Informational Interviews

Hi everyone! We hope you had a fun, safe St. Patrick’s day.

This week we’re going to focus on skills that will help you land your dream job. These skills will help boost your confidence when the time comes for that all-important interview. To get some practice, we’ll start with an interactive simulation called the “perfect interview.” It’s a video model of a prospective employer that will ask you questions and record your responses. This will help you get comfortable answering the types of questions that you will encounter in an “informational interview” and allow you to become aware of issues that you might not realize you have, (like saying “ummm” too many times).

The simulation can be found here: http://www.perfectinterview.com/ucf/

You’ll have to create a username and password and then choose from several options that are presented. For our assignment, you’ll choose the "short" interview where the selections are chosen for you. When you complete that, go back and complete the "short" interview where you make the selections. When you make your own selections, choose at least three areas you'd like to work on the most.

You’ll have the option of either typing in your answers or recording your answers as a video response through your computer’s web camera. It’s much easier to use the video response and it helps you to hear how you would truly respond in an interview. Your camera may not record the video, but as long as sound gets recorded it can be very valuable for crafting your interview technique.

You will hear your response played back to you immediately when you stop recording. Then, instead of advancing to the next question right away, be sure to click on the button that says “View Example Answer.” You’ll get a short video response from a student actor who gives brief, confident answers. You can review your interview responses at the end, when you save the completed interview, but the opportunity to review example answers will disappear.

If you have no idea how to respond, you’re in luck…. There is a “coach” that will give you advice on how to answer the type of question that has been presented. You don’t have to use the coach every time, but access the coach at least once in each of the short interviews. The coach gives insights on how to deal with questions that can be stumbling blocks in an interview.

One technique that is helpful in an actual interview situation is to listen to the question and not feel that you always have to answer immediately. It’s acceptable to take some time to think about your answer rather than say the first thing that rolls off your tongue. It lets the interviewer know that you care enough to give a relevant response rather than just a quick one. You can tell them, “Let me reflect on that for a moment,” and then compose yourself - rather than answering half of a question and then stopping mid-sentence searching for the right thing to say.

The interviews are short, just 5 or 6 questions each, so this part of the assignment can be completed in less than 15 minutes.

When you have completed this portion of the assignment, please do the following:

• Draft a reflection about your practice interview, commenting on the questions asked and your responses to the questions. You might comment on what questions were problematic. What were the strengths of your responses? What could you improve in your responses? How did you responses compare to the "Alternate Response"? What did you learn from the "Coach?"

• Give one question about interviewing or a piece of advice that you've gained in your interviewing experiences.

• Click on "Review Saved Interviews." Click on the "Share" button. E-mail yourself your interview and include the links in your posting.

For further reference, please see the following resources:

Information from UCF’s Career Services: http://www.career.ucf.edu/UserFiles/File/Plan%20for%20the%20Interview/player.html

Further information about informational interviews: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2002/summer/art03.pdf

Professional Life

Throughout college, there are many opportunities to improve your interdisciplinary skills by becoming a volunteer, participating in internships and by attending professional workshops. Do you know what your strongest and weakest professional skills are? When you challenge yourself to seek out and accept opportunities to develop new skills you are able to see what skills you have and where you need improvement. You also begin to figure out what you want to do in life as your future career and what you want to achieve as an individual. Life is full of opportunities; you just have to recognize them.

As an IDS major, take advantage of the variety of skills you already have and start making career goals. Career goals guide and help you organize your life. To help reach your career goals, take advantage of the Clubs here at UCF. Join the IDS club or something that interests you. Visit here to check out all the UCF Clubs

UCF also offers a variety of ways to gain relevant work experience that you can put on a resume. To see some of these opportunities visit UCF Career Services

Think about how your career goals have changed since you started college. Are they the same as when you first began or have jobs or classes you’ve had altered them? If you’ve already participated in internships or externships, how have those experiences helped your professional development?

When it comes to your professional life, what is your personal philosophy? Do you let you your values or your beliefs guide you? Is your philosophy interdisciplinary? What has been the driving force of your professional philosophy?

In your response, please answer some of the questions presented throughout the post and identify two opportunities to increase and improve your professional skills while you are at UCF.

