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A Week of Learning and Great Opportunities

  • Writer: Sabrina Wood
    Sabrina Wood
  • Oct 12, 2020
  • 2 min read

This week I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the business symposium, put on by the Frisco ISD Independent Study and Mentorship Program. Going into the symposium, I was quite nervous about talking to complete strangers about what I plan to do with my life. What if the professional did not like me? What if I suddenly forgot how to string complete sentences together and made a fool of myself? I did not know that what I thought would be a nerve wracking experience would be one of the best opportunities I have had so far.

Once I started the first interview, I almost immediately settled into a groove of asking and answering insightful questions that seemed to impress the professional. I found myself enjoying talking to these complete strangers and trying to gain as much knowledge as possible in the short fifteen minutes that we had to converse. While I am sure there were things that I could have improved on, I really enjoyed myself and learned a lot from each professional.

Now that I have more confidence about reaching out to professionals, I am definitely more motivated to begin my research interviews. I know that conducting these interviews is a vital part to succeeding in ISM and is essential to my research, but I have found myself dreading the interactions. Since completing the symposium and understanding that I can conduct myself professionally, I am excited to begin scheduling those interviews. I started looking around on LinkedIn this week in an attempt to find chemical engineers, not only in the area, but also in other parts of the country, since we have the ability for virtual interviews. I know that it might be more difficult to schedule these interviews but I definitely feel as though the option for virtual interviews has opened up a new world of possibilities. For example, I have a real interest in the work that chemical engineers do at Purina and have been able to find and start to reach out to them via LinkedIn. I am definitely beginning to look forward to starting these interviews because I think it will help with my original work and overall understanding of the field.

I have decided to start setting weekly goals for myself because I feel as though I am procrastinating on work that is not due right away. For this week, I need to focus on completing research on my original work, setting up my research interviews, and writing thank you notes to the professionals from the business symposium. In all honesty this does not look terribly difficult to complete in a week but I feel as though if I do not set these goals, I will find myself in a situation where I am not where I need to be regarding assignments and projects. Overall I am looking forward to the coming weeks of hopefully numerous research interviews and continuing progress on my original work.


 
 
 

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LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL INDEPENDENT STUDY AND MENTORSHIP

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