Sailing the Seas

We just got started but already we are at the end. We wish you success in your interdisciplinary journey and want to share a few tips before you set sail on the interdisciplinary sea. 

This class will likely be the only class that you study the methods of interdisciplinary scholastics until you reach capstone. That means you need to do your own cognitive integration of your subject areas. 

Try to enrich your experience by becoming involved in a community at UCF. One way is to attend lectures put on by the Office of Global Perspectives. These can be enlightening on so many levels and may awaken a passion in you that you may otherwise have missed.  

Work on your e-Portfolio throughout your academic career, reflecting on what you have accomplished and what you still need to accomplish while at UCF. It will be a much richer product if you dedicate a little extra time to it between semesters.

You’ll have an Interdisciplinary Research Project in Capstone, which is a course that’s at least as demanding as Cornerstone. Study the methods of interdisciplinary research now, and you might be more prepared at the end. (Believe us, it’s extensive). Here’s a link to our Interdisciplinary Research Project textbook’s online study guide: http://www.sagepub.com/repko/study/intro.htm

We hate good-bye so we’ll just say good luck!

Reflection

Hi Everyone,

We know many students choose the interdisciplinary route because they want a program specially tailored to their needs, however there are some who choose this option because they have more than one specific interest and want to explore these different options. Like us, many of you began with one major and then changed to a different major, sometimes more than once. Let’s face it - not everyone knows what they want to be when they start their university studies and sometimes it takes a couple of tries before you get it right. Your major and career goals may change a couple of times throughout your time in undergrad and beyond.

The e-Portfolios we are doing for our Cornerstone and Capstone courses will be a good way to show your audience some of the changes you underwent in your time at UCF (and other schools). Using reflection you will be able to emphasize the areas you wish to draw focus to, how you went from point A to point B and how it all ties together. 

For example, say you began as an English major because you wanted to be an author but halfway through decided you would like to write children’s book and would like to do your own artwork. So you chose to become an Interdisciplinary Studies major and focused on art and graphic design as well as English. When you complete the degree, you have a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. But you started out wanting to be an author and your goal now is to write and illustrate for children's books. How will you tell your story to a potential employer? Are you able to connect the dots and show that your path was deliberate?

Reflection lets you do just that, it lets you paint a more personalized picture for viewers. You should find this especially helpful when doing your personal statement page where you can reflect on your experience and goals and give a reader a look as to “why” you choose this path rather than a simple description of ‘what” you did - that’s what resumes are for. 

To compare reflection to description we'll use the above example again. When using reflection you can explain "why" you chose the educational path that you followed:

I have always wanted to be an author and children’s literature has been a particular passion of mine ever since my first Dr. Seuss book. As a children’s book author I want to be involved in every aspect of my creation. In order to do this I decided to major in Interdisciplinary Studies and concentrate in English and art so that I can not only write my stories but illustrate them as well and truly bring my visions to life.

If you were using description rather than reflection, you would simply say "what" you got your degree in.

So with that in mind here are some questions to think about this week.

1. How are you planning to use reflection in developing your e-Portfolio content pages?
2. What’s your understanding of reflection? How is it different from description?
3. Discuss your personal philosophy concerning your professional life.
4. How is or isn't this philosophy interdisciplinary?
5. How have your career goals altered?

 

RESUME

Hello Everybody!

This week's post is concerned with resumes. It is going to be based on an interchange of knowledge between what you guys know about resumes and cover letters and the information and knowledge that we can bring you about said topics. In order to do that, you guys are going to answer some questions concerning resumes. By analyzing your answers to these questions we will be able to formulate pertinent suggestions that will allow you to create effective professional resumes and cover letters.

These are the questions that are going to allow our interchange:

1. What ideas do you already have on how to improve a previous resume?
2. What about cover letters? What doubts do you have about writing a cover letter?
3. Show us your best written cover letter.
4. What is it that you guys know about resumes? What insights do you feel that we could give you about them?
5. Are there any resources and/or tools that you have acquired in the past for writing cover letter and/or resumes? If so, share them with us.

We hope this exercise will help us all improve our ability to write resumes and cover letters. Good luck!