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Today was the first class of the Academic Session named “Effective communication” the goal of this session is to improve our personal development, talk about our aims in life and goals, learn more about storytelling and practice our speeches for job interviews.
We took the lesson online and we had an activity about getting to know each other, all our classmates.
Martin talked about the topics we can choose for our written assignment which worth 20% of the grade, it can be a fictional story or a “how to” do something essay.
The group presentation (55%) the Quiz (5%) and class participation a 20% which includes business cases, vocabulary exercises and debates.
Also, Martin asked us again to continue our dairy journal about what we learned each class, with 100 words per day.
This day was special for me, because it was my first day in my new job; I’m very happy to start working in a company related to my field, so I promised myself to put al my effort to demonstrate my value and go above and beyond.
Today was my second day in work. It was interesting getting to know the company, I took 3 courses about “Health, safety, environment and quality (HSEQ)”, “Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS)” , “Workplace Violence Harassment” and “Accessibility for Ontarian with disabilities”, I took the onboarding and I met all my coworkers.
I met the vice president of the company and my boss introduced me as “the architect”. It was so surprising for me, because right know I am in an administrative position, but my boss wants to keep me in the company to offer me a position as an architect, for the upcoming projects.
I hope I can become an architect in this city and be successful as I was in Mexico.
The second day in class was presential. We met new classmates, practiced our English and talked about ourselves.
We made an activity about answering the follow questions:
1. What is your greatest accomplishment and why?
2. What is your greatest fear and why?
3. What does your perfect day look like?
4. What goal or goals are you working on right now and why?
This day was all about me and my hobbies. In my work, my boss asked me to design the invitation card for the Holiday dinner. I was so excited about this task because I love design and because I did it and he was enchanted about it.
The also gave me the responsibility of coordinate fuel supply to all the construction sites that we have in Vancouver. This is an important responsibility and by doing an excellent job, I know that they will allow me to do more and more duties like this.
Today´s class was amazing. We started with some vocabulary and we make a review about the last sessions.
We practiced vocabulary by writing and story and sharing it in teams.
We learn about how to manage client´s expectations and we work in our elevator speech.
I would like to write mine to keep the phrase and memorize it:
“My name is Mariela, I am a passionate and creative designer with an architecture degree. I love and enjoy helping people like you, by understanding their needs and necessities, so I would be more than happier to help you design and build the house of your dreams.
Tonight, was one of the greatest classes I love every class that Claire goes to school. Claire is our teacher Karen’s puppy. She is a lovely French puddle dog who loves running after a small ball and brings love to everyone with her cuteness.
I was tired when I arrived class because I had an exhausting day at work. But as every day, the class was so interesting and the activities we did were so funny that my energy always goes up and I end the day with joy and wishing for the day to have more hours.
We started today’s class writing in our Written assignment. I decided to write about “How to make a photorealistic render to captivate a client”. This essay will be about how necessary is an architect for projecting and designing the house of your dreams
The second activity of the class was about “Strategies to open presentations”. We practice a lot in this class, we put in action the strategy of “3 yes/no questions”, “the promise” which is about making a big statement and the last one was about telling “the story”
This exercise was so interesting. I think it helped all of us to improve our behavior and learn how to improvise.
Today, while outside the first snowstorm was taking place and the city was a chaos, inside our classroom, we were having a great relaxing and powerful day.
The first activity we did was about unscramble sentences. Later, we continued with the “Booya´s tips”.
We learned about how to manage conflict, 3 options to conclude a presentation (it can be summarizing our main points, picking a new story that summarizes the points or doing a call back to the opening which forces all the points made during the presentation).
We conclude the class making an activity about drafting a story by creating scenes, considering characters, dialogue, conflict, scenes, the climax and changes. It was really interesting to listen to my classmates’ stories. We all learned something new about everyone.
Today was a hard one in work. I was scammed and at the beginning of the day I was so ashamed with my boss that I almost cried. I talked with a friend about the situation and it really helped me to overcome and face my boss.