Interdisciplinarity in the Real World

Hello all!



To be an Interdisciplinary major means that we have more opportunities to pursue our passions in future employment than someone majoring in a single discipline might.Interdisciplinarity is most important in my studies because I need to understand human behavior and societal conflicts in order to pursue a career in disaster relief and non-profit. I express my interdisciplinarity by studying courses in criminology and pursuing my interests in American History and Pioneering. All the disciplines contribute to my future and I now have a deeper knowledge of our culture and how it has changed.



Aside from our college careers, we are all expressing our interdisciplinarity throughout our daily lives. With work, school, family and our social interactions we encounter real-life problems and need to consider all sides of the issue to fully comprehend the best solution.



Real life issues can involve your job search or a place to live. Most recently I had to find a new place to live and realized that it would take some thorough research from many perspectives to find a home suitable for my family. So when I found a potential place, I researched if it was flood-prone; some places on beach side are very prone to flooding. I researched all the real-estate companies I was working with to make sure they were legitimate. I also researched the criminal activity in the area in order to protect my family, which included checking the sex-offender alert site.After finding an acceptable place, I then had to strategize to make a rental deal. So our interdisciplinary skills come in handy on many occasions.



Now think about issues you encounter in your daily lives and answer the following questions:




· How do you apply your interdisciplinarity in daily situations?

· Are you integrating your disciplines, if so how?

· Do you know anyone working in an interdisciplinary profession?

· What may be some opportunities in your personal, professional, or academic that can increase your interdisciplinarity?

Post your answers below.

Critical Thinking

 ****UPDATE**** Thursday, 2/23/12 10:24 PM*******
 By now, most of you have read this post and gotten through the comments section. If you have, then you realized that the post was missing the main part of your assignment, which is the Virtual Philosopher. We apologize for this confusion. Collectively, we assumed that you were being given this assignment by your professor and that we were just discussing the results of it here in the blog.
The comments that you posted made us re-evaluate the instructions we were given and we realized our mistake.
With our apologies, here are the instructions for this weeks post. (We realize that many of you have posted already and we are not asking you to do the assignment over, but felt we should include the instructions for those who have not yet posted and to clear up any lingering confusion). The original post will be followed by these updated instructions:

1. Click the link below which will take you to an interactive exercise called Virtual Philosopher developed by Dr. Wade Maki from the Philosophy department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Virtual Philosopher Link (must have updated FLASH to play correctly): http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/vicecrime/vp/vp.html

2. Comment on your critical thinking reasoning that led to your decisions for all three scenarios: the friend's problem, the lifeboat problem, the liver problem.

3. Explain where your critical thinking gave way to your values, ethics, and beliefs. Comment on the differences you perceive between "ethical" and "critical" reasoning and what kinds of problems it caused in doing or reflecting on this exercise and even in your academic experiences.

4. Comment on how the Virtual Philosopher scored your response. From the comments you received about your responses, what insight have you gained about your own critical thinking and reasoning?

****END UPDATE*****************************************************************

Hey everyone. How we doing this week? We know this semester is already in overdrive, so hopefully this assignment gave you a chance to relax for fifteen minutes while you tried to relate to real-life examples that tested your critical thinking skills.

So the first part of the exercise asked three questions, would you ever lie, murder or justify whether it’s acceptable to  save one life verses many equally?

The next activity involved three critical thinking situations:
First, your odd friend just got dumped because his girlfriend wants to date someone cooler. Next, you have six candidates all which need a liver transplant and all have extraordinary reasons why they should receive the transplant. Lastly, the life boat situation, only a certain amount of people

Now for the interactive part… Please reply to this post with your answers to the following three questions:

1. How does including multiple perspectives and considering all sides of a situation before passing judgment or making a decision – thinking critically – relate to being interdisciplinary?


2. What do you think about the score you were given by the virtual philosopher? Did you gain any insight about your own critical thinking and reasoning based on the comments given about your answers?


3. In what way does the outline of your critical thinking disposition account for the way you responded to the situations during the virtual philosopher exercise?

