Week Eleven

The cell phone etiquette quiz said that I know proper phone etiquette but that I don't always use it. Sometimes I know that it is inappropriate to use my phone in certain places like the bathroom, or answering a text message at a restaurant. But the truth is that if I am with my friends or family at dinner, I know that they won't care if I answer a text message. If I go into the bathroom to answer my friend or mother's phone call, I know that the people in the bathroom nor my mother will care that the toilets are flushing in the background. Now, if I were at dinner with a new acquaintance or something like that, I would not answer a text. If I were answering the phone to my boss, I would not answer it with toilets flushing in the background. As far as cell phone use goes, I think that there is a time and place where it can be accepted and others where it can not. I mean, the point of cell phones is so that people can contact you away from home.

Week Ten

• Written Communication: An example of a form of written communication is "blogging". When people write and post things on their blogs, and people recieve the information by reading the publication, it is a form of communication. Because it is written electronically, this classifies "blogging" as a form of written communication. However, possible problems that could arise could be forgetting to refresh the page after publishing; resulting in non-publication and no readers of said publication. Thus resulting in a communication failure. Therefore, remembering to refresh the page and check to ensure publication can serve as a critical factor to the solution of non-publication and avoiding the failure of written communication.


• Verbal communication: An example of verbal communication would be speaking. When a person speaks in front of a crowd and the people in the crowd are listening and absorbing the speakers words, this defines communication in the verbal form. Barriers in this type of communication in this particular scenario would be the speaker lacking confidence and speaking very low. If this problem were to occur, the people on the receiving end of verbal communication would be unable to hear and/or recieve the information. Here we find again the failure of the communication process. The solution to this problem would be for the speaker to speak louder to ensure that the communication process in in effect.


• Non-verbal communication: An example of non-verbal communication would be selection of clothing. If a person wears a shirt that says that they love New York, they are expressing and communicating with those that read the shirt that this person loves New York. It is very hard to come across a problem with non-verbal communication seeing as regardless of what a person wears, how one reacts or expresses their body language, they are always expressing something. Even if you are a vegetable and someone dresses you in the morning and you show no emotion, you are still expressing some kind of emotion, a desire to be left alone or expression of deep hurt from the world. A way to avoid problems with non-verbal communication is very minimal because the most basic form of communication is non verbal. Animals can not write or speak in a language that we can understand but their expression and body language indicates their feelings and emotions.

I believe that I personally communicate very well in the written, verbal, and non-verbal forms. I try to mesh all forms of communication together in a presentable form in order to reflect a positive image. I believe that I could improve my communication skills by becoming more courageous when speaking to others and in front of a crowd. I find myself communicating differently with different types of people. For example, I communicate differently with my friends than the people at work, and I communicate with my family differently from others. I believe that I communicate effectively with others and I try to reflect a positive image by using my communication skills.

Service Learning Placement

So far at my placement, I have learned alot more in these couple of weeks. I have become more fluent on the company programs and have learned to become more fluent sounding when I speak to people on the phone. Good study skills came in handy to me when working at my placement because if I had not have studied, I would probably be suffering at succession with my job. Some positive experiences at my job is when I keep angry customers to a minimum and when I provide customer satisfaction. Negative experiences are when I try to explain something to a customer and they get extremely angry with me or hang up on me. I have learned that this profession requires alot of patience. I look forward to learning the tricks to keeping people calm. My visual is a picture of how I envision people when they get mad at work.

Week Nine

I believe that I have a positive attitude and reaction to things that happen in my life. For example, when I get a bad grade at school, I simply tell myself to work hard and try to bring it up. The difference is that a person with a bad attitude would get upset and given up on the class. If something bad happens like a family member gets in trouble, I believe it wise to just stay calm and try to fix the situation. if a person gets hysterical, then the problem just gets more out of hand.

At my service learning placement, It can get really boring waiting for calls. I just try to space out in order to keep myself from getting frustrated. When I get calls from mean old ladies, I actually pride myself on how calm I stay. I just answer their questions and remember that it is just a job, and not to take it personally. It does not pay off to get hysterical and overreact.

