Category: FYS 110 (Page 1 of 3)

I participated in the October Resume Challenge here at UNE, where I submitted my resume to Handshake after I had revised and met with career services about it. Although I had done these steps even before this challenge came out, I appreciated that the school was trying to get students to be active participants in their own working lives. Although I didn’t get a work study job, I hope that by my continued efforts, I can either find a way to make up the money that I didn’t receive, or eventually land a work study job that I was technically given. I learned that the earlier you do these things, the more likely it is that you will succeed at getting a work study job, and this is true for many things in life, that it is good to do as early as possible. Even if it didn’t work out this time, it still showed me the benefit that I had in doing these things far before most of the people in my class.

For doing all of these steps, I got some free Halloween candy and I got entered to win a couple of grand prizes, including Bose headphones or a bluetooth speaker. Also, because of my meeting with Donna from Career Services, I learned more of the specific details that make a resume the best that it can be, which is especially useful with my lack of career experience, since I am only in my first year of college. I also learned how I will be able to expand my resume when I do gain that experience that comes from things like work study jobs and internships. So through this, I gained a connection with career services, who I have already had another meeting with about my choices of what I want for my major and how I can figure that out for myself.

I attended a zoom meeting with my Environmental class as well as other environmental classes and we watched a movie and had a discussion pertaining to the effect that humans have on the environment. The movie was called The Human Element and it discussed how people had such a profound effect on the environment, that we as a species could be considered a fifth element in the natural system. The documentary showed interviews with people who had lost their homes due to climate change driven natural disasters such as rising sea levels. It also showed how towns had to keep spending millions of dollars to raise buildings, roads and dams in order to save the entire town from going underwater.

      The documentary also discussed steps that we could take as a species to try and help ourselves and our planet. One of those ways is putting funding towards actual solutions to these problems, like renewable or cleaner energy, instead of just trying to treat the symptoms of the strain that the human race has placed on earth. Putting more effort into solving the actual problem will not only help the people that are currently being affected, it will also be more economically beneficial in the long term. I learned that the extent to which people have an effect on the planet is straddling, but at the same time, we are also the ones that can actually do something about it. At the end of the showing, there was also a panel of professors at UNE that specialize in the environment, and from them, we learned a lot from a group discussion in how our generation feels about this crisis. They also gave us hope that our generation could do better than the previous one in this regard and they really believe that we can, in part because we grew up knowing that we would have to solve this issue.

I attended the Friday night painting activity where we painted a dog in autumn leaves together over zoom. I thought that this activity was a really good way to do something with other people that has been kind of lacking due to the current pandemic. The supplies were given out at the Commons where you could go and get them, and then later that night, you got on the zoom either by yourself or with your roommate, and you painted with everyone online. You could either pick up a blank canvas or one that already had the dog and the leaves already traced onto it, along with all of the paint colors that you would need and some brushes. 

When you logged on to the zoom and began painting, the person giving the instructions left it very open to what we wanted to do, and just gave us the steps that she did, but told us that we could put the colors where we wanted to. I appreciated the creative freedom we were given, but also that she gave us broad steps to follow if our goal was to create a painting that looked like hers. I had a great time painting with my roommate, who is also my sister, and it was a nice break from doing all of the work that I feel like I always need to do. I think that it is good to take a break once in a while in order to care for your own mental health, which is something that many people, including myself, need to make more time for.

One of the learning outcomes of the Business and Sustainability major is to “Know fundamental principles of business and ecology and apply these to sustainability initiatives within private, public, and/or civic organizations/enterprises”. This establishes that one of the goals of this major is to have the student develop not only their own skills in the field, but also how they can acquire knowledge from many sources and weave that broader perspective to improve themselves as working citizens. Boyer touches on this point when he brings in other sources for his article, sharing some thoughts by Sir Eric Ashby on his view of useful knowledge. He says that “A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education”. This quote shows that although Boyer believes that knowledge is important, it is also necessary to be able to intertwine that knowledge with the greater society around them.

One of the missions of this major is “Prepare students for ethically and socially responsible roles in sustainability and business professions and society”. This mission connects directly with Boyer in that he emphasizes the importance of knowing the social and ethical implications of your field. He claims that this is a necessary component of a college education in order for graduates to be successful in their respective fields. He says that “If a major is so narrow that it cannot be discussed in terms of its historical and social implications, if the work in the proposed field of study cannot be a broadening experience, then the department is offering mere technical training that belongs in a trade school, not on a college campus, where the goal is liberal learning” (Boyer 223). According to Boyer, in order for an education like college to be useful and fulfilling, it must teach a broader sense of what that discipline is, whether it be the history of it, or the social and ethical implications of that field.

