Don't Worry, Be Happy

October 12th, 2020

Over the past week in ISM, I have prepared for my professional interviews for Business Symposium, experienced and learned from those interviews, and began developing my contact list for the professionals I want to meet with, both to learn more about my profession and to begin looking for my mentor. In preparing for Business Symposium, I was able to learn about how I can improve my self-confidence and nervousness: by practicing my responses, and running through the questions over and over with my parents, I was able to become more confident and less nervous about the real thing. In experiencing Business Symposium, I learned that I wasn’t as bad as I made myself out to be; in fact, when my interviewers gave me feedback on how I did, they said that the one thing I should work on is spacing out my sentences, and not making them run-ons. On a deeper level, I learned that I should be more optimistic towards myself, just as I am with my friends and other people. Lastly, in developing my contact list for professionals, I realized that doing research beforehand is beneficial in the long run because it shows that you know what you’re talking about, and that you have a genuine interest in pursuing your topic of choice, which comes off well in the eyes of the professionals.

As a result of what I’ve learned, the only question that’s arisen, as far as I can think of, is what more can I do to make sure that I’m ready to start contacting professionals. Per my ISM teacher’s instructions, we need to have our professional voicemails set up by this week, a draft for leaving a voice message for a professional by this week, and an initial contact email draft (that needs to get approved by our ISM 2 mentor or teacher) prepared by this week. Knowing that I have to have all of these things ready and prepared stresses me out a lot, but it also excites me knowing that we’re going to start contacting professionals and finding our mentors, so that we can get started on what ISM is truly about. But as I mentioned earlier, I want to know what else I can do to make sure that I’m well prepared for when I start emailing them and calling them because I don’t want to come off as a student who doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Some challenges that I’ve faced during the past week were developing getting rid of my nervousness that came after the Business Symposium interviews, as well as managing my time to make sure that I completed all of my school assignments on time. I’ve always been known to stress about everything I do, so it’s easy to imagine that I was a nervous mess after those Business Symposium interviews. So when they were over, I didn’t even hesitate to leave the Zoom meeting and drown myself in music, to forget about the whole thing. But I realized something: rather than being nervous about what had just happened, why not be happy that I was able to finish it? And in turn, this makes me feel much more calm, so that I can get started on the next things I have to do for my other AP classes. So I did just that. With that nervous and stressful feeling out of the way, I was able to dedicate the rest of my time towards those other classes I was talking about. However, as I mentioned earlier, it was hard for me to successfully give the right amount of time to each of my classes. Was I able to complete all of my work? Yes. But I was as efficient as I could have been? Probably not. I often found myself rushing late in the night or early in the morning just to make sure that my work was getting done, and that is accurate and perfect. This wasn’t a fun feeling, so I now know for the rest of the school year that I will work on better managing my time, and giving an equal amount of effort to each of my classes.

In doing those things that I mentioned above, I was able to be successful in getting rid of my nervousness, and was able to focus on my other classes without my thoughts about the interviews overwhelming and stressing me out. Although trying to come to terms with the fact that my interviews for Business Symposium were done, it didn’t necessarily mean that I still wasn’t nervous, thinking about the lasting impression I had on my interviewers. I just tried to push those thoughts aside as best as I could, and it worked out for the most part. And in terms of dedicating time to each of my classes afterwards, I was also able to be successful in that. Granted I probably could have and should have dedicated more time to each of them individually, I was still able to get all of my assignments done in a timely manner, so I would say I was pretty successful in that.

In the next week, I need to work on doing research on the professionals that I have chosen to contact via email or phone, so that I am better prepared for when those interviews begin. Although Mr.Pirtle said we should interview at least 5-7 professionals, I want to do a bit more than that just so I can make sure that I’m certain on who I want to choose as my mentor, so I won’t regret my decision later. And by doing research on the list of people I have chosen to contact, I’ll be better prepared in the long-run, and feel more accomplished and successful internally, Given we aren’t supposed to have this done until we start the actual contacting and interviewing, it will help because I’ll feel more ready for it, and less anxious.

To conclude this, I would like to say that in doing research on the different people I have chosen to contact, I want to see how my profession can be applied in many different ways in reality. Like once I get that license to become a Certified Public Accountant, then how should I apply that knowledge and experience? And what would be the best way to go about looking for the jobs that I can use to get the experience part of my license, in a way that makes the most logical sense to me? It’s the little things like this that I want to know more about because I feel that it will go a long way in helping me better understand and prepare for when it comes to my time to become a CPA, and open up my own accounting firm.