Comment on the three questions based on the applied thinking you put toward each situation. Please use your best judgment when answering these questions as each individual may feel differently towards each situation.

Welcome One and All

Welcome Cornerstone students. Welcome to your new Blogger family as well as to your Interdisciplinary Studies major. We hope that throughout this semester we can impart some of the knowledge and wisdom that we have gained during our own wonderful journeys through our Interdisciplinary Studies majors. We are here, first and foremost, for YOU. If you have any questions at any time on anything we post, please let us know. If you don't agree with anything we say, tell us. The only wrong opinion is that which is never expressed. Challenge us just as you would challenge yourself in the real world, for out of challenge comes true understanding.

We only have a few rules:

• Check the blog frequently. Topics will always evolve. Even if you finish what is “required” for this week's reading, you may miss out on something much greater.
• Complete the postings early on to allow for discussion.
• We can be wrong. It's OK to disagree with us. In fact, sometimes challenging us will lead to the pursuit of a much greater answer.
• Avoid ranting. Discussion can lead to a positive outcome. Ranting, on the other hand, is negative by nature and will only lead to a negative outcome.
• Realize that there is no such thing as a wrong answer except for the one not given.
• Read the whole post. Sometimes we will ask questions at the end. ;)
• Reply by pressing the comment button.
• Please write your name at the end of your reply.

With that, I will like to introduce our team (in no particular order).
Note: We promise not all posts will be this big. ;)

First up, me, Ivan Maldonado:

My name is Ivan Maldonado. My concentrations are Computational Science (why don't they just call it computer science? lol) and Education and my minor is in Humanities. This is my last semester for my current major and I am very excited. I started my original major back in 2001 at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and, after a 6 year hiatus, started school again here in Florida. I went through two majors (Computer Engineering and Mathematics Education) before I found IDS. My passions are technology, education and religious studies so, as you can see, IDS was the perfect fit for me. 

When people ask me what IDS is, I tell them that IDS is the merging of several parts of several disciplines into one new and unique discipline. In my case, my main focus is on how technology merges into education to not only enhance but become part of education itself. This allows me the advantage of understanding how to use Educational Technology to its maximum efficiency to aid students in maximizing their understanding of any applicable subject matter. Of course, there is a downside to this. By specifically targeting both Education and Computer Science, I do become the jack of "this one specific" trade and the master of none. While I can still teach without computers and program without teaching, I am not as efficient in either separate discipline as a dedicated Education major or Computer Science major would be. But, alas, for what I lose, I make up in other areas in Spades (hah! Get it? Jack... Spades... No? Fine... That was a little corny... lol).

Ivan Maldonado

Secondly, we have Suzanne Sanchez:

Hi everyone! My name is Suzanne Sanchez. I am a senior and I graduate in April. My minor is Sociology. My areas of concentration are Public Affairs, and Humanities. I plan to continue my education in the UCF Masters Non-Profit Management Program next Fall. Ultimately I want to work for the Red Cross in disaster field work. I was inspired by my grandfather to go into this area of community service, as he worked for that organization for 40 years.

I was attracted to the Interdisciplinary Program because I liked the idea of having a well-rounded degree and I have many interests. In addition, it was important to me because there is such a competitive workforce and the more experience you accumulate the better your chances are. People always ask me what Interdisciplinary Studies is. I tell them it's a degree where you can have more diversity and choices for your academics. You can greatly benefit from this degree because the employers are looking for more experience in candidates. The only disadvantage is that it is not one specific focused discipline. However, the good outweighs the bad tremendously.

I am really excited to meet everyone, and feel free to “reply” by using the comment button. 

Suzanne Sanchez

Thirdly, Christine Ockunzzi:

Hi, My name is Christine Ockunzzi. I started my UCF career in 1991 (I guess some of you weren't even born at that time! UGH) I worked for Lockheed Martin for 22 years and I hope to resume my career there after graduation. In 2009, I returned to school after a 12 year absence to complete my degree. My areas of study are computational science and humanities and minor is sociology. Having worked on the computational science so many years ago, you can bet those pre-req's were pretty stale after 12 years; this is where IDS came in.

I like animals (dog training especially) and gardening.