One of the courses that is required for this major is the business management course. This course goes against what Boyer defines as an enriched major, as it focuses more on the skills needed to actually run a business, so that graduates can be knowledgeable enough in their field to do the same. Boyer insists that more vocational training such as this should be more reserved for technical schools and not a liberal education degree. However, this course geared more toward the vocational responsibilities in this field is incredibly important for a graduate to become successful in this field.

Go further into the chosen major’s learning outcomes and goals. Link one or more of them to specific elements of Boyer, Scheuer, and/or Ungar.

Based on the learning outcomes and goals of this major, it connects to Boyer in that both Boyer and these outcomes place an emphasis on preparing students to become a helpful part of their communities, both ethically and socially. This also connects to Scheuer, who emphasizes the importance of being a global citizen. The mission of this major states that it is to “Prepare students for ethically and socially responsible roles in sustainability and business professions and society;”. Without a grasp on how their work affects those around them, they cannot be truly successful in their field.

Look at the actual curriculum or course requirements. Where do you see pieces that look like elements of what Boyer calls an “enriched” major? Where do you see pieces that might be more technical or vocational? GO INTO UONLINE and get COURSE DESCRIPTIONS for those classes. Look hard for both.

Some aspects that this major uses that could be called Boyer’s enriched major is that it includes courses that have broader focused courses that are required to take. For example, one of the classes that does not fit this description is a classe such as business management, which shows that they teach the basics of how a real business is actually run. But they also have environmental ethics, which is a broader class showing us how we have a responsibility to the environment in choosing how businesses are run, and ways in which to respect that balance. This major also requires you to have an internship either in an environmental sector or a business sector so that you can gain experience in that area.

From the work in the first two bullets, develop two paragraph-like units that TELL the READER something about how specific parts of the major do or do not seem to fit some aspect of an enriched major. (Feel free to draw on Scheuer and/or Ungar to assist.)

The idea that graduates are required to take both technical and the broader courses to round out their education is very reminiscent of Boyer’s idea of an enriched major. This is because Boyer says in his article that it is very important to have more broad courses that explore how the major will fit into other subjects as a whole. One specific class that fulfills this is Environmental Ethics, where students learn about the impact of businesses on the environment. This is also important in the article by Scheuer, which emphasizes the importance of being able to connect what you are doing with the world around you. As a result of this scope, graduates will have a broader perspective on problems that they encounter in their jobs, and can draw on their knowledge from different fields to solve problems in extremely creative ways. 

Another thing that doesn’t necessarily fit with Boyer’s idea of an enriched major is one of the points under the mission statement. They say that one of the goals is to prepare students for entry level positions in both the public and private sectors of business careers. This aspect is based more on the technical side of things, in which a student actually needs to learn how to do the job that they might have one day. Although this doesn’t exactly fit with Boyer believes to be an enriched major, it is still an essential part of a college education.

Both Boyer and the major that I chose to research place an importance on ethical implications a field could possibly have. “Specialists must make judgements that are not only technically correct but also include ethical and social considerations. And the values professionals bring to their work are every bit as crucial as the particularities of the work itself.”(Boyer 224). A course that is required for this major is “Environmental Ethics”, which shows that even in business, people need to be able to consider the implications of what they are doing with their business to how it affects those around them. Not only is this necessary, it is the right thing to do in order to become a responsible citizen whose career can and will affect the lives of others. Additionally, businesses who think about the ethics of what they are doing could become even more successful due to that moral code.

Questions:

Put these questions in the beginning of the interview:

What courses did you take in college that influenced your decision to study this particular major?

What was it like getting a major in this field?

What was your experience like in obtaining your degree (s)? How might that be different from today’s standards?

Other Questions:

Do you realistically need more than a bachelor’s degree to be successful in these career paths? (To investigate: how far can I get, do things open up for me after that, what are the limitations to that?)

How would you realistically start a business?

Salary? Can I start out making a living with this, or should I start out with something else and build up to that?

What types of jobs can come from having a degree in this major? Is it a versatile degree? “Manager, Chief Sustainability Officer, Construction Manager”

What internship opportunities or work study jobs that could be related to this major/ help me get more experience in this field?

Are there any clubs or organizations available that can help me become more informed about/ has something to do with my major?

What are the responsibilities of running or maintaining a business? Is there flexibility?

Respond (on the blog post) to the following 2 questions:

1. What is a central tension Boyer discusses in his chapter? Support your response with a quote from Boyer and at least 4 sentences of explanation.

