Blog - ISM Digital Portfolio

This week in ISM was a slow week. I was able to get some work done for my final product which achieved my goal from last week. I was able to essentially finish up my research for the project and I started a bit on the business plan itself. I think it is coming along very well and I plan on continuing working on it during the week. I plan on meeting with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham this week. I want him to take a look at my progress and evaluate how my product is coming along. I really want to create the actual app itself, but I am not sure it I will be able to. Based on my research, creating an app is actually a lot harder than I thought. I was talking to my computer science friend about it too and he told me about all the different things that go into making an app. I realized that all this stuff was going over my head so I will just stick with the business side of things. Maybe in the future if I meet a computer science person who is willing to expand on my idea I will most definitely follow up with it. For now, I will continue to work on my business plan and follow up with Mr. Gene Cunningham.

This past week in ISM was a solid week. I finally updated my invitation for the final presentation night. This marks the final time I will be creating an invitation for ISM. I am very grateful for what this has taught me. I have the skills and knowledge to utilize Canva or other platforms to create invitations or any other digital thing that I may have to in the future. Switching topics, I was able to complete my product progress assessment which truly opened my eyes to my true progress on my final product. I have been slacking lately and I need to pick up the pace on my work. I have almost completed my research and will soon start the product itself. I already have experience in making a business plan so I am not too worried about complications in the creation of the product. I am looking forward to see how this product turns out. It has a lot of potential and I hope it will turn out amazing. I plan on working on the final touches of my research and beginning the business plan this upcoming week. Aside from this, there is not much I really have to do so I can put my whole attention towards it.

This past week in ISM was a very solid week in ISM. I was finally able to meet with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham. We had a very nice discussion over my final product. I wanted to get his thoughts on me changing my idea for the final product. I was having severe second thoughts on my current final product, the formation of my actual business Nair Technologies. I had already created a business plan for this business that was my final product last year in ISM 1. Mr. Cunningham and I discussed this idea and concluded that the idea was not viable at all. As a high school student, I had neither the time nor resources to successfully start my business and manage it . I think I will definetly pursuse this idea in the future maybe either in college or past college. So, as I previously discussed, I changed my idea to creating a business plan for my app. I still need to create a name for it and all the other aspects. But I have experience in making business plans, so if things go smoothly, then I may look into creating the actual app. This will require lots of research however, but I believe if I am committed, I can do it.

This week in ISM was an overall mediocore week. I was unable to meet with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham due to scheduling conflicts but we do plan on meeting this upcoming week to discuss my final product changes. Due to the fact that we were not able to meet, I had some time to think for myself about my final product. I think that changing the idea is really the best idea and am hoping that it will turn out for the best. As previously mentioned, it is essentially an app that will act as an information hub for everyone in Frisco because Frisco is a booming place and there really is no singular place to gain information. I think making a business plan for this idea is the best course of action because one, I already possess knowledge on making a business plan through my business plan for Nair Technologies, and two, because it will provide the appropriate framework for this original idea of mine. I truly believe that I can make it work and it is way more viable than starting my own business for real. I actually have the resources to start this new app. Going forward into this upcoming week, I am going to be conducting research revolving around the idea to become as knowledgable as I can.

This week in ISM was a week of thinking and recollection. I was able to conduct a little more research on the topic of my final product. However, this week I encountered a slight problem. It was a sort of rude awakening for myself. I do not think that my current idea will be working out. Starting a business is ideal and all, but it is not very practical at all. I do not think that I, as a high school student, possess the resources neccesary to start a business. It is not within my capability to follow through with this. I think that yes, it may be a learning process, but I do not think it will be enough. I can only truly get through a couple of steps which will not be far enough into the learning process. I already have another idea for this app that I think I can make an effective business plan for. It is essentially an app that will act as an information hub for everyone in Frisco because Frisco is a booming place and there really is no singular place to gain information. I plan on meeting with my mentor Mr. Cunningham this upcoming this week to discuss the best course of action.

This week in ISM was not the most prodcutive one. I was not able to conduct as much research for my final product as I wanted to. This week I learned a lot about the complications of starting your own business. I learned that entrepreneurs have to be willing abandon their current job or even career in order their new business. This really stuck with me because I do not know if I am ready to do that yet. I may not be willing to just give everything up for my business venture. There are so many risks, but if you put it into perspective, you won’t know what will happen if you do not take the risk. It may be worth to just try it and see what happens. I think for me, if I really do see a future in my company, then I will take all the risks I need to. I will have to deal with an unstable income while my business grows slow and steady. This is one of many things I took away from my research about the topic. In the upcoming week, I hope to conduct more research for the final product in order to develop it the best I can.

