Reflection

Joseph says:

First I want to say thanks for being a part of our blog because I believe this is the last new posting we will contribute to the blog, but not necessarily the last comments we will make on it. When you take Capstone in your final semester, you will need to have a finished e-portfolio, which happens to be our last assignment due in it. I say take the time now to add content to your cells so they will be available to you once you have to actually assemble the rest of the e-portfolio because I did not do so, and I am scrambling with finding material to add to it. After I had written a paper that was saved on my computer, I typically put it in the recycle bin and consequently deleted it at a later date, so I really do not have much to put in the content cells. It is much easier if you put it in the cells as soon as you are finished with it.

I think reflection has more of a personal feel to it, with more emotion and hindsight applied to it than just description. Reflection seems to have a little more right brained activities (like synthesizing, seeing the whole picture, understanding context and feeling, and recognizing patterns) than description, which I feel leans more towards the left-brain (like logic, sequential learning, organizing, etc.).

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Ada says:

I'd also like to thank you guys for giving such great participation in this blog; you really thought about the prompts and we had some pretty good discussions. I liked hearing about everybody's different paths and experiences at UCF.

To me, reflection is very different from description. Reflection, to me, implies going further and critically thinking about a subject... thinking about its implications, its significance, its causes or effects. Joseph makes a good point about using different parts of the brain; I think I might agree... it takes a different kind of thinking to examine events in a different way and try to understand their significance and reflect upon their meaning to you instead of just the events themselves and what happened. (And if your capstone class is anything like ours, you'll be spending a lot of time talking about different ways of thinking and the different sides of the brain.)

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Share how you're planning to use reflection in developing your e-Portfolio content pages.

Share your understanding of reflection. How is it different from description?

Interviewing Part II

Joseph says:

The best way to answer some of the standard and non-standard interview questions are honestly, but you can always prepare for these and many other questions by looking at the wealth of resources online. Also, in the Career Services and Experiential Learning offices, there exist people who will do interviews with you. They will also look over your resumes, cover letters, and CV’s (curriculum vitae’s) and help you craft better ones. Again, I will say this, use these offices to the fullest potentials because they can and will help.

What I feel the best way to handle a phone interview is to have a genuine smile throughout the entire interview because they can hear it. It will spread to all parts of speech and have an uplifting overtone to the entire conversation. And when in panel interviews, listen intently to whoever is talking, making eye contact, and show body language that shows you are interested in what the person is talking about. Show that you are an engaging person because not many places want to hire an antisocial person.

I am not too sure about when to talk about salary, but you should make it obvious that you are not only there about the money, even though that is most likely why you are there. I typically don’t talk about money until after they see what kind of candidate I am and I can tell they are interested in me. Please resond to the questions at the end of our posts.

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Ada says:

I'll admit, while I've been through a lot of interviews, I haven't been to a wide variety of kinds of interviews. Never had a real phone interview, never had a panel interview... generally it's just the basic one-on-one where they ask about my experience and ask for more information about things on my resumé. This might actually be the most important piece of advice I can give based on my own experience: be prepared to talk about everything on your resumé. If you say you can speak certain languages, be prepared to speak some. Be prepared to talk about your responsibilities and accomplishments at your former job. Be prepared to solve hypothetical problems, like "If this situation happened to you on the job, how would you handle it?" I've never gotten a question that was extremely crazy, but the point is: be able to think on your feet and have a good attitude while doing so.
As far as salary, I think a general rule is to not ask until you've actually been made an offer, but I think this is a little flexible. You really have to use your own judgment; depending on the job, it might be acceptable to inquire about salary after the interview's over, or in some rare cases, when applying. If you're not sure, though, and you really want this particular job, I would say don't ask until you've been offered the job.

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Do you believe it is wrong for employers to check your credit, and why?

When do you feel is the time to talk about salary?