My boss was so gently and comprehensive that I actually believe he’s a great human being. I told him I was sorry about what happened and he said that scam is something we are always exposed to.
Today’s class was by the application zoom. We continued practicing our communication skills, we make some teamwork and did a lot of improvising activities.
Today was one of the best classes ever. I think the theory of today really helped me to be prepared to embrace a job interview.
We practiced a lot in groups, by going in front of class and improvising and we are now prepared to answer the basic questions that a recruiter uses to make, like: Tell me about yourself, tell me about your strengths and what´s your biggest weakness.
After class, I was so enthusiastic that I decided to continue reading a book about leadership. I’m enjoying so much these topics because they´re preparing me to the real world and I’m now understanding the Canadian culture.
Today I wrote a lot about myself. I learned that the most perfect I want to be or when I try to do something really quickly, I always overthink and end up screwing it all.
I learned that I need to take time to clarify my ideas, be patience, try not to do all hastily and that I don’t need to impress anybody to show what I am good at. I just need to do the things in the way I know.
We stared today’s class with a few words expressing dissatisfaction. We had to write a story using those words and we practiced our oral conversations in teams.
We learned about how to react or answer while we are receiving and giving feedback. I learned that the most important thing is to “listen”, be open and receptive, ask for clarifying the ideas and the questions and decide what to do.
We memorized the “sandwich approach”:
1. Start with something positive
2. Transit to constructive feedback.
3. End with something positive.
I learned an interesting expression: “Sugar coat”, which means say something bad in a good way.
This day was all about vocabulary. We acquire skills in hiring and firing someone. We also practiced our speeches in asking for a rise. I remember that I wrote one for Martin:
“Hi Martin, I would like a rise and this is why: In the last 2 months, I’ve been generating a 3% of revenue above the 15% expected thanks to my effort in the search of value engineering. I’ve found 10 value engineering and know we have budget to do the changes that our client wants. I have to mention that, over the time, I’ve taken all the responsibilities that you’ve given to me and I will always continue embracing the challenges that you have for me. Please, consider this my salary increase request.
Today we practiced our speeches in promoting somebody by using new terms (new vocabulary). We make an exercise about describing a person in a form of a story and by this day I think we had improved a lot our storytelling
Martin asked us to write a journal entry related to “Why you should study in Canada”, and my participation was this:
“To live in different country from where you were born is a totally challenge. You need to be brave enough to get out of your comfort zone and leave your family and friends. But the award is worth all the effort.
Life as a foreign is awesome!
You can meet new people from different countries; people fearless like you.
To study here gives you the funds to build a better future, to grow as a human being and become independent.
Maybe, you will have a lot of doubts and as near as the date approach, it will become a dilemma, so you need to have courage enough to continue forward, trust the process and make the jump.
Yesterday I wrote another journal entry. Martin asked us to write about our feelings in the moment the date of leaving our home is approaching:
“As the date was approaching, my feelings were changing from happiness to anxiety, then, to the illusion of the new beginning and the coming days. While everything was all joy, suddenly a feeling of fear for the new challenges, the job interviews, job haunting, money and the unknown used to settle in my mind for about 10 minutes, and later the loop begins again.”
Today we worked in our written assignment, I talked in front of the class about my happiest childhood memory and my other classmates talked about other different topics,
At the end of the session, we went to North Vancouver to have a time to relax and chill.
I have to mention that I found this module one of the most important and helpful of all the course.
This is my last month in Customer Service Diploma and I’m already missing my friends and teacher. I know that these months have been the most fruitful of my whole life. The things that I’ve learned and the practice that I had here helped me to find the job that I have right know and to build my dreamed life in Canada.
I would like to tank you Martin, for all your support as a teacher and your kindness as a friend. You’ve been one of the best teachers I’ve ever had and I will always be grateful with you, for building my confidence as a Canadian employee and showing the way to build good relations with clients by your tips and MLL.
Thanks for everything.