This week in ISM was a solid week. I got a lot of great ideas for my final product when I met with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham. I accomplished my goal of meeting him this week that I had set from last week. It was a very productive meeting that I learned a lot from. The one main issue we identified with my idea of my busines was my lack of resources. As a high school student, it will be very hard for me to accumulate all the possible things that I need in order to start the project. I will need a lot money and time dedicated to this business. As far as money goes, I will most definetly need lots of it, and this will prove to be very challenging because there will be little to no people who will regard my business as a worthwhile investment. Also, as a high school student especially since I am going through the college process as well, I will not be able to commit very much time to committ to this business. After discussing all these things with Mr. Cunnigham, I really have a lot to think about. I may need to change up my product proposal a bit, which is my goal for the upcoming week.

This week in ISM was a productive week for sure. I came up with a good idea for my final product. It is quite complicated, but I hope to achieve as much as possible. The overall purpose of this business of mine is to accumulate all my research and findings from the past two years of ISM and put it all into one large effort that is my Nair Technologies business. I really want this to be put into motion so I can put all my extensive research to good use. I know this will be a long and drawn-out process, but it will definetly be worth the effort. I want to get as far as I can in the process of making my own business as I can. Even if I don’t get to the end goal of making the actual business itself, the whole process will be a great learning experience for me that I can carry on into college and beyond. I plan on meeting with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunnningham this week if possible and discuss this idea with him. I hope he will be able to help me with this idea and if it is too unreasonable, then we should be able to come up with another good idea.

This week in ISM was a week of preparation. I finished up preparing for the Research Showcase. I finalized my display board for the showcase. In my opinion, I believe this is the best board that I have made compared to my previous ones in the ISM class. As for the Research Showcase itself, I am fully prepared on discussing my topic to those who attend the showcase. I am honestly very excited to explain everything I have learned from this year in ISM 2. I will display a high level of understanding of the business management field. I really hope attendees will take a look at my original work project and read it entirely. I have my copy of the project available as a physical copy for those to view, but I know people like reading on their phones so I have a qr code that will link them to my project. I know that my original work project displays a high level in depth analysis over the question of “Why?” so I hope that those who read it learn a lot from it. Overall, this upcoming week will be the Research Showcase and I am very much looking forward to it. I hope this experience will be more rewarding and valuable than the previous Research Showcase.

These past few weeks of ISM have not been the most stressing weeks. With my original work finally completed, my focus shifted more towards my final product. But the more pressing matter is the research showcase. I need to be completely ready for it and it starts with my display board. Thankfully, I was able to refer back to my plan for the display board which was very helpful. There were a couple of things that I changed format wise that made the board look better. I included the things that I thought made the most impact in my ISM 2 journey up until now. They included my quote and mission statement, all the contents of my original work, information on my mentor, my topic proposal, and a link to my digital portfolio. All of these things in my opinion contributed the most to my learnings this year in ISM thus far and I look forward to presenting them. I feel as if I am fully prepared for the research showcase and am looking forward to it greatly. Going forward, I will need to start thinking about the final product and brainstorm some ideas for it. I will get together with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham and discuss this topic. I am hoping my final product can turn out the best it can be.

This week in ISM was a momentous week. I finally finished my original work and could not be prouder of myself. I completed my long research paper that answered the question of “Why?”. I was able to successfully answer this question in relation to the successes and failures of companies. I put in a lot of time and effort in this project and really believe it turned out the way that I wanted to. I accomplished my goal of answering the question of “Why” and reflected all the research I completed with my high-level analysis skills. It truly reflected my higher understanding of the business management field. I learned so much through the research conducted in my original work. It emphasized upon my goal to focus more on entrepreneruship this year in ISM. I hope in the future now to incorporate my findings into the company of my own, Nair Technologies. Now I have to focus on the future in my journey in ISM. I need to finish up the final semester of my ISM journey strong. I will come up with a great idea for my final product and ensure that it will be the highest quality that it can be.

This week in ISM has been a very solid week. I achieved my goal from last week in meeting my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham. We had a very productive meeting where we discussed original work. He was very proud of how much research I had done for the original work. We talked about the upcoming steps for the project as a whole. I will be essentially putting all my research into an essay form. The body of my essay will be a summary of all my research. I have to introduce the topic of my original work in my introduction paragraph. My high level analysis will be in my conclusion paragraph which will wrap up the essay. We also discussed a different application of the question of “Why?”. It was more of the customer relations side. One example he used was the fact that PGA was moving its headquarters to Frisco. I was amazed at this fact. Frisco is growing exponentially, so moving here is very smart. This upcoming week I will finish my original work project. I will ensure that it is done to the best of my ability. This is what I truly hope to accomplish this upcoming week.

These past two weeks in ISM have been very productive. I wanted to meet with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham this past week, however we were unable to meet due to some scheduling conflicts. We are planned to meet this upcoming week so I hope it will be beneficial. This week will actually work better for me because I essentially finished my research for my original work this past week. The final company I researched in relation to the question of “Why?”, was Kodak. I learned a lot from this part of my research and it really brought in a new light for my findings. Making the smart decision is very important and a company has to be willing to adapt to the market trends and consumer needs. Kodak was unable to do this, which in turn led to their failure. They truly did not answer the question of “Why?”. I plan on now convening with Mr. Cunningham before I start on the analysis part of my project. Based on what we discuss, I plan on effectively coming up with a high level analysis which will hopefully conclude my original work project. I will have to be very productive in order to accomplish this however.