Interviewing Part I

Joseph writes:

In both practice interviews, the interviewer asked very pertinent questions that I have heard in real interviews before. I realize that I have almost no experience in jobs other than serving, and even though you can kinda make a connection to any other job, most positions ask for real experience that translates. I have done many interviews, and applied for hundreds of jobs, and I feel quite comfortable in the interviewing situation because you have to come up with answers to questions immediately, and from serving, you definitely learn to do that. For the most part, I had similar responses to the alternate ones provided, and if I had any reservations about the question, the Coach helped a great deal. Here are my practice interviews:

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3020929&type=standard

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3020931&type=standard

One piece of advice I have is just do your research on the company and show them you have a vested interest in them because you took your time to research the company.

Ada writes:

In a lot of ways I think these practice interviews are good, well, practice, but they're a little too generic to properly prepare somebody for an interview. I'd like to see some different versions of these interviews available that are at least somewhat tailored to particular industries. It's also hard to answer some of these questions without knowing exactly what job you're interviewing for. Questions about education or previous work experience are fine, but what about a question like "How does this job fit into your long-term goals?" (Which, of course, was the first question I was hit with in my first practice interview.) I could answer this several different ways, depending on what kind of job I was applying for. I had some jobs where I ultimately wanted to climb to management, or others where I eventually wanted to specialize in some particular part of the field... I think, overall, my answers were comparable to the example responses. (Some of them, unfortunately, only gave me question marks "???", so they weren't entirely helpful.)

I think that researching the company you're interviewing with is extremely good advice, as well as being able to ask questions about the work itself. This really shows that you're interested in the company and the field.

Here are links to my interviews:

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3020911&type=standard

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3020912&type=standard

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Complete the Informational Interview Assignment provided by Capstone mentors.
Discuss the results of your interview practice.

Personal Philosophy, Career Goals, & Academic Opportunities

Joseph writes:

My personal philosophy regarding my professional life reflects what kind of person I have changed into after making a huge decision in my life. I turned away from being the typical crazy partying college guy and decided to get serious about life. I now believe that in any vocation I am in, it is not only necessary but a privilege to do the job as if unto God. And with that philosophy entails attacking a job with such appreciation and vigor that separates me from the rest of my coworkers. I not only strive to be the best, but I do everything by the book. I don’t cut corners and I go the extra mile.

I think this philosophy is interdisciplinary because I use all of my abilities, both right brain and left brain abilities and use them to interact with everyone I meet, both logic and intuition, sequential and random patterns, and whatever knowledge i have learned from all of my classes to talk to guests, to interact with them, and to give them the best time possible at a restaurant. And as soon as I can, I am going to use those abilities when I get an actual career that I would be happy with.

A few different happenstances have altered my career goals greatly. I had plans of working at NASA, with some family members who already worked there, but now that Obama, who promised not to shut down NASA so he could win the Florida vote, is shutting down NASA, I have had to make some different plans. I am now trying to find any job out there, and I am trying to rely on some friends who have good careers also. I know something good is out there for me, I just have to be patient enough for it.

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Ada writes:

Hmm, I'm not sure I ever really thought about having a philosophy concerning my professional life. I guess the main rules I try to live by are that I should be doing something I love and that I shouldn't compromise my ethics for work. The first one means I've mostly sought out jobs related to art or computers (though, ironically, I have no interest in digital media). The second one means that I've butted heads with a few of my managers/employers, particularly when they wanted me to knowingly lie to customers. This is the main reason I don't like sales-oriented jobs. I've always been very good at them, but I'm also not willing to lie in order to sell something, which makes a lot of employers unhappy. I'm not sure I really see anything particularly interdisciplinary about my philosophy, as it could really be applied to any job in any field, or any discipline or combination thereof.

