“So, what are your plans for after graduation?”

With only two months until graduation, it is safe to say that I am in sheer panic mode. Everyone always warns you about how finding a job after graduation is hard work, but I never expected it to be this difficult.
I have applied for about three to four jobs a week, and I am starting to feel beyond overwhelmed. With the infamous question always rising whenever someone asks how much more schooling I have left, “What do you have planned for after graduation?”, I am beginning to want to scream. Who knew that graduating college, the thing that my family has always wanted for me, the thing that I promised myself that I always would do, would be this stressful.

I have to blame my passion for success. I have always held the highest expectations for myself and I know that I am not alone when it comes to this. All I want is a well paying job, in the city I desire, doing what I love best; is it that hard? The answer is yes. I cannot allow myself to become defeated from this job search, I mean… more than half of the places haven’t even denied me! So why am I panicking you ask? Well, the answer is quite simple… I want to succeed.

I want to show everyone that they didn’t believe in me for nothing. With an amazing family rooting for me, the best group of friends a girl could ask for, and an amazing boyfriend who has been my number 1 supporter throughout this entire process, I cannot begin to explain how blessed I am, especially with a great group of people on my bench.

Only 2 more months, two more months until the real world hits me like a bus. My only wish is to succeed in life, and hopefully my standard for myself isn’t too high. I know that I will get to where I want to be soon enough, it’s just a matter of trial and error. And to everyone else out there going through the same amount of stress as I am, best of luck to you and hang in there! We can get through this together, and hopefully soon enough, that dreaded question will be something we actually want to answer.

Resume SOS part 2

Like I have said before, I love the career center here at GVSU. Every advisor that I meet with seems to give me a different set of insight that helps me better my resume as well as prepare me more for the outside world.

On my second trip to the career center, I had a walk in appointment with an advisor names Stephanie. From the beginning I knew I liked her because the first thing she did was compliment the layout of my resume. This was my second time in there, because the first time I needed help because I had just completely redone my resume. So after the first set of critiques, I went in there again hoping everything looked good. It didn’t take too long for Stephanie to give me a couple more suggestions, but after that we were done. The whole appointment lasted maybe 10 minutes, and I was able to obtain more career advice, as well as what to do when applying for jobs in the Spring.

The career center is always there to help with any questions. Like I said before, having the career center here on campus really is one of the many reasons why I love this school. I know I will be making more visits to the career center throughout the rest of my time here at GVSU, and I hope they continue to guide me in the right direction.

Canales, S. (2015). Career center. [image]

Social media to me

Social media is something that is very important for my career field, as well as to me in general. I use social media daily, and unlike some people, I’m not ashamed to say that I love social media and everything about it! To me, it is a way to keep in touch with people who I don’t see on a daily basis, see what my family is doing, and lets be honest, it’s just a great way to creep on people.

Ask any of my friends and they will tell you that I am labeled the “social media queen” to them. Social media is something that I have had ever since I can remember, the idea of being able to connect with so many people from one site is very appealing to me, and always has been. Like I said before, I use social media daily. I have every account possible, and I use them in multiple different ways. Keeping in touch with friends is important, but as I have become older, I like to use social media to update my blog, check LinkedIn, fix my resume, and make my social media channels appealing for potential employers. Growing older changes the way I’ve looked at my social media accounts, and I actually really like the way my accounts have matured as I have.

It seems like everyone now-a-day has some sort of social media account. Social media has no age limit, and I love how anyone can become connected no matter what their age is. I see others using social media for around the same reasons as me; younger generation have them to remain cool to their peers, my generation uses it to keep in touch with family and friends from high school (or just to stalk them), the older generation is using it to keep tabs on their kids and family also. How convenient is it to have these websites where you can keep in touch with family members who live far away, or ones you may never see anymore? “Sixty-seven percent of US citizens ages 12 and up use social media of some type” (King 2015).

With such a  popular thing, comes positives and negatives. Some of the positives are that it connect us. Social media gives people their own little community online. You can follow anyone you want, and you can pick and chose who you want to see. This gives people a sense of belonging, and it helps for us to feel a different sense of connectedness with people. “A sense of community allows individuals to extend their interactions with strong ties and increases their opportunities to form weak ties. It encourages and supports information seeking behavior and reflects the sense of enjoyment that individuals gain from connecting with others via a range of social media tools” (Scheepers,H.,Scheepers,R., Stockdale & Nurdin, 2014). .A downfall could be that “we live in world of objects and are guided in our orientation and action by the meaning of these objects” (Bilandzic, Patriarche & Traudt, 2012). Being so obsessed with something like social media could ultimately be a bad thing. People become too obsessed with this form of communication, and it cuts out the social part of it. You see young kids only wanting to use an iPad or iPhone instead of wanting to go out and play with their friends. It’s very sad to see that the younger generation is becoming so consumed with the media part of it that they are completely throwing away their adolescence. There are so many more positives and negatives that people could correlate with social media, but these are just two of the main ones from my perspective.