This week in ISM was a productive one. I had achieved my goal from last week in researching another company that answered the question of “Why?”. I successfully was able to analyze the massive amounts of success of Wal-Mart. It is one of the, if not the most, largest retailer in the country. One thing that greatly confused me was how Wal-Mart was able to achieve such a high level of success in the current digital era of the economy. Online retailers are the brunt of the economy and dominate. So how does Wal-Mart compete with all the online retailers? I learned that it was through their strategies to appeal directly to the customers. They offer the absolute low prices to them, which draws in tons of people. This and their highly effective money management skills are what drive them to be at the top of retail as a whole. I also was able to schedule another mentor visit with Mr. Gene Cunningham. I really want to discuss my research with him. I feel like it will be beneficial to me so he can see if I am going in the right direction. I want to get his opinion on it too. I think the meeting will be a big step for my original work project, because this is what it all ties into.

This week in ISM was a productive one. I achieved my goal from last week to be more productive. I furthered my research for my original work. I researched yet another company that related to question of “Why?”. This week, I was able to look into a company that had failed. I added this to this list of Toys R Us and Blockbuster; Radio Shack. I was able to successfully look into just how they failed. Their competitors were becoming way more dominant than them and customers began to favor them instead. Some of the major customers include Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. These customers were one of the major reasons for the decline of Radio Shack. They were just overall offerring better things to the customers. I learned a lot from this. I learned that I need to keep up with my competitors and not slack behind, because if I do, the gap will only grow larger and larger. I compared Radio Shack to my own mock company, Nair Technologies. In fact, out of all the companies I have researched, this one company is the most similar to it. This is why I was able to learn so much from it. Going into the next week, I plan on researching a company that actually answered the question of “Why?” to become successful.

This week in ISM was a slow week. I extended on my progress for my original work project. I wanted to formulate some format for the project itself. I had been conducting research for the past couple of weeks and it has been going well. I have learned a lot about “Why?” companies are successful because of how well they are able to answer that question. I think the best way to approach the format of the project is a long essay type. If not a long essay, then I was thinking of doing a series of analysis’ of my research that showcases a higher understanding of my topic. I may want to come up an individual document for each company that I researched and provide an individual analysis for each one. Then, at the end, I will write an around two to three page document that discusses my results and any conclusions that I may have come up with. I plan on implementing these ideas in the upcoming week that I will be working. I am most likely going to be researching more companies that pertain to my question in order to further my findings. I hope to accomplish more than I did this past week.

This week in ISM was a productive one. I was able to accomplish a lot of work for my original work. I was following up on the question of “Why?” for the companies success. I was able to again conduct research on one company that suceeded highly, Amazon, and another company that failed miserably, Blockbuster. I learned quite a lot from my research. I inititally learned that Amazon is not only successful due to their massive retail range, but it is also because of their ability to hire and attract the most capable people from all over the globe. I learned about a method they use called the six-page method. This is one of Amazon’s bread and butter. It essentially is a memo with six pages that assess the worth and value of potential products. Mastering this is extremely hard which is why Amazon is successful. On the other side of the spectrum, I learned about the downfall of Blockbuster. They were the kings of their industry, but they experience a major downfall and went bankrupt. I learned that the actual reason for their failure was not entirely on the emergence of new competitors such as Netflix and Redbox, but rather majority internal problems. All of this combined to one large decline. All in all, I learned a lot this week and cannot wait to learn more about the topic for my original work research in the coming weeks.

This week in ISM was a very long week. I achieved my goal of conducting some research for my original work project. I actually did learn a lot through my research. I was effectively able to look into both sides of my question. On one side of things, I conducted research over Apple. Through my research, I concluded that Apple has surely answered the question of “Why?”. The reason behind their immense success is their customer base. They give their customers a reason why to buy their products. On the other end of the spectrum, I had to think of a company that had recently gone through a major failure. The first thing that popped into my head was Toys R Us. They had recently gone bankrupt and out of business. The reason that I found behind their failure was lack of internal management and an overall decrease of the toy industry. They were unable to answer the question of “Why?”. Toys are not popular anymore, it is all digital now. It was overall some great research. I am looking forward to this upcoming week to conduct more research and delve deeper into the topic. I want to look more into these companies because if I potentially start my own business, I can apply everything I learned.

This week in ISM was a very slow week. I was able to achieve some of my goal from last week which was work on my original work project. I was able to gain some progress on it this week. I started to conduct some basic research to answer the question of “Why?”. This is honestly a harder question to answer than I thought. I am struggling to find out the specific details for companies that answer the question. I may have encountered a slight roadblock in my original work project. I need to start going in depth in my research and I may even need to go to databases to find some more ideas. I am planning on beginning with the more successful companies first because I feel as if it would be easier to find data on them first. I could then identify trends and such that I could apply to the less successful companies to see why they are failing. Customer reviews and services would help answer the question too becasue this deals directly with why the people purchase products of a company. Overall, I am going to continue researching more and more this upcoming week for the original work project.