I don't think my ultimate career goals have changed very much (my ultimate goal being to run my own business, which I've wanted to do pretty much as long as I can remember), though maybe certain "sub-goals" or aspects of my goals have changed over the years. For example, when I was younger I wanted to own a comic book store (I know, I'm a HUGE dork), whereas now I guess I want to focus more on selling my own artwork rather than other people's. And I always thought I'd spend a few years after college working full-time as a programmer before trying to start my business, but now, after several years of college, I'm anxious to just get my business started and make my dream come true.

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Discuss your personal philosophy concerning your professional life.

How is or isn't this philosophy interdisciplinary?

How have your career goals altered?

Cover Letters & Resume

Joseph says:

The resume I use is more of an educational type resume that definitely highlights my interdisciplinarity because I show the different types of classes I have taken. I try to highlight those classes I feel more directly reveals what type of person I am. If you have a cover letter, does this sound familiar?

Dear Hiring Manager/To Whom It May Concern:

I am extremely interested in such and such position.

I am a junior/senior at the University of Central Florida pursuing such and such degree.

My qualifications are such and such

Please contact me at this number/email to discuss … Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Your name

This is the basic format of almost every cover letter that is out there. I recommend trying something a little different to make yours stand out. Talk about the research you did about the company and your knowledge of the company and incorporate that into your cover letter. You can find many examples of cover letters online, with the same basic format, just make sure to personalize it as well.

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Ada says:

One thing I would strongly recommend for learning to write good resumés and other business documents is a technical writing class. I took Writing for Technical Professionals a couple terms ago, and even though I had already considered myself to be a very strong writer, it taught me a lot of important things about business communication. Aside from giving me lots of practice in writing different types of letters and memoranda, I received a lot of good feedback on my resumé. (And somehow this was the first time I had heard the tip that resumés should almost never be more than one page!)
Highlighting your interdisciplinarity is, I've found, very important. Skills I wouldn't have expected to use at a particular job have turned out to be valuable to potential employers. For example, when I applied for my research assistant job, I didn't expect my linguistic skills to be terribly important, but it turned out that my interviewer was looking for somebody with strong computer skills _and_ strong language skills (for reviewing/proofreading technical papers).

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What are ways your resume can highlight your interdisciplinarity?

What are some questions about cover letters you've have?

Share your best cover letter.

What are questions about resumes that you have and/or share some advice?

Share any resources you've found about cover letters and/or resumes.

Professional Opportunities & Job Skills

Joseph says:

I will admit that the only time I have used my interdisciplinarity at work is when I am discussing what exactly a light-year means and other things that interest me about space and mathematics. I speak to and with a ton of people because I am a server at a restaurant, but I really hope to work with something, anything in space, and since my professional career so far is all hospitality, I am doing my best to start a different path for myself. I cannot wait for the good things that are made for me.

My strongest job skill is my people skills, because I can basically become friends with anyone and have stuff to talk about because as an Interdisciplinary Studies student, I have taken some varied courses over many different subjects. I just have a lot of knowledge that is trying to manifest itself in my daily life. To be honest, my weakest job skill is my laziness. When I am serving at the restaurant, if it is a slow day, I tend to get in more of a lazy mode than if it were busy. On those busy days, you cannot even tell that I could be a lazy person; I just work smarter, not harder. I think the only thing I can really do to not be lazy is to make myself busy. I like to work fast and consistently, and get everything done with as fast as possible (but not sloppily or cut corners) so I can just get out of work and get home to my wife.

I have tried to do the internship and externship route but it never seemed to work for me. I have seen it work for some of my friends though, and I am really happy that it did. It helped them get the positions they have at their work, and it was invaluable to them. If at all possible, I recommend doing an externship, internship, or co-op. If you have not signed up for KnightLink already, do so here!!

According to the UCF Career Services website,

“It is never too early or too late to work on you professional development plan. The more time you invest in this process, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.”

Walk-in career assistance is available Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Career Services is located in Ferrell Commons (across from the Market Place), Bldg. 7G or make an appointment by calling 407-823-2361.