Since the very beginning of MySpace, I have always been connected somehow. Growing up in the generation I did, I was able to see how some of the most major social media channels have evolved as the years went on. I remember making my Facebook and not knowing what the heck I was doing. It’s still so weird to me that social media has become such a norm amongst people of all ages. Seeing some of the evolution of social media has been amazing, because it still is changing every day. “Today’s global technology system actually took more than 60 years to come to age” (Hurley 2010). 60+ years is what it took for us to be where we are today, and it is amazing to think about what else we have in store for us.

I can honestly say that I am excited to see where social media is in about 20 years. The evolution of something as complex yet simple as social media, is something to admire. Seeing where we have come from, and where we are now is truly amazing. I will continue to use social media daily, and I will forever hold the reputation of social media queen amongst my friends, and I hope everyone else enjoys this as much as I do.

Microsoft small business (2012). How to use social media.[Image]TechNet.com

 

Bilandzic, H., Patriarche, G., Traudt, P. J., & Ebooks Corporation. (2012). The social use of media: Cultural and social scientific perspectives on audience research. Chicago;Bristol, UK;: Intellect.

Hurley, B. (2010). How internet, social media have evolved. The Colorado Springs Business Journal,

 

King, D. L. (2015). Why use social media? Library Technology Reports, 51(1), 6-9,2. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.gvsu.edu/docview/1646465090?accountid=39473

Scheepers, H., Scheepers, R., Stockdale, R., & Nurdin, N. (2014). the dependent variable in social media use. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 54(2), 25-34.

Resume SOS

Heading to the career center was something that I was not a stranger to. I love going to the advisors whenever I have any questions about my resume, future career, or just questions at all pertaining to my degree or career path. The career center was there when I first initially needed help on creating my resume, and they were still able to help and guide me with my resume now.

Heading into the career center last week, I was able to get some extra help on my resume, since I have recently completely redesigned it. I wanted to make sure that my layout was alright, as well as my wording. I had many questions about my resume, and wanted to make sure it was the best it could be since I will be applying for “big girl jobs” soon. As soon as I went in there for my consult, I learned so much about how to better my resume, as well as some helpful tips for my future in applying for jobs. She was very helpful, and made sure to answer all of my questions about how to go about reaching out to potential employers. I love going to the Career Center for any questions I have about my future career, or resume, and I am sure I will continue to utilize this service for as long as I can here at GVSU.

Canales, S. (November, 24, 2015) Career center[image]

 

 

The future of my blog…

The future of my blog looks bright. I don’t plan on deleting this anytime soon, and I know I will continue using it after my CAP 105 class is complete. This blog has been around since the beginning of my Advertising and Public Relations journey. PR loves blogs, and blogs love PR; We go together perfectly.

The pro’s outweigh the con’s to keeping this blog. Having this blog, and especially with it having so many posts over a period of time, I think puts me ahead of the competition. Future employers will be able to visit this blog, and see all of my work that I have been able to complete over the last few years. Making sure my blog URL is on my LinkedIn page, or just on any other social media page, will get my blog noticed by almost anyone, good or bad. Having this blog will be very beneficial for myself, and my classmates, if we decide to keep it in the long run. Putting in this much work on this blog, and not keeping it in the end, seems a little crazy to me.

The future of my blog is bright, and I know I will continue using it after this class is over. With graduation quickly approaching, I know this blog will help put me above the rest of the other for a potential job position. I appreciate all of my CAP professors for pushing me to post on this blog, and helping to get my love for blogging to where it is now.

Blog (November 24, 2016). [image]bobullam.com.

Happy InDesign Holidays

With the holidays rapidly coming up, it is important to not forget the importance of keeping in touch with your family and spreading the holiday cheer, right? But the essence of a postcard has rapidly decreased, so why send a postcard when you can just as easily send an email with your family Christmas card, or even a quick text? The answer to that is easy, because no matter how many texts or emails you send, they will never hold the value or importance as a postcard. Working with InDesign, we were instructed to create just that, a postcard that could be for anything we desired. I decided to create a Christmas postcard, obviously, because Christmas is right around the corner, and happens to be my favorite holiday.

