Pepping Up with Pepsi

WE NEED POP IN THIS PLACE

Advantages:

• Contains caffeine so people will be awake (though on a sugar high)
  
• Pop drinkers will be happy (a.k.a Kassidy)
  
• Wider selection for clients
• A lovely Pepsi label looks good with most decors (especially are blue walls) <--I just spelled "our" wrong there but I am going to leave it because I dont want to edit hah
  

Disadvantages: <---i made that small for a reason!

• price (but it is worth it)
• Creation of new caffeine junkies
  
• If you buy Coke - yuck

This is no way is supposed to count for my weekly posting...I just wanted to throw it out there.

Our discussion in class.

I want apologize for my weak presentation today. I guess I should have made it more clear in the beginning why I picked the topic.

After doing research, I learned that there was a lot of information for teaching students via media such as PowerPoint. What I was trying to say was that if we use keynote, we can spend more time thinking how out slides look and how to cooler graphics affects our audience… instead of actually spending time creating slides.

To clarify more, I will summarize parts of my paper and blog it here to show you why having more graphics in the slide helps students.

Sorry if I confused anyone.
Thanks,
Krish.

The Nascar Kass Method of Blog Organization

The title says it all, friends.

I, uh... don't know why I had to qualify it if the title DID in fact "say it all". Please don't ask me about this.

The Consultant Becomes The Client

The Futility Of Existence Can't Catch You If You Infer Your Own Meaning, Which We All Do
(which of course, you won't)

Earlier in the year I learned that it was incumbent upon me to experience the writing center from the perspective of a consultant. So I had decided to take in my resume for a good spit and a polish. Usually my resume just gets the spit.

I went to the BCC. I went there because I figured that their consultants might have a particular expertise on resumes and career development. The problem with my resume is that I have a strong background in the field of politics. The problem with that is, I no longer want to work in politics. I need to start developing a resume that accommodates my current career path.

"What kind of resume does an author/poet/storyteller put together?”, I asked myself. My career aspirations include: getting published, collecting royalties, and getting published again and doing whatever I can to keep that whole thing going. But that isn't a job you really apply for, so what do I need a resume for? It's not necesairly job I'll ever get either. Unemployment doesn't pay, at least not beyond 12 weeks. Christ! Why did I pick this profession? Is it going to be any less thankless, aimless and unrewarding than politics? Sure I like doing it and I get praise for it, but my career in politics went much the same way. Am I doomed to endless points of false starts and true failures within a grander mosaic of a lifelong factotum? It's worked for Bukowski (pun intended), but he at least got paid for his writing, but he wasn't able to live off of it until he was 50. Do I have to wait that long? What do I do until then?

All these are important questions because when writing your resume it turns out that you have to think of your career prospects said the consultant. The problem is, that a career in writing is hard to predict. I am not entirely sure what kind of employment I could or would want to acquire in the field of publishing. I could very well end up as a substitute teacher or a lumberjack until (if) I get published.

This is another conflict. I have to have both a resume for my true professional development and the jobs I intend to have in the mean time. Apparently American Apparel is less interested that I was a foreign policy advisor for a U.S. House Race and more interested that I was a waiter for three summers back in the day. Come to think about it, that hard to get and once prestigious job isn't terribly useful to me at all these days. The futility of existence overwhelms me, so I struggle to infer my own meaning. Oh, I already inferred futility. Nevermind.

The consultant said that I had a good document design going but that I had to put less on the page. It's something that I felt like I had known all along. I figured putting the most information on the page that I could fit with 10 or 12 point font was the best way to go. If they could see all the cool stuff I did, I was sure to get hired I figured. Not so. Apparently making less information more interesting is the way to go. I knew that, I used to be a speechwriter. Maybe that could be useful to mention to publishers? No? Alright.

The consultant at the BCC did exactly what I was taught to do. He evaluated my document and made marks and recommendations, but he didn't edit or proof read. More so, he taught me how to do it right on my own. I feel like I picked a new skill in resume design. I wonder if I can list that under skills in my resume?

Hmmm. No, I had better keep it short.

Consultant Limitatons

Consultant Limitations
Dammit Jim, I'm A Consultant! Not A Linguist!

As much as I find reward in being a Writing Center Consultant, I also encounter a number of frustrations. Usually these frustrations stem from explaining the complexities of the English language to ESL students.

I had a particular client two weeks in a row as I had taken over a shift for one of my colleagues. This client is a Masters student from Korea. She is perfectly intelligent and had a lot of interesting and complex ideas about her field. In fact, her conversational English is quite good.

Sometimes though, we have a wee bit of a tiff over word choice. She used the word “consequence” in a place where she should have used a word like “outcome”. She felt as though I was splitting hairs when I said that consequence implies a more direct cause and effect relationship and carries a connotation of that which is unexpected and usually negative. The reason for this is that various dictionaries made it appear as if both words mean the same thing. I talked with her about the difference of connotation and denotation of words, and how an understanding of the latter usually comes with language immersion. The consultant who typically helps her had told her that she should read a reputable newspaper for 30 minutes every day, which I thought was good advise. I also happen to think that watching television is helpful, that is after all what helped Arnold Schwarzenegger become the profoundly prolific communicator we know today.

What I have learned and what sage people have told me is that as consultants, we can’t know and we can’t do everything. I think ultimately it is these kinds of limitations that frustrate me the most, because it reminds me that some people are going to walk away with less than they wanted, and because of this I think I walk away with less than I had hopped too.

SC #1

Session with Noah:

I have asked many, too many, questions in the writing center and fortunately, all have been answered. The center, as a whole, has diligent individuals who seem to be kind enough to help me sought out my queries, but there is one person who withstood all the challenges I put forth. Hence, it’s obvious that I aim one of the blogs towards him.

My session as a client with Noah begins in January of 2008, my first week of work. I introduced myself to Noah and told him my position at the writing center, “a digital media consultant”. While the rest of you started class and turned in all the necessary documents, I began to work. For the first few weeks, I hesitated to ask him, or Kosta, any questions. "Survival of the fittest," I reminded myself before I went to work. I finally got a job, I knew, I was going to enjoy and at no cost was I going to loose it.

However, over the next few weeks, I observed many of Noah's (and other consultants) sessions. One thing that was common with all the sessions was the willingness of the consultants to help me learn the process by talking about all the questions I had. I can actually say that I was a client throughout the semester with many people and had meaningful f2f conversations. Overtime, I became a more confinement consultant. The point that I am trying to make is I didn’t know many of the things - where the coffee goes end of the day? How to make it? How to change the water for the filter? How to start my sessions? What to expect from clients? – And I learned all of these things by talking to people and being in a conversation that these senior consultants have with their clients. I was actually a client who was in small sessions though out the semester, rather than a straight 60 min one.

Later, I did sign up for a proper session with Noah and after reading a part of the essay, we talked and agreed that the way I had portrayed the consultant in my story was quiet accurate and he could relate to it. Also, I learned that it is important to have little humor in the session as it helps the client keep their focus.

Krish.

I want to organize my posts here.

Trixie here are my organized blog postings....I will be updating this throughout the week.