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Ada says:

Well, as I said in my previous post about integrating areas, I've used interdisciplinarity a fair amount in my professional life, though maybe not for all of my jobs. I've probably used it the most at my current post as a research assistant. My professional history has consisted mostly of art-related jobs: I've done body art (like temporary tattooing and body painting), photography, and assisted at a glass shop, and I presently work freelance as an artist. My interdisciplinarity has helped at these to a degree (like utilizing my technical skills at my photography job) but mostly those were single-discipline jobs. The only other jobs I've had have been one retail job and my current work as a computer vision research assistant.

My strongest job skills are probably my interpersonal skills (commercial art, especially body art, requires being able to talk to people, find out exactly what kind of art they want done, and make them comfortable) and my technical skills (being able to troubleshoot equipment, or to edit code at my current job). My weakest skill is probably my ability to prioritize my work; sometimes I have a hard time determining what's important for me to work on right now and what should wait. I've been working on this the last couple years; it kind of goes hand in hand with my work I've been doing on my organizational skills. I am really, really bad about forgetting things, even important things. I can make all kinds of reminders for myself and I'll still forget CRUCIAL things, so I've had to learn a system to make sure I get important things done. But learning to prioritize is probably my biggest work weakness right now. Sometimes I get little things done and run out of time for the important stuff.

I second Joseph's recommendation for getting involved in Career Services. If not Career Services, find someplace you can network, or a place that posts jobs, or even a club you can get involved with related to your field. My current job is arguably the best (and most reliably well-paying) job I've ever had, and I would have never known about it if I hadn't gotten involved with Women In Engineering; I found out about the job from our local chapter's mailing list.

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Questions for the Mentees:

How have you used your interdisciplinarity in your professional life?What has been your professional history?What are your strongest and weakest job skills?What can you do to develop and improve upon your weak skills?How have internship or externship helped your professional development?

Critical Thinking

Joey writes:

Edward Glaser, in his An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking (1941), writes that the ability to think critically involves three things:

1. An attitude of being disposed (state of mind regarding something) to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,
2. Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning,
3. Some skill in applying those methods.

I believe this most closely approximates what I believe to be critical thinking, and I truly believe that it is quite important in your personal, professional, and scholastic pursuits.

Also, I believe that Critical Thinking is at the crux of an Interdisciplinary Studies degree, because you are asked to basically make up your own degree within certain parameters to highlight your skills and abilities. Critical thinking makes you decide what is important to you that you want others to know and what you have done to further those efforts. At the end of our posts are some more questions that we want you to ask yourselves and respond to. Thanks.

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Ada writes:

I agree that critical thinking is absolutely crucial to an interdisciplinary student. Strictly speaking, I think critical thinking is important for _any_ student, but I think interdisciplinarity is nearly impossible without strong critical thinking skills. It's only through critical thinking that we are able to synthesize multiple disciplines.

Objectivity is a skill which must be developed hand-in-hand with critical thinking. One of the most important parts of critical thinking, to me, is learning to examine yourself and your own biases and thought patterns, and only through objectivity can you critically examine and find flaws in your own thinking. The same goes, though, for critically examining the words and actions of others, like books and websites you might read. Learn to read between the lines!

Critical Thinking: an introduction to the basic skills is an interesting book on this subject; I particularly liked the section on objective reporting. (If my link works, you can read some of it on the free preview from Google Books.)

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Critical Thinking

How does your critical thinking relate to being interdisciplinary?

Comment on how the Virtual Philosopher scored your response. From the comments you received about your responses, what insight have you gained about your own critical thinking and reasoning?

How does the outline of your critical thinking disposition match with the application of it in doing the Virtual Philosopher?

Understanding Interdisciplinarity, Integrating Areas

First, we want to say thank you all for being a part of our blog, and one thing we are going to do to better facilitate dialogue for all of us is to post our initial conversation no later than Friday for you all to respond to, and offer more responses during the week on our part. This week, we are going to talk about Integration.


