What I Have, Will, & Should Learn

            As the semester winds down, I find myself in a reflective state contemplating my past, present, and future.  I think of all that I have learned in the past few months, what I will learn in the upcoming semester, and most notably, what I should be learning. These thoughts seem to consume me.   

            As it has been all semester for me, I find it is quite easy to relay what I have learned throughout this term. Prior to its beginning, I would have never fathomed how much goes into running a business.   I have gained a great deal of knowledge in the Fall of 2013 both in the academic environment as well as in the social settings I have engaged in.  As an aspiring business major in the honors college, my schedule has been limited to business courses.   In my Business Informational Systems course I have come to learn how vital social media, technology, and process models are in increasing efficiency.   Similar yet distinctly different, I have been learning how to be an effective leader and how to mediate in my Foundations of Leadership course.  In Statistics and the Analysis of Data I have learned to calculate, correlate, and read data and how it plays a huge role in ensuring that businesses and their leaders meet standards necessary to be an efficient and effective corporation. Finally, in my two writing emphasis courses, Lit & Civ II and Writing Argument, I have developed the hard and soft skills needed to be an effective writer and communicator.  This course specifically has given me a more worldly perspective and has shown me how pleasurable and valuable reflection blogging can be.

            Just as I can simplistically state what I have learned, I can also explain or infer what I will be learning in the upcoming semester.  Next semester in the Spring of the new year I will be taking five more business courses.   My leadership development will continue in the Interpersonal Leadership Skills course where I will be learning how to communicate effectively within a group of people with the goal of developing team synergy.  Conversely I will learn about basic practices, methods, and policies in a traditional business environment in Fountains of Business.  While in Business Law I will learn the legal ins and outs of these general business policies.  Accounting will serve to teach me how to manage currency and capital worth.  But of all these courses I am most excited to begin studies in my major - marketing.   In this course, I will be learning the history of marketing and general strategies.   I am eager and optimistic about venturing into the world of marketing.

            Finally I have come to what I should learn. It is easy to evaluate what I have already learned and what I must learn in order to acquire and hone my professional skills; but it is immensely more difficult to state what I should learn, not as a professional but as a person.  My leadership development class and this course have given me a wealth of opportunities to reflect on my own being, allowing me to increase my level of self-awareness. I have come to realize my strengths as a driven, dedicated, and passionate individual; but I have also come to recognize a number of crucial flaws I have that inhibit me. What I should learn is how to be empathetic and how to relax.  My strengths have made me a very critical person of others and of myself.  I need to stop being so harsh in my judgments.  Success means nothing without personal happiness and making others happy is more satisfying than acquiring any accolade or sum of money.   People are the only things with true value that we will come across in our journey through life.