Blog #10

This research paper may prove to be somewhat of a difficult task to do. One discourse community that I have an interest in writing about and researching is the financial advisory community. I have always been interested in the financial advisory community and its place in society especially since being that I am an international business major. I like the idea that advisors help people plan for their futures and become a large impact on many people's lives and futures. I recently attended a information session for Bank of America Merril Lynch. The current employees gave myself and the other interested college students their spiel about what it was like to be a financial advisor. After going to the meeting, I have a pretty good understanding of financial advising. In this research paper, I will research what it means to be a financial advisor and the steps they take when dealing with clients. I will interview a family friend who is a financial advisor at Edward Jones. I will ask him various questions about the job and as well as the most important aspect that is what is his fiduciary duty to the clients. I will ask him how he communicates with the clients and by which medians of communication he uses to contact his clients. Upon researching this discourse community I will learn the values they hold as well as the communication within the group that makes this a specific group. This may prove to be difficult because some of my questions may go unanswered in the interview making may have to research various journal articles about financial advising. Hopefully when I finish this paper it will prove to be a valid insight into the discourse community and in turn it will be something that my professor will give me a decent grade on.

Blog #9

Wardle writes about identity and conforming to social norms within a certain group and in this particular work, the focus is on the workplace. It is a normal idea that one must act and use certain genres within a workplace because it is expected.

Having worked four different jobs, I have a pretty good idea about how one's identity and behavior changes due to what is expected. As I am getting closer to graduating, which is terrifying, I will need to obtain an internship and learn the ways of how things are in the business workplace I enter, It will be crucial that I learn while in my internship how to communicate and the areas of improvement that I will need to focus on. I may lose part of my identity as I will constantly want to have a good and professional impression when I meet new people. This will be a positive and a negative thing as I will constantly have a filter and try to carry off a "persona", but possibly in the late future when I am in a more senior position, I will be able to show more personality Early on in my career, I will have little to no authority which will not bother me... as I would like to think it will not.

Being that I am an international business major, I would like to do business with a concentration in business between countries or a multinational corporation. I have yet to narrow it down to what I want to do specifically, but I can see myself somewhere along the lines of doing international finance or wealth management/financial advising but I would carry with me a global perspective of the markets and focus on non-U.S. markets. Yes, this sounds very boring to most people. The fact that I will have a global perspective means that I will need to travel to various countries and learn the customs there and become acquainted with markets aboard and trends in order for investors in the U.S. to jump on money trains that might not be seen on mainstream Bloomberg.  

Entering the workforce will no doubt be about change within a person. A new person in a workplace will have to learn the lexis as well as understanding of how things work within the discourse community.

Blog #8

Serving is something that can be looked at very differently depending on the place that a server is serving food... servingly. For example a server that works at a at a three Michelin stars rated restaurant could be looked upon differently compared that to your average diner server. I do not think of a server as anything negative regardless of the restaurant where I am currently eating because I feel many of these servers we encounter are just ordinary people trying to make money.

Mirabelli introduces the idea that waiting tables is simple not just a repetitive skill that requires little school education, He infers that it is a practice that takes years to master. Marabelli talks about how a fellow waiter, John Harvey explained that it took him 10 years working at the restaurant before he thought of himself as a master waiter.

I myself have been in the hospitality business for 2 summers and have found that my line of work is as unappreciated as waiting tables is. Yes, the jobs that I preformed at my hotels were repetitive and sometimes little school knowledge was needed in order to do said jobs. I, however realized that what I did on a day-to-day operation system was actually a very confusing task. I was tasked with multiple things to do around the hotel and do many different things in order for the hotel to function smoothly with minimal slip ups. I had to know what to do every day, if I was unable to preform certain required tasks I had to solve the problems at hand. Only on a few occasions was my intelligence insulted, mostly by angry guests looking to just cause problems. One instance that particularly annoyed me (and there were quite a few) was a time when I was working in the lobby of my hotel reading the entrance for check-ins. I had to assemble a water dispenser and put accenting fruits in it as well as put out little finger foods for arriving guests to sample. I also was one of the first workers that interacted with the guests so I had to not only be knowledgeable about every plausible and implausible question by the guests, but I also had to have a deep knowledge of the greater San Diego area and the prices and times of attractions as well as places to eat, things to do and general questions.

One day a women came and started talking to me as I was setting the lobby for check-ins. We began to talk about the hotel and she asked if I did anything else. I responded by saying that I attend San Diego State and am pursing international business. She then by my surprise raised her eyebrow and scoffed and said that I was really putting that degree to use sarcastically Instantly I was agitated with this heinous... person but remained calm and reiterated that I was ATTENDING SDSU and had not graduated yet... (with a smile on my face of course)

A real art form that servers as well as jobs similar to mine is that you have to learn to deal with people and have patience, which is a very difficult task. Mirabelli furthered my understanding that just because a certain job does not require a mass amount of formal education does not mean that it is a cakewalk of a job. Serving tables is an integral part to society as they are the middle man between chef and customer.      

Your Fellow Blogger,

Kina Bramlette

Blog #7

  I liked this blog assignment as it was just the question of reflecting upon a prior experience which I will attempt to do in the following words. A time in my life where I found myself drastically changing my identity kit was when I changed schools sophomore year of high school. I was absolutely petrified at the thought of attending a new school and not knowing a single person and not knowing the "right" way to do things. When I started at my new school I completely changed my behavior. Before, I was rather obnoxious in classes and seen as a class clown figure and outgoing and all that other extrovertism jazz in my old school, and now at my new school I was quiet and reserved and walked through the hallways trying to be undetected. I noticed this that I was not acting like my true self due to the lack of complacent belonging in the new environment. I was trying to keep a low profile in an effort not to give people the wrong idea about me or have a negative opinion of me. I went along with this "mushfaking" for a portion of the first semester until I found the right fit and the correct behavior that my peers would deem acceptable. I slowly but surely maneuvered back into my old self, but this new persona was an altered version of the original. This new version still had the same personality and tenancies, but now I was more mature and not so obnoxious. One's identity kit is a very important thing as it is the persona of the person. Mushfaking can be a good or bad thing depending on how the person is altering their behavior. In my personal experience, this mushfaking proved to be a positive choice to make as I learned how to adapt to my new environment before just jumping into the picture and not changing anything at all.  

Your Fellow Blogger,

Kina Bramlette