Ada on Interdisciplinarity and Integration:

I think the things I've enjoyed the most in my academic career have been projects that integrated two or more of my fields of study. My minor is Computer Science (before switching to IDS I was a computer science major) and my two other fields of study are Letters & Modern Languages and Behavioral & Social Sciences. Let me give you some examples of how I've integrated different areas:

* Modern Languages and Social Sciences


This one's pretty easy - - I'm very interested in linguistic anthropology; I'm actually taking a class on it right now (ANT 3610). I love studying how people speak, why they speak the way they do, how language reflects culture, and how culture is formed by language.

* Computer Science and Modern Languages


Natural Language Processing is a particular interest of mine, and something I'd like to pursue if I ever decide to attempt any graduate computer science work. The idea behind this is basically using computers to understand or generate human languages. In particular, I'd like to pursue research in computer processing of sign language; a lot of this involves Computer Vision, which is something I've been learning about at work for the past year.



I haven't really found a way to academically integrate computer science and social sciences, though depending on how you look at it you might say I work in all these different fields on a daily basis: I work at the UCF Computer Vision Lab, which is a pretty fascinating environment to me, not only as a computer scientist but as an anthropologist. For one thing, I'm one of only two females working in an otherwise male lab. (Really, it's an overwhelmingly male-dominated field to begin with.) We're also a very culturally diverse lab; a couple of us were born in the United States, but most of the people I work with come from other places, like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. Throw in the fact that I help proofread papers and give lessons in English pretty frequently (very few of my coworkers are native English speakers) and you could say I integrate _all_ of my fields at work! =) Arguably, though, a lot of what I'm talking about here is multidisciplinary, not interdisciplinary.



Joseph on Interdisciplinarity and Integration:

Thanks Ada for such a great post. I have to say that integration for me is quite simple for the most part. I have a minor in Mathematics and have one area of concentration is Physical Sciences, such as Astronomy and Physics, and the Physics classes I have taken are all Calculus-based, so I did not have to do much on my own, but I am grateful because the integration actually gives me a deeper understanding of the material. My other area of concentration is the Social and Behavioral Sciences. One thing I am contemplating working on is the Psychology of Mathematics, and by this I mean how we feel towards Math itself, from an early age to us as adults. It seems that at an early age you will either have a liking for Mathematics, or (more likely) a rather strong distaste for it, and this leads to many people not studying it. I really feel that Mathematics is quite important and hope this research of my own disproves my hunch that a lot of people just do not like Math. I hope that you all do! I love it!

Here are some questions to ponder this week:

How have or haven't you integrated your areas and minor?

Why do you believe integration of your areas and minor are important in terms of professional, academic, and/or personal development?

How do you believe your areas and minor can be better integrated?

E-Portfolio

The e-Portfolio here at UCF is a tool that can be used to supplement your scholarly pursuits and your professional pursuits. It is basically an online representation of you that a University, employer, or other entity can access to get a brief (or not so brief) idea of who you are and what you are about. You can also demonstrate some of your work and awards you may have received. It definitely is an asset to have.

Joseph on the e-Portfolio:

On some of my resumes, I have put the address to my e-Portfolio from here at UCF. So far, I have mainly used it to be as online resume and a short biography about me, but I am definitely aware of how valuable it can be because a paper resume, or just an online resume, is quite impersonal, and your e-portfolio allows you to put a face to your resume. Some employers see hundreds of resumes, so anything you can do to make yours stand out is best. So, please take this opportunity to consider how you are going to make your e-Portfolio work for you and answer these questions at the end of Ada's post on this blog.