This week in ISM was a very solid week. I was finally able to meet up with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham. We had a great discussion. First we caught up with one another because it had been a while since we last met. We spent a majority of our time discussing the original work. After a long discussion, we came up with a great idea. A company can either be successful or fail. The question I want to ask is why. Why are companies successful, or vice versa why do companies fail? This may seem like a simple question at face value, but it is more complicated than one may think. It is not simply why are they successful, but rather why do we, as customers want to buy their product? What makes us go there? I am planning on analyzing around 8-10 companies and writing reports for each one as my original work attempting to answer this question. I will utilize all my research up to this point to apply myself in the project. The Business Symposium also took place. It was my second one and overall was great. My favorite part was interviewing ISM 1 kids and answering all the questions they had. In the upcoming week, I am going to start working on my original work project and hope to gain some progress.

This past week in ISM has been a productive one. I continued my research in business management. I learned more about S corporations and C corporations than I have before. I only really knew the basics of the two types of corporations. I learned many things including the liability side of things, the taxation, the structure, and more. It was great to learn because it can provide me with ideas for my original work or final product possibly. I have an upcoming mentor visit with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham. Earlier this year in place of interview questions, I created my own questions that I have for Mr. Cunningham. I hope to discuss my upcoming original work project. Also I want to talk to him about being able to sit in on meetings of his to observe. I was unable to sit in on anything last year because I never found the time to ask. But I feel like this time we have more time so this will be possible. This will all be asked this upcoming week. Also I will need to start preparing for the Business Symposium. I am very much looking forward to it because I feel like I will be a lot more prepared than I was last year.

This past week in ISM has been a week of activities. I finally reached out to my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham to schedule my first mentor visit. I am honestly very excited to work with him this year. I have actually been somewhat in touch with him over the summer talking about sports, business related things, and just life in general. I am honestly very lucky to have found a mentor like him. I feel as if we have built a strong relationship not only on an ISM level but as a mentor for life. He has guided me through a lot and is pleasant to talk to anytime. Switching up topics, I have been conducting more research about business management. This year in ISM, I can really explore the more detailed parts about business management. I believe I have the basic parts down and am ready to dive into the depths of business management. This next week in ISM I hope to conduct even more solid research to gain the maximum amount of information. Also, I plan on getting my research portfolio all set up for the upcoming. It’s really great being in ISM 2 because I know how to do everything and what’s expected from me for every assignment. It saves tons of time and is better overall.

These past few weeks have marked the beginning of my ISM 2 journey. I believe that the start of the year this time around was way better than last year. This time around, I actually knew what I was doing and completed all my tasks. It was honestly a great feeling having prior knowledge when I was doing everything. It was funny to see my classmates frantically worrying about everything and asking tons of questions because I knew exactly where they were coming from. That was the me of the past, which is why I have made a goal for this year in ISM to help my classmates around me with whatever they need regarding general questions or advice on an assignment. The ISM 2 students last year helped me out so I want to strive to be like them. Also, I recently planned my questions for my first mentor visit so one item on my agenda now is contacting my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham and planning the first visit. I am greatly looking forward to working with Mr. Cunningham this year and hope to do more hands-on activities this year. I think we have formed a solid relationship the past year in ISM 1 and I hope to maintain it this year.

This week in ISM was a solid week of progress. The majority of my work this week was dedicated towards my final product. I finalized my outline for the business plan and I think it was pretty high quality. I am hoping that this final product will be a higher quality than my original work project. I am hoping that this will display a higher understanding of the business management field and truly show everything. All I need to do now is elaborate on my outline and go into detail for all the parts of it. This includes the executive summary and all the other parts. I plan to work with my mentor on this elaboration and am hoping he will be able to help me a lot. I am planning on meeting with him this week to help establish a strong plan and go into great detail. I really want this plan to be the best it can be because I need to make up for my poor performance from the last original work project. All in all, I need to meet with my mentor this week and work on my plan to completely finalize it.

This past week in ISM was a week of working. I had recently scrapped my initial plan for my final product because I really did not like how it was and thought I could make it better. I had brainstormed new ideas and came up with a new outline. I used all my research to come up with the basic outline. It is obviously not very good, and I need to get my mentors two cents on it. He would provide effective constructive criticism that would only benefit me. Also during the week I finalized my final presentation night invitations. This is the second time I ever have made invitations ever, the first being the research showcase invitations. I have learned all the formatting and such this time around and the invitation looks pretty good if I say so myself. I am hoping that most of the people I invite will be able to come to the final presentation night and see all I have done throughout the year. Even if they do not come, it’s the process that counts. My goals now going into this next week are to meet up with my mentor to discuss the product and overall continue working on the product.

