Extra Blog: May

Well the year's finally over.  It's been a long four years at IPoly but it's been a good time too. Looking back I'm kind of glad my parents forced me here freshman year. I honestly don't have much else to say except that I hope everyone has a good summer and wish everyone good luck on whatever they decide to pursue in the future.

Blog 23: Final Lesson Reflection

1. From my presentation I think I am most happy with my activity. It helped me get my point across on some of my information and it just overall turned out well. While I was walking around it also seemed like everyone enjoyed doing the activity as well, so that's another good thing.

2a. For my final presentation I think I would give myself a P. I was able to make time and felt that I did a good job of explaining my information. That I know of I also believe I met all the P requirements as well.
2b. For my overall senior project grade I would give myself a P-/AP+. I have had a few parts of the senior project where I just didn't do well and that lowered my overall grade, but I feel my work in these last few months may have brought my grade up.

3. What worked for me in my senior project was my mentorship. With my dad as my mentor he was almost always available to me for information. With all of his experience he was able to successfully help me answer any questions and just provide good feedback on things I showed him from my project.

4. I think I would just have tried to get myself to procrastinate less in all honesty. There were a fair amount of assignments that I got docked points on because of my procrastination. Things such as blogs or research count. Or then there's my second lesson which because I had put it off till the last minute did not turn out so well.

5. The senior project has been useful to my future endeavors in that it has given me another career to think of pursuing. I currently am pursuing a career in the medical field, but this project has helped me see just how viable small business can be if done right. Also, the work I was a blue to do with my mentor was just a good experience. I hadn't really had any work experience before I had to do mentorship and it was just nice to get to work with my dad.

Blog 22: Mentorship

Literal

• Check link for Mentorship hours
• Mentors is Humberto Tavira and his place of work is TD Knitting Inc. 

Interpretive 

The most important thing that I have gotten from this experience is just getting to see first hand what a real business owner or manager does. It has shown me that business really isn't as simple as you might think it really is. Along with that just getting to work with my dad was kind of fun. Since it was business most of the things I did were tedious, but being there to see what my dad did on a daily basis was a good experience.

Applied

By getting to work with my mentor I was able to get a lot of my information to get answers for my essential question. In fact, my first answer came from working with my mentor and seeing how he does things at his business. For my other answers having a readily available mentor who I could ask questions to helped me figure out if they were good. This first hand knowledge from an expert in the field gave me more help than I could have gotten from just an article online.

Blog 21: Exit Interview

 1. My EQ is "What is the best strategy a manager can use to make his small business more successful?" My first answer is to have a good management style. My second answer is to create a good business plan. My third answer is to create a good marketing plan. My best answer is my answer two because it is the backbone to a business. It helps you organize your goals and all the important details about your business. With this you can stay on task more easily and make decisions that will better help your business.

2.  I first came to this answer when I read a source regarding a business plan. It brought up some of the points I stated above and got me thinking about how it was a good answer to my EQ. When I asked my mentor about it he agrees with the fact that a business plan is extremely beneficial to a business' success. With that in mind and  a few other articles I read, I found that a business plan was the best answer of the three I chose.

3. I in general just had difficulty deciding on answers for my EQ. When it comes to business there are multiple different things that can affect how successful a business is. I overcame this by talking to my mentor and getting his opinion on my potential answers. With his help I was able to choose my answers. This along with just doing a little extra research helped me with my answers.

4. My two most important sources to answer my EQ would be my mentor and the book The Ultimate Marketing Plan by Dan Kennedy. My mentor as I previously stated was a great help whenever I needed a question answered. The book itself just provided a great deal of useful information that while primarily helped me with my answer three also helped me with my answer two/best answer.

 

 

Extra Blog: April

Another month another step closer to finally presenting this project. This month I finally finished my independent component. Completing the online course has helped me find a lot more information for my project. The final test ended up being easy except for the fact that it included facts about the units I worked on during my first independent component, which I didn't study, resulting in my final grade not being as high as I had hoped it would be. Either way it was a good experience learning from the course. Just a few more weeks and then this project is finally done.

My transcript showing my final grade. The final exam unfortunately brought down the grade by a good amount

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

Literal
 a) I, Humberto Tavira, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 40 hours of work
 b) I completed my online course on Saylor.org
 c) Check link
Interpretive
The online course head helped further my knowledge on business in the technical aspect which I would normally not learn from my mentor who teaches me off of experience. The course took many hours to complete as it contained a large amount of reading.
Applied
The course helps me answer my EQ by providing more information for my answers. For example unit 3 focused on marketing which helped me gain more information on my third answer which revolves around forming a marketing plan.

Extra Blog: March

Another month has gone by and things have been going pretty well. Things are the same as mentorship and I have done a little more on my Independent Component 2, which I hope to get done over spring break or at least get close to finishing. We didn't do many research checks this time around, but I did find a few articles that I found to be really informative. Just two more months until this is all over. It's kind of hard to believe how fast this year has gone by, but honestly I just want to get this over with already.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/10/14/5-inexpensive-ways-to-promote-a-product-launch/
http://www.nfib.com/article/7-essential-sections-of-a-business-plan-49946/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2013/12/30/dont-treat-your-employees-like-you-want-to-be-treated/