Blog #3: Communication and such

It's funny how we've been communicating through this blog for like 4 weeks and now we're blogging about it! (that was dumb,sorry) Okay so I kinda have a nice big story that sums up alot of which this blog is covering so I'm gonna throw it out there and hopefully it all makes sense in the end.

So, one day there was a young man named Andrew Christian Farver. Just kidding. Okay so the other day this girl came into my CEE class and was like "hey, if you're interested in doing a leadership internship and making lots of money, put your name down." So I was like "Am I a leader? Check. Do I like money? Check." So i signed up. They called me at like 9pm 2 nights later from a cell phone and we're like "bla bla bla come to an informal interview at this date and time." It turns out that it's a business-esque internship in which you basically own your own small painting company. You do everything from hire workers to buy supplies (basically everything). It also happens that it gets a ton of bad reviews and it's a whole lot of work (like 40-70 hours/week during the summer). It's called College Works Painting, look it up.
Okay so I show up, it goes well, the girl is like "I'd like to set you up with a more formal meeting with our vice president" (who happens to be this huge ex-football player, by the way). Okay, fine by me, it all seemed kinda interesting, so why not? Show up (it's business professional attire btw which isn't fun when you have to wear a shirt and tie ALL DAY for one little interview), and start talking with this guy. I won't go into the nitty-gritty details, but I'll highlight the things that pertain to this. Basically this guy was super successful and bought the company out of college and now it's worth millions and he's pretty much set.
So he was asking questions about why I would be good for the internship while telling me important things that helped him succeed along the way. What he said was that in order to be successful in any business type of job, it took much more than good grades. He asserted that personality is the number one thing because you have to be able to PRESENT (didn't think I would make sense out of this did you?) yourself and your company. Being bold, outgoing, decisive, and friendly (to name a few) can turn (almost) any person into a successful worker. Although he didn't specifically talk about this, he did stress the importance of talking (aka COMMUNICATING) with your workers everyday. Communicating with workers both above and below you in command is an absolute necessity when it comes to planning. If you can't tell your workers what to do or even if you can't tell your boss what you're doing, things will almost never go as planned. He didn't talk about writing, but we all know that if writing is anything like talking (which it is), you need to be able to get to the point and be as clear as possible. How annoying would it be if you were trying to get info out of a worker when they kept ranting about their weekend and the news. Writing needs to have a purpose and should be straight forward. Scratch that, in order to not be a hypocrite because I rant on here like an old lady, when I say writing, I mean technical writing(to copy what Kevin used because I can't think of a better word). So yeah, that's what I learned about communicating, presenting, and writing during an interview.

BTW I chose not to continue with the interview process (therefore ending my chance at the internship) because A) too much uncertainty with the company getting bad reviews and B) It's way too early to give away my entire summer to something like that. I plan on trying to find an engineering internship or doing something cool/interesting.

Off to the girls volleyball game (Penn State vs. Illinois),

Andrew

PS- Sorry I write so much