These past two weeks in ISM were weeks of progress. I continued my research for my final product. I found a great article that furthered my findings on the topic of a business plan. It is important to keep in mind what is going on in the economy when writing a business plan. During the current state of the economy is the worst possible time to neglect making a business plan. This article, written by a well-known business planner Tim Berry, describes four common lies and myths about business plans. All in all, this article helped me a lot. It opened up my eyes to things I had always believed and provided me with some great information. I also finally started working on the actual plan. I began producing the executive summary. Although most sources recommended to do this step last I just want to finish it first to set the tone for the rest of my plan. I utilized all my current and past resources and research to form the executive summary. I truly believe that my executive summary reflects my deeper understanding of the business management field as a whole. My future goal is to continue working on the final product and hopefully finalize.

This week in ISM was a week of research. I continued my research for my final product. I visited the site of the Small Business Administration (SBA) with hopes of finding something related to a business plan for rising small businesses. I found the perfect source and it helped me greatly. I learned that there are actually two types of business plans. One is just the traditional business plan and the other is the lean startup business plan. The traditional plan is the more common one of the two. These go into more detail to get all of the information across at once. I think that this is the format that I am aiming for. I want to get all of my data and information across at once so it can be as in depth as possible. Lean startup business plans are quite the opposite. They are not as common as the traditional ones, but still use the same standard structure. This type of plan is extremely short but gets the overall message across. It only focuses on summarizing the most important points of the key elements. This would be an ideal plan for me, but I do not think this would reflect my deep understanding of the business management field.

This week in ISM was a slow one indeed. The only major thing that happened was my application for ISM II next year. I was able to think about the future of my ISM journey through the application. It helped me re-evaluate my goals and objectives for next year. It helped me think decide whether or not I wanted to continue down the same path or not and why. I decided to continue down the path of business management and hopefully remain under the mentorship of Mr. Gene Cunningham. I really like him not only as a mentor but as a person as a whole. I hope to continue my mentorship under him which could potentially lead to some internship of some kind. That would be an ideal goal of mine and if it could happen, that would be amazing. Even if it is not an internship directly with him, hopefully he could point me in the right direction towards one. I also want to stay in the business management field because I can really see a future for myself in it. Overall, I am excited to close this year out and look forward to the next year if I get accepted.

This week in ISM was a week of work and progress. I was able to work with my mentor Mr. Gene Cunningham on the final product. The primary goal going into this mentor visit was to work on the final product. When I arrived at the office, he got me and we went up to where he worked. On my first mentor visit, there was no other employees where we were, but this time there were quite a few. I was able to see them in the workplace and observe what they were doing. I saw many things. I saw a business meeting going on and also a salesperson on a sales call. I was not able to observe them too much in detail but it was still interesting regardless to see them working. I was able to get a solid idea on what I was going to do for the product. I want to come up with a small local business and create a business plan for it. I am most likely going to actually follow through with this, my only intentions are to just make a plan. I want this plan to potentially help other upcoming small businesses.

This week in ISM was a week of activity. The major highlight of the week was my speech over my original work and research up to this point. All the reflections I made on my fellow ISM students speeches helped me come up with my presentation. I changed my presentation greatly from the last speech I gave. I condensed the slides into the information that was necessary, not any unnecessary information. Previously, I had way too much extra information on my slides which just prolonged the speech with boring information. Rather than having individual slides for each research assessment, I categorized them all into main parts of business management. This was way more efficient and it summed up my research in a more effective manner. I also condensed all of my informational interview slides to keep it consistent throughout the presentation. I also knew I had to reflect on my original work in the presentation so I summed it up as brief as I could. It was not so brief that it did not get the overall purpose across. All in all, I delivered the speech well and in an effective manner. I am looking forward to the next one.

This week in ISM was another week of planning and reflecting. The whole week, I have been listening to my fellow classmates reflection/original work speech. It was interesting to see their ISM journey up until now. It was also cool to see all the different types of original works they did. It was quite diverse and some of them actually gave me a couple ideas on how I could have improved my own original work and also towards my final product. The main original works that helped me get ideas were those that related to business management, such as entrepreneurship. This leads to my final product proposal. I honestly did not know what to do for my final product, but I just knew I wanted to make it higher quality than my original work so I decided to meet up with my mentor to help me. We met up and he helped me come up with a good idea. I am pretty sure I am going to come up with a business plan for a small business. My end goal is to come into a small business as a leader and implement this business plan to make the small business more successful.

This week in ISM was not the most productive but it was a week of planning. The next big thing coming up is my reflection and original work speech. This will be my reflection over my original work project and over the research showcase. I will have to provide some negative reflection over my original work project because it was not the best project. There is a lot I could have improved on and I will present all of this in the presentation. Next, the reflection for the research showcase will be mostly positive. It was a great event that only provided benefits. It helped me show all the work I have done in ISM to all the people there. It helped me interact with more people and increase my networking skills. Another thing I need to start planning is my mentor visits and my final product. These both go hand in hand because I will be working on my final product with my mentor during these mentor visits. I hope to be very productive during these mentor visits and get a lot of work done for my final product. I don't want it to turn out like my original work project.

