Advice to you Rookies!

Guys, if you're reading this then you have already taken your first step towards an A in business writing: You're taking class with Angie! You really can't not get an A unless you try. Do your blogs, find a group that you can get along with, go to class, turn in homework. That's it, that's all I can say. Not much else to say. The only other things I can give you advice on is a cool website that I've been looking at all day. www.ashesandsnow.org, it's the site for Gregory Colbert who does photography and film. He has some amazing pictures. Other than that, have a great time in Angie's class, you really can't mess it up. Have a good year, thanks for reading.

Distracting Ethics

Evidently, ethical problems in companies cause pretty big problems with productivity. I never knew they were that big of a deal. I guess because i haven't actually been exposed to corporate ethical problems I can't really know how I would react. Well, first thing is first, that article was full with statistics. I know that these statistics are meant to help the reader understand what how big of a problem this is, but I found them very confusing. I mean, they're saying that 36% of people find ethical problems in the office distracting, and of these 36%, one in three don't want to report them. Also, of those that find it distracting, they tell, on average, 48% tell 8 people. Of those 8 people, on average, 3 become distracted as well. I mean, seriously? I think they could have found a better way to show the numbers. Any who, I think that the problem could be handled when employees come into the company. The company should enlighten the green horns as to what to do if they encounter such a problem. At the same time, however, the company has to act on what it says, it can't just tell people what to do and when they do it the company do nothing. They can have a third party deal with these reports as well. The third party can be neutral and unbiased. They can look at the problem objectively and deal with it in a satisfactory manner.

Web writing vs plain writing

Web based writing is different from conventional business writing in many ways. Onw of the biggest differences is that people that are searching for something on the web are searching there for convenience, whereas people reading a paper document such as a book or journal or magazine have time on their hands to look for what it is they are looking for. Because of the differences in the time constraints of these two groups web based writing needs to be short and to the point. It needs to know what audience will be searching for the information and present it in an easy to read manner so that the audience will not look for the information at another location or on a another site. Formal business writing is more formal, I feel, than web based writing. Web based writing is mainly for convenience. When transferring a document formally read on paper to the web one must keep in mind the reasons for which the audience will be reading the text on the web and not on paper: Convenience, time constraints, and ease of accessibility.

Free Blog

This weekend was a weekend full of soccer. We had a tournament in Rock Hill, SC. The tournament was at Manchester Meadows, a new turf complex that they built up there. The fields are perfect, I mean come on they're artificial, but they had a different bounce compared to a good ole grass field. We played to games on Saturday, one against UNC-Greensboro and one against Old Dominion. The first game against UNCG was a good one. We possed the ball really well and had great combination play throughout the field. We didn't force balls forward, if nothing was on, we simply held the ball up, went back, and started all over again. Nathan came through big time with two goals. We ended up winning the game 2-0, so he was the goal scoring hero. Keegan also had a very good showing, he managed to pull the sikest nutmeg I've seen to date in a live college game! The second game against Old Dominion didn't go as well as the UNCG game just because of the scoreline. We lost 2-0, but we outplayed them like crazy! We dominated the for 65 min of the game. It wasn't until the last 5 min that they got their 2 goals and beat us. Not trying to shift blame or anything, but if any loss can be blamed at a ref, this was one of them! The first goal they scored was off a freekick that resulted from a ficticious hand ball. The second goal came after one of Old Dominions forwards fouled McKenzie, our right back, and left him on the ground. One of the Old Dominion players then proceeded to take the space that was left where McKenzie fell and played the forward whom scored on a breakaway. It was sad that we lost but we played some of the best soccer I've ever seen us play, and that includes the season that we went to the Final Four!

Mock Interview

My mock interview went well if I do say so myself. I interviewed for the job of team manager for Real Madrid. For those of you who don't know, team manager for pro teams really means the head coach. When it gets to that level, you don't really coach the players that much anymore, they already have all the skills, they just need someone to manage the formation and where each player plays and other things of the sort. Like I said, the interview went well, I thought I spoke with confidence and answered the questions well. I could have prepared a little better for some of the questions. The questions were pretty standard questions that are asked in many interviews but they had a slight soccer twist to them. I think Angie had some questions that Mark had sent her but unfortunately she couldn't get to them because she couldn't get online. Overall, it was a good time!

Freeee, Freeee blogggggin!

So I have the chance to free blog this week so I'll tell you a bit about what i did this weekend. First off, I started by working at my father's restaurant on Friday night. I wasn't too bad, a little busy, but that's the norm for Friday nights. Saturday morning I didn't do much of anything other that sit at home and do some homework play a little soccer. It was a beautiful day and there was no reason not to play some futbol. Saturday night I worked at the restaurant again and waited tables. It wasn't as busy as it was on Friday night, but it was busy compared to other days of the week. In other news, lake Hartwell is hosting the Bass Maters tournament and my roommate is ecstatic about it! My roommate is a bit of a redneck, so you'll understand. Well, it's Sunday night and I'm off to play a little indoor soccer at Fike with the teammates! Until next time!

Cover letter Response

After watching the tutorial my initial reaction is, "Haha, they just told me to fool one of my own references!" It gave me some great insight though. I did not know half the stuff that the website taught me. I liked the points that it made about "The Reality of Coverletters." The section about the reality of coverletters tells the reader that coverletters are important but they are not looked at until the employer is actually interested in the employee. Once the employer becomes interested in the employee, the employer returns to the coverletter to get additional information about the prospect. I also learned that bigger companies are more prone to hire people from career fairs and college-type job fairs as opposed to "freelance" job seekers. The P.S. technique is also one that I have never really thought about but it makes sense that it would be a good technique. It shows the person reading that the person seeking employment is thinking about the job and trying to impress instead of just sending resumes to all kinds of companies and just hoping that something would come of it. The most useful part of the tutorial for me was the part that talked about selling the benefits and not the product. After reading many things about persuasion, I see that selling the benefits is more effective at persuading than just selling the product; it gives more logos as to why it would be good to hire the person.