Ada on the e-Portfolio:

I'll admit, I haven't heavily utilized my e-Portfolio outside of my IDS classes. I felt it wasn't the best way to market my work in my field, so I have other portfolios I use when actually seeking work. The e-Portfolio did, however, give me a chance to review and organize my academic progress and accomplishments at UCF. My work in IDS included a lot of assessment of what I've done so far in my college career and outlining my plans for the future, and this is certainly all appropriate for an e-Portfolio; it does a good job of showing my personal and academic development. It can also demonstrate interdisciplinarity by highlighting projects I've done that incorporate my different disciplines, like game development or language processing. I will probably be more likely to utilize the e-Portfolio when I'm applying for a more programming-oriented job, because it will allow me to actually show a reviewer the work I've done (source code, executables, presentations). Right now, however, my basic resumé and my art portfolio (hosted on other sites) have been more useful to me for actually getting work than anything else.

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Questions for you:

How will your e-Portfolio demonstrate your interdisciplinarity?
What is the audience / purpose you're thinking of using?
How would you envision your e-Portfolio looking like? What would you like to stand out?

Joseph's Introduction:

I never would have thought that I would start out an introduction by saying I am a Christian, but I guess I have now. Usually that is something that most people try to disclose at a much later date when everyone is okay with who you are. But now, when asked “Who are you?”, I am more than proud to state that as who I am first.

Next, I am a happily married man that is looking forward towards graduating this December. I am just hoping that I can get into a career that will allow me to contribute to the household. My wife and I are looking for a house right now, and we are looking ahead to start our lives together after college.

Next, I would like to mention that I am a senior at UCF. Originally I chose UCF as where I wanted to go to college for three main reasons. One, UCF was giving me the most money of any college in Florida. Two, I wanted to be far enough away from home that I wasn’t expected to come home every weekend but I wanted to be close enough that I could go home to Destin, FL whenever I wanted. Three, my best friend had moved to Orlando our senior year of high school and UCF just happened to be where he moved. Additionally, I was a Mechanical Engineering major when I came to UCF and UCF had great credentials for the program.

But, as I discovered that being on my own for the first time was quite liberating, I neglected my studies somewhat, and bounced through a couple of majors, and eventually ended up with a ton of classes finished but no degree. The Interdisciplinary Studies degree allowed me to combine all the education I received here at UCF into one degree, and now I plan to highlight that when I am looking for a career. By the way, I love Family Guy, The Office, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

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Ada's Introduction:

Hi! I'm Ada, and I was previously a computer science major, but I changed to Interdisciplinary Studies earlier this year. My minor is Computer Science, and my areas of study are Letters & Modern Languages and Behavioral & Social Sciences. I'm something like a fifth or sixth year senior, but I'll finally be graduating this fall. =) I chose UCF for a number of reasons: It was local and affordable, most of the rest of my family went here (so I was pretty familiar with the campus already), and I knew it had a great computer science program. However, computer science is no longer my major focus. I've been running a small art business for the last couple years, and my post-graduation goal is to turn this business into a full-time career. Changing majors to IDS served a dual purpose: it allowed me to pursue other academic interests than computer science (like anthropology and linguistics, both of which are major passions of mine) and it allowed me to graduate much more quickly than I could have if I stuck exclusively with computer science. I will most likely continue taking classes after graduation (perhaps getting a certification in Technical Writing or Gender Studies) but I would like to devote myself to my business full-time starting next year.

When I try to explain Interdisciplinary Studies, I summarize it by saying that I have a minor and two other areas of study, and part of my education is to learn to integrate these disciplines together. Most people understand it pretty well from that; if I get a blank stare, THEN I try telling them that it's basically a double major.

I think advantages of an interdisciplinary education include, obviously, a richer, more well-rounded education as well as exposure to new ways of thinking, like an engineering major being forced to endure liberal arts people. ;) Disadvantages might include only skimming the surface of some subjects instead of delving deeply into them like you would if you were majoring in them. (For example, I'm studying both language and behavioral sciences, but I'm only now beginning to study linguistic anthropology.)

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Questions for you:

Who are you? What are your areas / minors? What year are you?
How do you explain IDS to others?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of an interdisciplinary education?