This week in ISM was a week of preparation. I had my first mentor visit with Mr. Gene Cunningham. I went to his office and it was quite the experience. It overall felt like a job interview. I had to go through the security gate, stating my name and who I was here to see. I approached the receptionist and told her who I was here to see and she replied “Please be seated he will be with you momentarily”. It really did feel like a job interview. Mr. Cunningham gave me a brief tour of the office and showed me his own workspace. We discussed many things during the visit. One thing we discussed was my original works project. He was unable to assist me on the project since it was due the week before. But he did give me tips about how I could potentially improve it and what all I could add. The big thing we discussed was the upcoming research showcase. He helped me with my display board and gave me great advice on how to make it better. We strayed off of topic a little a talked about business management as a whole. He talked about everything that was great about it and also recommended me some books that would help me better understand business management. It was overall a great mentor visit and I cannot wait for the next one.

A lot has happened in the past three weeks in and out of ISM. The last two weeks was winter break and I accomplished a lot. First off, I finalized my mentorship with Mr. Gene Cunningham of DXC Technology. This was very exciting news. I look forward to working with him in the future. I actually have an upcoming mentor visit with him on Wednesday the 10th and I am looking forward to it greatly. I hope for it to go well. Another big feat I accomplished in this time period was my original work project. This was the biggest project of the year in ISM. I created a handbook/guide that contains information pertaining to the business management world. I used all my research including information from my research and interview assessments. This project reflected my deep understanding of the business management field and showed how I could translate that deep understanding into a big project like this. The main purpose of my original work is to help those who are clueless in regards to business management. It is supposed to help them and provide them with valuable information that they can incorporate into their careers or even their own lives. All of this and more was included in my original work set-up and completion summary and original work assessment.

This week in ISM was a week of progress and reflection. We gave our research speeches a couple of weeks ago. I now needed to reflect upon the mistakes I made in the speech. The biggest mistakes I made was my constant fidgeting throughout the whole speech and the fact that I went over the assigned time limit of eight to ten minutes because I had too many bullet points on my slides. This reflection helped me prepare for the final research speech at the research showcase. It gave me a good idea on where I need to improve on.The state of my mentorship is progressing well. The professional I asked to be my mentor, Mr. Gene Cunningham, was supportive of the mentorship, but wanted to discuss the logistics of the actual mentorship. I am planning on reviewing the mentor handbook and getting back to Mr. Cunningham with all the important details. Hopefully this will be the deciding factor in his decision to become my mentor. I would love to work with Mr. Cunningham, I believe we would have a stellar mentorship. Overall, it has been a good week and I expect to have a mentor by sometime in this upcoming week.

The past two weeks in ISM have been weeks of achievement. I achieved my past goal of finding a mentor. I asked Mr. Gene Cunningham of DXC Technology to be my mentor. He was supportive of being my mentor but just wanted to discuss the details and logistics of meeting. He comes back in town this upcoming week and I’ll have to discuss everything then, hopefully securing the mentorship. Mr. Cunningham was my first choice to ask to be my mentor because out of all my informational interviews, he was the one person I had the best relationship with. We connected a lot through the interview and his career was also of great interest to me. I hope to gain full mentorship with him and hope to gain new experiences from mentor visits with him. I also hope to gain some insight from him on my original work project. Maybe we could come up with something entirely new. The possibilities are endless. I think there is great potential in our mentorship and I hope it goes smoothly. One thing I need to work on now is my original work project. Putting it off will not be beneficial to me and is not a smart thing to do. I need to get on it as soon as possible.

This past week in ISM was a week for finalizing. I achieved my past goal of delivering my research speech effectively. It was overall pretty good but I think one thing I could have improved on was shortening the speech. I spoke for around thirteen minutes when the targeted time was eight to ten minutes. I could have shortened it by going into less detail of my research. I seemed to repeat a lot of information and I could have taken out some of it to shorten the speech. Next, I completed my fourth and fifth informational interviews with Mr. Bharadwaj Heragu and Mr. Kishore Khandavalli. They went very well and I gained lots of valuable information from them. These last two interviews concluded the process of getting informational interviews. Now the task ahead of me is to find a mentor. The people I currently have in mind is either Mr. Kishore Khandavalli or Mr. Gene Cunningham. In my opinion, I had the best interviews with them. Another thing I achieved was successfully created my invitations for the upcoming research showcase. This was the first time I have ever created a formal invitation for an event. It was challenging for me because I am not the most creative person. In conclusion, my upcoming task is to find my mentor.

This past week in ISM was a very productive week. A big highlight was that I finally got my last two informational interviews scheduled which is a goal that I set for myself last week. I am glad I achieved this goal and now I am looking forward to these next two interviews and hoping to get the best out of them. Another big achievement this past week was that I completely finished my research speech. I spent a lot of time on this and it really helped me reflect on my Independent Study Mentorship class journey up to now. I have to now just deliver this speech to the best of my ability and give it my best effort. I included my main research from my research assessments in the powerpoint and all my interviews along with the key points from each one from my interview assessments. I also included my original work in the speech which I need to start working on. It will require maximum effort and a big chunk of my time which I am definitely willing to give. After I conclude these last two informational interviews, narrowing down my choices for finding a mentor will be the next step in my journey. There are a few that I have in mind and I hope that they are willing to assist me as my mentor. My upcoming tasks now involve delivering my research speech effectively and start thinking about a mentor after my last two interviews.

