of BlendZ as creative as possible, but I’ve also learned how to interpret it as an outside viewer. I’ve seen this learning reflected in the work I’ve created: the appearance of the website and the simplicity of it, the “playful vibe” created by the ads, and how our customers interpret BlendZ image. I find tons of value in this learning, because in order to have a | |
wonderful relationship with our customers -- which we value a lot-- we need to keep many things in mind while we work, and one of them is our visual image. Apart from this, in terms of challenging myself, I’ve learned how to use Squarespace instead of Weebly. Squarespace offers many features that other website creators don’t, but honestly, working with it is quite hard. It takes a lot of time to format the pages because when you add new items to the page everything moves around. The BlendZ website is “my little baby” and I’m extremely proud of it; I believe that my effort and time has definitely paid off. I’m proud of this accomplishment because I’ve always wanted to challenge myself with media, and I finally did.
Before closing up, I wanted to mention the idea of iterations and feedback. Since we began the IA in 2013, those two terms have impacted the road that has taken us to this point of the ride. Within the IA, there is no giving up, instead, there is improving what you already have, you get the opportunity to get back what you believe was your final work and iterate as much as you want to make it impecable and beautiful. But the only way to iterate is by receiving and accepting feedback; feedback allows you to recognize your errors and it gives you space to reflect what you could improve on, it doesn't block your ideas such as grades do. With this said, I constantly iterate with my work, I work as hard as I can to nail it in the first attempt, but if I don’t reach the top of the hill, I’m open to change, I take the feedback and I go back to the start. I’ve practiced this learning for so long, that now, it comes naturally. I’m constantly fixing what I do, improving it every time, and changing any small details when I get new and better ideas. I can’t express how valuable iterations are, they’ve simply become more of a life style.
I’m happy to say that theres so much left to come, and that these learnings are not done yet, I will keep on adding much more to the list.
I’m happy to say that theres so much left to come, and that these learnings are not done yet, I will keep on adding much more to the list.