Reflecting Blog Post for COMM 305

Part 1: See Insight

For the first part of this assignment I met online with a peer advisor for the ePortfolios. His name was Thomas Island and he was very patient with me while we underwent some technical difficulties with the webinar program. Together we reviewed my Wix site for the aesthetics, accessibility and functionality. Overall Thomas was impressed and after a complete review only had one minor comment, to add a PDF download version of my resume to the site. The funny thing is that I had my resume on site as a PDF originally and one of my previous class professors asked me to include it as a section instead. I have gone back and now added the PDF download version too. The only other area that my peer advisor and I touched on was meeting up again in four to six weeks to review my site and any progress that is made. I am looking forward to sharing my updates with him.

Part 2: Reflections on Curating my ePortfolio

My basic approach to curating my COMM ePortfolio WIX page is to continue to advance my professional brand through a well-designed and well-organized website. I hope that aesthetically my look & feel appeal to viewers and that my messaging conveys my experience in marketing communications. I feel relatively confident at this time; however, I know there are always area of improvement. If I could do it all over again I would select a different template. I also like the idea of being able to change my design based on my growth as a communications student and a professional marketer, but the guidelines of the courses specifically request that the overall design remains the same.

My life has been fairly well balanced overall between work, home and school. There are times when specific areas are more intense and take away from the other areas of my life. For example, when my work travel picks up it makes my school load more challenging to complete, as I have to be on the road and working from hotel rooms in between meetings during the day and dinners at night. Work travel also impedes on my personal life when I am on the road for a week at a time and have to leave all the personal responsibilities to my husband such as taking care of our home and our dog. The work-life balance is very important to me, but it is definitely an ongoing action.

I would like to see my professional self-intersect with my personal self in ways of self-growth and self-branding. This can be achieved through careful decision-making. I believe this becomes very relevant when thinking about how to position oneself on social media. Social media can be accessed by anyone and once something is posted online, it is there forever. That is why it is super important to be strategic with what you post and say in social media. You never know when it could come back to haunt you later.