This past week in ISM was a week of working. I have continued to search for more interviews with professionals. I still need to complete two more and I have currently had three. Something I need to work on is expanding my contact list possibly. Having more contacts would assist me with finding more possible interviews and overall expand my connections. I also need to start thinking about possible mentors based on my interviews. I have one professional in mind, Mr. Gene Cunningham. The interview I had with him went very well and I believe that we formed a good connection with one another. Another big thing that occurred this past week was my original work proposal. I completed it and had a great idea for an original work. My idea was to create a simulation that would portray an individual’s life in the real world regarding their role in the business world. The simulation would start at the individual getting an entry-level job at a company. The simulation would run and show how they work their way up to a high level executive job. All the struggles and successes that they go through would be shown through this simulation as well. My upcoming tasks now involve finding more interviews and work on my original work.

This past week in ISM was a week of updating and catching up. I was struggling this past week not only in ISM but in other classes as well. I was getting behind and I was in utter dismay. I knew I had to overcome this lack of production and get my life back on track. I was getting behind on updating my digital portfolio and research portfolio for ISM. I sat down and completely updated both of them. I had also procrastinated on my research and interview assessments which I needed to finish as soon as possible. I also tried my best to get caught up with all my other classes. This production left me with a great feeling of accomplishment and it felt great. I wanted to keep this feeling. I knew what all was necessary for me to do in order to keep it up. I had to be a diligent worker and be on top of everything. This was the overall lesson I learned this week. My next task is to get my last two interviews scheduled by the deadline so I can get my future interview assessments done. I will need to reach out to more professionals.

This week in ISM was a week of planning and organizing. I was planning for our UNT trip on Wednesday. I was extremely excited because this would be the first time for me that I have experienced a college class. The exposure would give me a good idea of what college is all about. The whole process was an experience. First, we had to go onto the UNT website and see all the available classes for us and pick the one that matched our schedule the best. Also, it had to be either one closely related to our field of study or one of personal interest. I picked a personal finance class with a couple other people because it was the only class that related to our topic enough and fit our schedule requirements. We had to email the professor of the class requesting if it was okay for us to come and observe. Now we just had to play the waiting game. This was my first time interacting with a college professor and it was a great experience. Overall, this whole experience is helping me plan for college and get ready for the difficulties that come along with it.

This week in ISM I experienced my first Business Symposium. It was quite the event. I experienced many new things. We started off in the library where we were supposed to approach the numerous amounts of professionals in the room. I faced the challenge of approaching them individually. I was afraid of confrontation. But I eventually overcame this fear after experiencing a realization. “What do I have to lose” and “What bad things could possibly come from this” were some of the realizations I went through. Next, there was a college admissions officer that talked to us about the college process and what all we needed to do in order to go to best college for us. I gained new information from this presentation in regards to the college application process and how exactly scholarships worked. The one part that really gave me the most challenge was the networking part. This is where we had to interact with other ISM students from other schools and basically add them to our network. I faced the challenge of approaching people I usually would not. I had to fight the urge to take the easy way out and interact with the people I already knew. Overall, the Business Symposium experience was amazing for me and helped me in many ways.

I have learned a lot this past week in ISM. I conducted two informational interviews. I learned a lot from both of them but there were a couple of things that stuck out to me. My first interview with Mr. Bedapudi taught me a good way to be efficient and not procrastinate. He advised me to find a person with similar work and get together to work with them. This will help because this person will hold you accountable to do the work and help you if needed and you can hold them accountable and help them. This makes me think that I need to find someone who is willing to work with me. My other interview with Mr. Damodharan was very interesting. I learned many things about the real world such as the challenges that come along with it. He actually asked me some very interesting questions too. What is your passion? Is business management your passion? Why do you want to go into business management? These questions made me rethink my choice because I did not know the answer to any of these questions. But this week was overall a success because of my two informational interviews. I need to prepare for my upcoming interview. Also, I now need to assure that business management is really my passion and find the reason I even want to go into it. Also, I need to find a study partner to help with my procrastination.

This week has been of contact. I was effectively able to set up 3 informational interviews. It has been a long progress of setting these up. I faced many challenges in the process of getting interviews. I connected with over twenty-five professionals on LinkedIn introducing myself and the course of ISM. Only about seven people messaged me back showing interest in the course and helping me. I followed up with these professionals requesting an informational interview but none of them responded immediately. The time I had to wait for their response was very agitating but patience was necessary. Only three of the professionals actually messaged me back and we set up interviews. These professionals were Prakash Bedapudi, Gene Cunningham, and Dilip Damodharan Pillai. I look forward to the interviews and hope to have one of these professionals as my mentors. I also set up my correspondence log that contained all my progress in contacting professionals. I hope to add more professionals to this log and fill it out. A goal of mine now after these interviews will be to set up more informational interviews and find more potential mentors. Hopefully I will find a mentor that will help in the best way possible.