A central tension Boyer discusses in his chapter is that colleges and the professors and administration that work there have opposing views as to what a college education and majors should be. Some say that having highly specialized majors are what is necessary for students to have success after college. The opposing side argues that having a specialized major without any investigation into a broader spectrum sets the students up for being unable to fuse their highly specific knowledge with the greater discipline and how it connects to other aspects of different subjects. This closes off their mind to having very creative responses to problems that could have drawn from knowledge from a wider range of information. “This unhealthy separation between the liberla and useful arts, which the curriculum and the faculty too often enforce, tends to leave students poorly served and the college a weak and divided institution.”(Boyer 217). The fact that there is argument and controversy even within one university takes a toll on the education that students receive there, as depending on what professors they have, they could get conflicting ideas of what they should be learning, and become confused and frustrated as a result.

2. What is Boyer’s “Enriched Major” idea, and how does he imagine it as a response to a key tension? Support your response with a quote and at least 3 sentences of explanation.

Boyer’s idea of an “enriched major” takes the best aspects from both a liberal and technical education style. This creates a type of education that encapsulates the most important things about a major that one cannot learn on the job, and why that major is important in the first place as well as how that major can relate to other disciplines. It also teaches the implications that their major could have on the world around them. This combination of both sides could resolve some of the high tension around which is better to teach in universities. “Through such a curriculum the student can move from depth to breadth as departments put the specialty in larger context.”(Boyer 223).

I attended the systemic racism zoom lecture and I learned some new information that I had not previously known. The zoom was all about what systemic racism actually was and how people could help to change it by being more aware of it. There was a guest speaker who did this lecture presentation over zoom, and then some students asked him questions at the end. One of the things that stood out to me was that even if someone is not a willing participant in systemic racism, they can still unknowingly contribute through learned biases and attitudes. Additionally, being a passive participant contributes to the standstill and a lack of change. It is only by being an active participant and protesting for change that change can actually occur. Fighting for change is first recognizing that there is an issue, and that it is not just “a few bad apples” that are ruining progress. 

Many people must recognize that something is wrong, and then join each other and do something about that injustice. This new perspective on what others believe is happening in the U.S. is a little bit of a new concept to me. Another thing that I have learned is that although I knew that there was such a thing as people with bad living situations, I didn’t realize that a lot of people of color find that they are in constant fear for their life. Whether it be from the police or where they live, some people can be africa from simply walking home late at night. I hadn’t realized that there was such a large bias in some places in America where police treat people they encounter differently simply based on their skin tone.

During our writing meeting, Olivia and I talked about my goals essay, the positives about it, and things that maybe I could improve. She read my essay one paragraph at a time and said that most of it was actually really well written. Some things that she told me that I could possibly improve was when I talked about wanting to be able to express my creativity. She told me that I could talk about examples of how my classes or extracurricular activities could fulfill that need for creativity, or even talk about the lack of it due to the pandemic. Other than that, she suggested that I explain what cultural citizenship is in more detail to make it easier for the reader if they didn’t know what that meant.

After listening to my audio journal entries, I noticed a couple of themes that I discuss in almost all of my videos. One of the most prominent is my struggle with planning things out. It seems that just when I think things are under control, I then have a ton of stuff to do. I often feel and share at least a little bit of stress over almost every entry I do. I also discuss doing a lot of things with my family, since they live close by, so we see each other almost every weekend. Although I know that I should spend some weekends on campus to go to activities and things like that, I also discussed a few times throughout my journals that things are really all that normal. As a result, there aren’t nearly as many activities and events going on, and the things that do happen are pretty restrictive, since all the new pandemic rules need to be followed. I also briefly talk about in some of them the social aspect of how my experience is going. It seems to be much more difficult to form connections with people and make friends, because most classes now only meet once a week, and people aren’t allowed to have more than one person at the dorm at a time. The most social that I am able to be is when I go to the ukulele club meetings, but those only happen every two weeks, so I haven’t been able to really get to know them that well yet. In addition, the first couple of weeks I was prepared, although a little stressed, about getting things done in a timely manner. Even though I am getting better at this, it seems like I don’t ever really catch a break, whether it is a paper due or an assignment coming up. Chemistry is also a subject that I struggle with, and although I can eventually figure it out, it is not really a subject that interests me and as a result, I find it more difficult to get the motivation to actually do the assignments. But overall, I seem to be doing okay adjusting to these new experiences, even though I don’t really have anyone who can say they know what this first year experience is like, because nobody really does.