The first week of j-term at Lindenwood University has come to a close. I must admit, I was not really looking forward to spending three hours in a classroom everyday. However, when I met everyone in my Creating and Managing Your Online Personal Brand class, I knew it was going to be a fun group of people. But who knew that we could all learn so much and have that much fun in just four days together? In the first week of class, I learned way more than I expected.
This week was a busy one. I created a few blogs, gave a couple of presentations, and got to know my fellow classmates. My favorite part of the week was when everyone gave presentations on Friday. I became exposed to a large group of individuals who are making a difference, mainly in the communications world. My choice was a lady by the name of Kris Carr, who has turned her battle with cancer into an adventure story. I became so intrigued while researching this incredible woman. Usually for presentations, I do not find myself really impacted by the information I find. This time it was different. Kris Carr is an inspiration to anyone, even if you do not have any health issues. By researching her, I learned to turn desperation into inspiration and to truly live life to its fullest. Kris Carr actually has a documentary of the first fours years of her fight with cancer.
I also learned how social media outlets, such as Twitter, can truly make an impact. Throughout this past week, many people in the class including myself sent out “tweets” to successful men and women who are where we might want to be some day. It was so exciting to see these people actually tweet back! At first all that I thought about was how cool that was and how laid back these people must be. However, something much greater can be learned from this. Little did we realize at the time, but we were building connections with these people. Social media can be used as a way to network with others. Yes, people would consider website such as Facebook and Twitter as social networks, but the network part of it did not really click with me until just recently. I am looking forward to making new connections through social media. To learn more about using social media for professional networking, I found this article on Mashable (aka: one of my favorite websites): Use Facebook for Professional Networking.
A few other fun things I discovered this week were HootSuite and Wordle. I am not sure how I feel about HootSuite yet, but I am loving Wordle. I may be addicted, no big deal. Overall, I am highly looking forward to the next two weeks of this j-term class. The people in there are hilarious and intriguing, and I cannot wait to see what else I can learn. What started out as uncertainty has turned into excitement over this class.
it'sheatherchristine 
I absolutely love your wordle on here, so cute!!!! And Kris Carr is seriously so inspiring to me, I’m so glad that you were able to introduce us to her!!!
I feel the exact same way, can’t believe how much we have learned this week!
Loving the wordle! Nice focus on the networking aspects of the week. As always, your writing style really makes your posts enjoyable to read and easy to stay focused on.
My only suggestion, I’m not sure if it’s my computer, but some of the words in the post were cut off by the background format, so you may have to adjust the settings.
Other than that, amazing!
Kris Carr is inspiring indeed and thank you for presented her to us so well. I found the article you shared -HOW TO: Use Facebook for Professional Networking- very interesting and I think people should understand that we can use Facebook for other things than just “having fun.” I agree with Kirstie your writing is amazingly good. Really nice post.
My name is in the wordle! Thank ya! lol
I love that you’re learning so much Heather! J-Term has always seemed to me like an extremely valuable learning opportunity; it always make me wish all our classes were in this format.