This past week in ISM was a very good one. My big achievement this past week was writing my first ever interview assessment. It was significant because it helped me reflect on what all I learned from that specific interview in regards to business management. It gave me the chance to put my experience into perspective so that I could see truly what all parts of my field of study I learned from it. I look forward to writing more interview assessments in the future so I can learn from them too. This week I was successful in scheduling another interview with Mr. Gene Cunningham of DXC Technology. The interview with him went very well and I learned a lot about sales and how to be a successful salesman. I was given tips on negotiating and leadership skills that will help me in my field of business management. I have many goals I need to achieve in this upcoming week. I need to organize my digital portfolio because it is getting very unorganized and messy. I want to schedule my next set of interviews so I can gain the maximum amount of knowledge by the time I find a mentor. Lastly, my final goal for this week is to research more about the field of business management and start looking at colleges related to it so I can start planning ahead.

This past week has been a week of progress. I was able to accomplish my contact list and interview questions. I will say the contact list was very challenging. It took me a while to compile twenty-five different contacts and gather their information. It was challenging because I initially did not know where to look for my contacts but I ended up on LinkedIn. Even after I found contacts on LinkedIn, I encountered another problem. The contact information was not all there on LinkedIn, which caused me to overcome the challenge and research that person and find all of their contact information the best I could. I was able to find many professionals related to business management in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. One question that stemmed from this experience would be, “How can I be more efficient when finding information for my contacts on my contact list?”. I compiled a list of interview questions that I felt are going to be good for an interview. I did reference Forbes magazine for a couple of questions, but the rest were original questions. I hope to use these in my upcoming interviews. That would be my future goal. I want to start getting interviews set and going in for them.

The first two weeks of ISM was a learning process for me. Coming in to the course, I did not really know what to expect. I had so many questions. Thankfully, all my questions were answered when I learned about all the aspects of the course and what to expect from it. I am very much looking forward to this class and all that comes along with it. I hope to gain real world experience in the business management field. I had my very first successful moment as an ISM student over the weekend. A man encountered me and said he has a coach for my football team back in elementary school. So I engaged in a conversation with him and we started talking about ISM. He said he participated in it as a mentor a couple years ago and he gave me his business card. His name is Eric Williams and he is the regional business director for Takeda Pharmaceuticals America, Inc. This was a big step for me as an ISM 1 student because I had potentially found a mentor. This was the big achievement of mine in these first two weeks of ISM. My goal now is to prepare for the interviewing process. I also plan on doing research about his company.

ISM 2 Blog Posts

Blog Post #26: 3/25-3/31

Blog Post #25: 3/18-3/24

Blog Post #24: 3/4-3/17

Blog Post #23: 2/25-3/3

Blog Post #22: 2/18-2/24

Blog Post #21: 2/11-2/17

Blog Post #21: 2/11-2/17

Blog Post #20: 2/4-2/10

Blog Post #19: 1/28-2/3

Blog Post #18: 1/21-1/27

Blog Post #17: 1/7-1/13

Blog Post #16: 12/17-1/6

Blog Post #15: 12/17-1/6

Blog Post #14: 12/10-12/16

Blog Post #13: 12/3-12/9

Blog Post #12: 11/19-12/2

Blog Post #11: 11/12-11/18

Blog Post #10: 11/5-11/11

Blog Post #9: 10/29-11/4

Blog Post #8: 10/22-10/28

Blog Post #7: 10/15-10/21

Blog Post #6: 10/8-10/14

Blog Post #5: 10/1-10/7

Blog Post #4: 9/24-9/30

Blog Post #3: 9/17-9/23

Blog Post #2: 9/10-9/16

Blog Post #1: 9/3-9/9

ISM 1 Blog Posts

Blog post #26

March 26 - April 1

Blog post #25

March 20 - March 26

Blog post #24

March 5 - March 19

Blog post #23

February 26 - March 4

Blog post #22

February 19 - February 25

Blog post #21

February 12 - February 18

Blog post #20

February 5 - February 11

Blog post #19

January 29 - February 4

Blog post #18

January 22 - January 28

Blog post #17

January 15 - January 21

Blog post #16

January 8 - January 14

Blog post #15

December 12 - January 7

Blog post #14

December 5 - December 11

Blog post #13

November 21 - December 4

Blog post #12

November 14 - November 20

Blog post #11

November 7 - November 13

Blog post #10

October 30 - November 6

Blog post #9

October 23 - October 29

Blog post #8

October 16 - October 22

Blog post #7

October 9 - October 15

Blog post #6

October 2 - October 8

Blog post #5

September 25 - October 1

Blog post #4

September 18 - September 24

Blog post #3

September 11 - September 17

Blog post #2

September 4 - September 10

Blog post #1