The End

                                        Last blog, we did it guys !!!!

It’s been a journey having to write these blogs. At first I liked writing them but then the topics became more difficult to write 750+ words so I started disliking them but here I am, writing my last blog. Now lest get started with this blog.

Back in 2014 I was tired of always having to use the bus and running out of money. I would starve at school because I didn’t have money to buy myself food so when my friends bought food at school I was always low-key hoping they would offer me some. I tried not to make it obvious but sometimes hunger shows. I got to the point where I decided to just apply for a job because I was tired of not having money to treat myself and have my own car.

 “All I had to do is make a resume and submit it”. Those were my thoughts before starting my resume.

I had just recently taken a business writing class where I learned to make a resume, a cover letter and a Thank You letter. It was all fresh in my head. I had this, or so did I thought.

It was easy to find places to apply. If I recall correctly I found at least 12 positions that I wanted.

Everything was going silky smooth. I knew the structure of my resume, the places I wanted to apply and had my cover letter structure too. It wasn’t until I actually had to fill out the resume and the cover letter that I noticed it wasn’t going to be silky smooth from that point.

In a resume you need to market yourself. You need to know your strongest skills, what qualities you have that make you the person for that job and what can you bring to the team that will set you apart from everyone else.

My first application was for a sales representative at Macy*s. Filling out my contact info and my education were the easiest things. However, filling out my skills, work experience and a well worded objective were the most difficult thing.

I had no job experience so I had no idea what my skills were. All my skills were more of “I know how to do my homework and pull all-nighters” type of skills. I had never work so I had no experience section. I wasn’t sure if being on Facebook 24/7 updating my every move was going to be a qualifying skill so I spent hours doing research on my own about a resume with no work experience.

After about an hour of researching online on how to create a resume with no work experience, I had 3 extra options to use as page fillers. Instead of work experience I used community service experience, awards and hobbies.

This options made it somewhat easier for me because I had a lot of community service experience and many awards from both my first two years of college and my awards from high school. The challenging part was trying to figure out my hobbies. I’m a very boring person so the hobbies section was definitely full of lies, along with my “skills.”

A week after I submitted my resume I got a call from Macy*s. They reached out to me and let me know that they saw my application. Right there and then they gave me an interview date and time.

When I arrived at my interview they had my resume printed for me. They handed me my resume so that I can show it to the manager during the interview. As I was reading the resume I was sweating like a sinner at church. I was scared that they were going to find out that I lied in about 50% of my resume and that I was just making a fool of myself.

When the manager called my name for the interview, I didn’t know if to pretend I was someone else and then walk away or to go through with the interview. I decided on the second option. I wanted to throw away my resume because I felt like nothing made me stand out from the other people that applied.

I handed the resume to the manager and she took a quick glance at it and then ignored it. By the end of the day I had the position. Never did she mention the resume. I was glad. I don’t think I got the job because of the resume I think I go the job because of the connection I had made with the manager. I was myself during the interview because I thought nothing else could go wrong and if they already knew I had to lie in my resume then I obviously didn’t have the job. I was myself the whole time and I feel that it was my personality getting me the job. I think that was probably what made me stand out from everyone else. Everyone sounded scripted and gave the same answers and I was the only one down to earth giving them different answers and asking questions.

Lets get down to business

Just want to take a second and say that it’s such a great beautiful cloudy Sunday morning. I enjoy cloudy cold weather more than a sunny days so I’m currently feeling inspired to write and I’m listening to John Meyer so this should be a good blog.

For my career I want to do something different than what I am going to focus on during this Ethnography. This is just one of the many steps I would like to take eventually which is to focus on a store managerial position for a big retail store such as Nordstrom, Bloomingdales or Macys. I want to start from 0 and gradually move up because I want to experience every position and know how they work in order for me to keep in mind how my decisions would impact those who will depend on me. I want my work to be outstanding. I don’t want to do an ok job. I want to influence and be asked for advice. I want to be able to say that I am successful. That’s why I want to start from 0 to understand everything.

For my career I want to be a merchandise marketer for high end brands. I am currently a brand representative for Calvin Klein at Macys so I believe I’m on the right path. My next step is to be a store manager. For this ethnography, I have plan to interview my store managers and try to figure out how they communicate with each other to keep a store running.

I would like to know what works for them and what doesn’t work for them. I want to know how they can predict the traffic of people coming back and how they communicate to be ready for that.

I would like to know what made them apply for this position and how much experience they had before deciding to manage a whole store.

As a brand representative they are still above me. I have managers above me so I would like to know what is it that they do when they are not around in the floor. Are they planning meetings? If they are, how often do they plan them? What do you talk about? How often are these meetings taking place?

I would like to learn many things because as a store it looks like we are pretty successful. We have been the #1 several times. To me this is a great sign of communication because without communication this couldn’t had been reached.

Like any other discourse community, I know this community has public goals. I would like to ask them if their goals are the same as associate goals have? To sale and bring customers back or do their public goals differ? It would be amazing learning about what is going on while they aren’t around associates. Along with learning their cost of affiliation. What are they losing in order to be where they are at? How does this affect them?

The more I write the more excited I get to start this ethnography. Really looking forward to this project.

Ok, re reading this, I just realized it’s not that great as I was hoping but it is something. It helped me brain storm my ethnography and that was the idea of the blog. Winning! :)

In the Real Wolrd

Experiencing new things are often scary. If we could, we would all stay in our comfort zones but if you want to move forward in life you must take risks. When taking those risks you come to a point where you have to find a different identity and act. Why act? you might be asking yourself. Well let me answer that for you.

When you enter a new job you are an actor. You come in portraying to be someone you are not, just like in Halloween. We create this fake character of ourselves where we fake to be comfortable in the current situations that we might be in at work.

It’s very hard to start a new job and show your true colors right away because you can come off too strong and everyone will start to hate you and no one wants that in their new job. You know what they say, first impressions matter. So you must act like the nice, quiet fake person you are when you are around new people.

Also, you need to be confident on what you do and say to not let your cover down. You must have authority like Elizabeth Wardle mentions in “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces." In other word you must be secure of what you communicate because communication matters and can lead you to “command not just the attention but confidence, respect and trust of your audience.” Once you have gain their attention and trust with your authority you can little by little let go of your fake self and show who you really are but in the mean time you must stay in the down low.

I’m not looking forward to this when I graduate from SDSU and get my first real job. I like showing who I am but I know I can come off too strong with my brutal honesty and my dry humor. Maybe that’s why I only have like 3 friends.

I will not only have to change the way I carry myself but also the way I speak. My language will have to be more professional and educated. I have to be smart about my choice of words and the way I express them but yet have the authority to gain the trust and respect of those who will be my new coworkers. I’m going to have to try and fit until I make it.

Although I’m going to hate doing this, it is a process we all have to go through in life.

We have to keep in mind that this is all just temporally. It’s a part we play in life and it happens so often that we should be used to it and embrace it I believe. It becomes our daily life practice.

We do this when we communicate for the first time with strangers. For example, when we go out shopping we act defiantly with the associates as we would if we were talking to our friends. Same thing when we go to a restaurant, meet new friends or join a group like a community practice.

It’s just like we have been talking in class since day one. We must adapt ourselves to many different situations. You must act the way it is expected to act, speak the way it is expected to speak and behave the way it is expected. At the end of the day it will all be worth it because in doing so you will most likely achieve what you are perusing. You know what they say, fake it until you make it.