I Did It!
My ePortfolio has been a valuable tool during my educational career--having it provides a platform for me to showcase my writing abilities and talents. I have received excellent feedback from Dr. Beck regarding the layout and content which has made it more visually appealing.
EPortfolios are excellent supplements to one’s professional life. Beyond interviews, beyond resumes, beyond exchanging business cards, ePortfolios provide information about talents, abilities, interests, and skills. It provides the opportunity to offer as much or as little extra information I choose, and I can share the link at my discretion. Upkeep is a necessity. A sloppy ePortfolio is indicative of a lack of attention to detail—definitely not a quality one wants to portray to potential employers or clients. Maintaining it and keeping it updated will help me as a small business owner and the acquisition of clients. My course projects page will transition to service tiers and testimonials as I build my business.
The main project taught me two significant things: Dr. Beck doesn’t mess around with assignments, and I am fairly astute even at 3:00 a.m. as long as I have good chocolate. A semester’s worth of work in 19 days, hundreds of pages to read, blog posts, ePortfolio updates, three exams, two part-time jobs, full-time care for my daughter, Chamber of Commerce meeting, Christmas and New Year’s Eve family gatherings, two doctor’s appointments, cooking, cleaning, laundry, paying bills, and maintaining a household.
And I did it.
Despite being sleep deprived and looking rather haggard, I enjoyed the concentrated research I did for the proposal. The information I found will be used at a later date for a work project—a Power Point presentation for the board and executives to demonstrate the value and necessity of parental support in the development of family service plans.
What would I have done differently with the project? I would have stayed focused on the assignment instead of getting lost in virtual, library, rabbit holes in my pursuit of more information. Studies fascinate me, I relish statistics (even though I don’t understand them fully), and I’m passionate about helping people. EBSCOhost is like a gold mine to me, and the only reason I am sad to be graduating in December is because I’ll no longer have access to it.
What I did that was most valuable was to hire my back-up nurse 3 full days—one day each week--to focus on reading. So much reading. I absolutely love to read, and the only thing I was concerned about was my retention rate since it was so much information at one time. I completed most of the writings in the wee hours of the night and early hours of the morning as my daughter slept, so that worked out well.
This class has been tremendously enlightening and has provided information that I will be able to take into one of my jobs. I’m happy I took it and I enjoyed having Dr. Beck as a professor again. Now that I’ve accomplished it, my two final courses seem like a cake walk, and I’m pretty darn proud about getting through it if I do say so myself.
