Evan Smith

MBA 660 EET 01

Personal Reflection Essay for Blog

Affect

                The material and information I learned from the Project Management course made me feel stressed, unorganized, awakened, and focused. It was stressful because of the constant barrage of assignments and obligations which, in conjunction with my other very difficult class this block, created a storm of uncertainty and anxiety every week. I felt unorganized because I was never felt fully confident that I knew what deliverables were due or which group I needed to meet with for the next week’s presentation. I felt awakened because I have never been exposed to Project Management and I have never known anyone who was a project manager. After having taken the course, I realize that there are elements of project managing in most day-to-day projects whether they are inside or outside of work. I felt focused because of the amount of attention required for this class. Managing many different groups, readings, blogs, submissions on Canvas, and write-ups made me feel extremely focused throughout the block.

Behavior

                The most significant example of a new or changed behavior I developed in this course would be the use of Prezi.com to create presentations that are different and refreshing from the typical PowerPoint presentation. Another tool that I had set up 8 years ago, but hadn’t used since then, was my personal blog. I originally created the blog as a place where I could write about cars and the automotive industry. This project was a good motivator to find my login and start using the blog again. A new behavior that I also started using this course was a calendar. After the first week of class, I realized that an online calendar would be invaluable during this course. It helped alleviate much of my anxiety about what deliverables were due and when.

Cognition

                My most influential cognitive growth through this course came through reading and presenting the book The Wisdom of Oz. This book forced me to actually put into action things that I had learned or things in life I was going to try to change. I actually used lessons from the book to help me get started on working on my physical health by going jogging and going to a gym. Specifically, I used the portion of the book that instructs readers to act like making a change like your life depends on it. This is one tangible example of using the information in the book to make a change that has actually taken place.