Gotta Get A Move On

Jan. 11th, 2021

Over the past week in ISM, I scheduled a meeting with and confirmed my mentor for the remainder of the year, as well as began working on my Original Work product. I was able to successfully prepare for my mentor meeting by using the resources provided by Mr.Pirtle in the ISM Student Locker, and used that information as a guide for the meeting. Thankfully, when I asked Ms.Frazier to become my mentor, she said yes. As far as working on my product for my Original Work, I’ve been successful in beginning to do research on what I want the end product to look like, as well as what I have to do in order to get it there. I created an outline of the steps that need to be taken in order for me to be successful at the end of this process.

As a result of what I’ve learned from past interviews, as well as tips that Mr.Pirtle himself has taught me in ISM, I was able to take what I learned and apply it to this mentor meeting. Things like being confident, having a guide for what you want the interview to cover, and being prepared to meet helped me out, as it’s done so in the past. I also found that doing research beforehand for my Original Work product has eliminated the stress and pressure I would have felt if I had jumped straight into creating the actual product.

Some challenges that I’ve faced during the past week were keeping myself from getting overwhelmed about the mentor meeting, as well as not getting more stressed out about getting back into the swing of things with school starting back up. As mentioned before, I’ve had interviews with other professionals prior to this one, but this one gave me a more nauseating feeling and scared me because I knew there was a possibility that the professional could say no to me when I asked them to be my mentor. To limit this feeling of uneasiness, I created an outline for the points I want to touch on and explain when talking, as well as made sure that everything I would say would flow and tie back together for the purpose of the meeting. This made me feel more confident because I had a basis on what I would be saying, and knew that as long as I had the general ideas down, I could elaborate on them as necessary. In terms of being stressed out about school, it’s not a new feeling. As I’m sure I’ve said countless times in previous blogs, I always find something to stress about, and yeah, it’s not fun to think about, but I also believe that the stress is what keeps me motivated to give my best effort and the end result is often better than I would expect. The good thing is that after the first couple days of returning to school from break, my mind settled back into the way things run, and I picked myself up and pushed my way through what I had to get done.

During this next week, I’m going to work on taking some time to work on my Original Work. I know that the more time and effort I put into it now, the less likely I am to rush later and the better the end product will be. However, I also want to make sure I’m staying on top of all of my school work, as well as taking breaks in between for the sake of my mental and physical health. If I can find a balance between doing school work and taking care of myself, that’ll be amazing.

To conclude this, I would like to say that I’m excited that I finally have a mentor, and can work with them on my Original Work product. I also admire my mentor because they give reliable information and advice, and I know they’re someone I can always rely on for basic and complex questions. They inspire me to try new things, and remind me that it’s okay if things don’t always go as planned, and for that, I am grateful.