Finding the images online was the easy part, but figuring out how to put those images into InDesign was a whole other story. Knowing how to work these different programs isn’t crucial for my future career choice, but it will definitely put me ahead of the rest when it comes down to being more technologically advanced than the rest. After finally bring able to place my images on the 5×7 postcard, I was able to end up with the end product that I had imagined in my head. Working with InDesign was difficult, as expected, but it was a learning experience. I am actually very proud about how my postcard ended up, and I hope to be able to use the program more as the time goes on.

Canales, S. (November 17, 2015). Christmas postcard. [image] web.

Brand Yourself

Branding yourself in the best possible way is something that EVERYONE should strive to do. Knowing what to post to the internet, and when to post it is crucial. What some people don’t understand is that once you put that drunken picture of you and your friends on that social media page, or that embarrassing picture you post of your friends “just because”, on your page, it will forever be there. People can see these things, and you are being looked at and critiqued by these posts by potential employers. Sometimes though, posting the good stuff to your pages: some accomplishments you have, some activities and hobbies you do, or just keeping the drunken/embarrassing/bad pictures OFF these social media channels, will ensure you the best possible image amongst potential employers and people.

When I first logged onto the Brand Yourself webpage, my initials score was a D+… this is quit embarrassing, especially since all of the Google links that brought up my name were not even me. I went through every link on that page and made sure that only the ones that I wanted to be shown first, would be. After boosting every social media channel I have, my score still would not go up, insert frustration here. I tried everything to get that grade up to what I wanted, but the thing would NOT budge. After fixing all of my Google search’s, boosting all my social media pages, and even creating a Brand Yourself webpage, my grade went up to a C-… still embarrassing. I have been trying to get it up higher, but everything I do will not raise the stubborn grade. I will continue to do my best to create the best possible image of myself on the internet, since so many people are looking at that when hiring in new employees. Hopefully it will eventually go up, especially now since I have this new tool to help me know how to make myself an A.

Social Media Management

Using pages like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, it is easy to plan out your tweets, and is amazing for those multitaskers who love looking at 3 different things at once. With all of your tweets, messages, and your own activity, these pages allow you to be able to monitor multiple different things at once.

First going over the two sites, it was a little overwhelming. But after realizing what each column meant, and what exactly I was looking at, it make the concept of the page a whole lot easier to understand and like. For my CAP 105 class, we had to schedule out 5 different tweets to go out throughout the course of the semester. Figuring out what days and times I would prefer for these tweets to go out wasn’t even the hard part, but knowing WHAT to say was the real struggle here. Tweeting is already stressful enough for me, because trying to condense what I’m trying to say in 140 characters bugs me enough. But working with the site was simple, and fun, and I’m glad to now know how to work these two social media management sites. Below are the 5 tweets that I have scheduled to post throughout the remainder of the semester. Be sure to favorite them for me (:

Canales, S. (October 28, 2015). Twitter. [Image]

Infographic

An infographic; you must be thinking to yourself, what is that? Well, I was the same way. Like many of these other assignments that I have had to do, I was pretty confused on what exactly this was. But once I got the grip of it, I had a blast doing it.

An infographic is a visual representation of either how to do something, or just showing you the statistics of a certain element. These are fun to use as well as look at, and make looking at information visually appealing, since we all know that is not always the case.

For my own infographic that I created, I wanted to show how to “get those likes”. In other words, how to post content on a social media page, show your family and friends, and get the gratification and praise that you desire on your post! Sharing content on a social media page is simple, fun, and a way to express yourself in different forms. Whether that’s posting a picture, a status update, a tweet, or even a blog post. My infographic solely focuses on posting a picture to a social media channel, because with each one of these outlets, posting a picture is normal and almost expected. Check out my infographic below, and be sure to check out my other posts on my blog!

Canales, S. (2015). How To Get Those Likes. Piktochart.[image]

Canales Family Christmas Card 2016

I’m the first one to admit, photoshop is not one of my strong suites. But being able to work with it and play around with all of the features it had was definitely a learning experience.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to incorporate using my dog in the photo that I was going to mess with.  Picking out the picture was easy, but the background definitely set some challenges for me as I tried to decipher from the thousands of background images that continued to pop up online.

After finally deciding on which photo, and background that I wanted to do, the rest was an uphill battle. Figuring out how to remove the background, change the background, move the photo, make a filter, it all was a struggle. But after sitting in front of the screen for what felt like forever, I was finally able to create the picture I had in mind. My final photo will be used for the Canales family Christmas card 2016. 

Canales, S. (December 23, 2015). Vinnie. [Online image]

Huffington Post. (May 20, 2014). Olaf. [Online image] Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/20/disney-sidekicks_n_5085158.html