Fourth up to the plate, Tamara Groom:

My name is Tamara Groom and I am a non-traditional student (I just turned 35) who has commuted to UCF from Brevard county for the last couple of years. I am finally a senior IDS student. My focus areas are engineering and computational sciences and my minor is digital Media. Since I concentrated primarily on computer courses in both of my focus areas and my minor, it’s easy to explain my Interdisciplinary Studies path as being one in which I took as many computer courses as possible to become computer savvy, but that’s just part of the story. I also took journalism courses for my elective credits.  And marketing... And visual communications... And some more digital media... In this multi-media world of ours there are all kinds of things that I want to accomplish and I felt that I should try to gain as many skills as possible. The disadvantage to that in an Interdisciplinary Studies approach is that you don’t learn programming languages in as structured of a way as you might if you were in a computer science program. The advantage to it is that I don’t have to specialize in one language and now know I have the ability to learn any language. Welcome to IDS. Ask me anything.

Fifth up, we have Antonio Hermida:

Hello my name is Antonio Hermida and my areas of concentration and minor are commerce, social science and mathematics respectively. I chose interdisciplinary studies as my degree because I liked the flexibility that it gave me to customize my studies. When other people ask me what is it that my degree consists of, I always tell them that it is a bachelor’s with concentrations in commerce, social science and mathematics. The disadvantage about the IDS degree is that it is relatively new and people think that it is not specific enough. The advantage is that as long as you know how to market yourself to a prospective employer you will come across as a knowledgeable person with aptitudes in different disciplines. What I would like to do with this degree when I graduate is to apply the acquired knowledge to a job that comes along as interesting to me. A job that will allow my growth in both career and spirit.

Sixth up, we have Maegan Anderson:

Hello, my name is Maegan Anderson. I am graduating this semester with a focus in Mathematics and Education with a minor in Business. I am aspiring to be a high school Athletic Director and possibly teach math. I have been volunteering all throughout my college career in education and sporting events to help with my goal of becoming an Athletic Director. I plan to get a sports internship this summer and then start my career in the fall at a high school. After some work experience, I plan to go back and get my masters in Business Administration. I chose the IDS major because it helped me use all of my credits wisely and allowed me to be well-rounded in three areas. When people ask me what is the IDS major, I tell them that I basically have three focuses and am able to apply a perspective from each. I look forward to this blog. Please feel free to ask me any questions. Let’s have a great semester!

Last, but not least, we have Jeff Popluder:

Hey Everyone, My name's Jeff, I’m 22 and these four years at UCF have been the greatest experience of my life. I’ve made friendships for a lifetime, taken opportunities you could never dream of and received the best educational background for my personal needs. When first attending University of Central Florida I was very passionate about Engineering then shortly realized all the math classes weren’t for me so quickly changed my major to Management Information Systems (MIS). This degree breached Business Management and Information Technology and that encompassed a curriculum that I was extremely interested in. Shortly after, the program had budget cuts and the degree was removed. My next option was to become a general business major and have no path or swim with the big fish and create my own destiny.

I made the best decision to this day and became an Interdisciplinary Studies student. Not only was I able to create my own course guide but it opened many doors in the sense of internships, campus involvement in SGA and it also landed me a job my senior year of college and most likely an amazing job when I graduate. I decided to intertwine the curriculum from MIS taking related courses in Business and IT and those are where I choose my fields from the majority of those classes. Secondly, I took behavioral science classes to learn the studies of humans and their interactions in the economy and interpersonal communications. Pretty much I’m an average college student who likes to explore their opportunities and become involved in everything to play as many cards as possible. I’ll cherish this last semester here at UCF and hope the best for everyone else that is on a similar path to success. Please feel free to email me with any general or personal questions I am still very knowledgeable with SGA if you have any related questions involving Senate.

Now it's your turn:
Feel free to introduce yourselves and your minors/areas of concentration.
Why did you chose this as your degree?
How do describe your Interdisciplinary major to others?
What do you feel are the disadvantages or advantages in Interdisciplinary Studies?
What would you like do with this degree when you graduate?
Please feel free to add anything else or ask any questions you have. We are here for you.


We're looking forward to hearing from you!