My main influences in my life that have helped me shape my attitude is when I see people with bad attitudes. people with bad attitudes and snotty personalities really get on my nerves. These people help me look at myself and tell myself how I don't want to be. I get aggrevated when I see people with bad outlooks on life. I wish everyone could understand that bad things happen in life, but life is what you make of it and how you react to the bad things.

Week Eight

At Dial America, some hazards that could possibly injure employees could be not cleaning up a spill on the floor and someone slips and breaks a hip. Or someone could trip over an unseen cord on the floor and twist their leg or foot. If people aren't responsible for cleaning up after themselves or looking out for potential hazards, others could be the ones to suffer by getting injured for careless people.

After looking at the OSHA website for safety issues that apply to workplaces and my particular workplace are the mandatory OSHA publications that must be displayed in Spanish. In order to have everyone completely informed of regulations and emergency policies, having OSHA posters translated into Spanish and a toll free number with Spanish speaking operators are the best way to ensure that everyone is properly informed. Even if a Spanish speaking person understands pretty good English, if there are even one or two words that are not understood, this could result in misunderstandings.

So far in my job at Dial America, I have learned to project my voice to sound pleasing and friendly over the phone and to improve my customer assistance. What I have learned about working with the people at Dial America is that they are always willing to help and all they want to do is help the customer. If you have a question, people at Dial America always have the answer because they have most likely worked on that program for a couple of years and have taken thousands of calls on it.

So far I have had a few negative experiences on the job because I have little old ladies trying to buy wigs and they get mad at me when they have a question that I can't answer. I tell them that I have to transfer them to customer service and the get huffy and take my name sand inform me that when I transfer them they will tell customer service about me. But then again, I do come across some very understanding and patient ladies who tell me that they appreciate my assistance and wish me a good day. What I look forward to in the coming weeks is learning the programs better and being able to perform at my job more efficiently. My learning style is an asset to me in this career because I am a hands-on learner and I learn best by actually doing something. With taking phone calls, you have to learn alot on you own. There is only so much your trainer can teach you.

Week 7

One skill that I posess that I think is unique to me is that I am nearly fluent in the Spanish language. I think that by using this skill it will be useful in the career path that I would like to pursue. I am interested in the medical field and would like to become a Paramedic and some day a doctor. If I had fluent Spanish speaking skills I believe that that would be very useful to the field, myself and to the community. In my daily life I will continue to study Spanish and try to make myself as diverse as possible so that I may make myself useful to my employer and to the community that I want to help. As long as I study hard and work hard to achieve my goals I will aquire many skills that I will be able to add to my resume.

Week Five

The personality type that I discovered today in my career search does relate to my service learning placement. I am a social personality type and that means that I like to give information and help people. When working at Jittery Joe's I help people by making coffee and assisting in completing orders. I also give people information about the products at the store like food and what types of coffee we have. This job fits into alot of my social personality of wanting to help people.

In the coming weeks I look forward to getting more customer service and coffee shop experience. The last few weeks of my placement at Jittery Joe's, I have had more positive experiences than negitive. The times that I expected people to get mad they were actually very nice and patient with me. Then the times that I am doing good with a customer they of course are fine and not snotty.

Week Six

Time Saving Tips

1. Prepare things like outfits, and the next day's lunch at night so that when you wake up in the morning, you can get ready without worrying about rushing around trying to prepare lunch and what clothes you want to put on.
2. If it can be done at night, do it at night. Anything you can do to prepare yourself for the next day the night before, do it. Obviously you can't put on make up and get dressed the night before, but you can lay your clothes out.
3. In the mornings, I have a two minute rule. If it can be done in less than two minutes, do it. This keeps my dawdling down to a minimum.
4. At night, I put my books and purse close to the front door so I wont have to look for them when I leave, I can just grab and go.
5. I like to set my alarm clock an extra 10 minutes early, this way I can use them any way that I want, I can snooze through them, accomplish a quick chore, or watch TV before I leave for the day.

If I were to become overwhelmed with obligations I imagine myself being a little stressed out but trying to remain positive. Even if I was overwhelmed with obligations, I would try to keep my day as organized as possible so that everything would run smoothly. There will be times in life when things will be overwhelming but them important thing is to work through it and try to remain on schedule and focused. My strategy would be staying on schedule and staying organized.