Friday was another enjoyable group day. It is always difficult to "stack" speakers, but you did an excellent job of maintaining attention and courtesy to the folks who took time from their professional responsibilities to come and share their ideas and thoughts about their careers with you.
Please reflect on Friday's experience and tell me one important, interesting and/or new idea, fact, or bit of information you learned from one or more of the speakers. Spend a few sentences explaining why you chose to write about that item.
Did any of the speakers pique your interest in a potential new career field?
I thought that Friday was a great experience to learn first hand from people and their careers. It was exciting to see their positivity, and it seemed like they were eager to tell us about their jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe presentation I liked the most was the two speakers from the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. They were the ones who had the most believability about their passion for their jobs. I thought it was pretty amazing that she was able to coordinate 75 events per year and that he had been around in the business for more than 10 years. The fact that they were able to get past so many hurdles in their jobs was perfect evidence that they were happy with their jobs.
I feel like I learned a lot about different career fields in the area on Friday. They were all very enthusiastic and that definitely made their talks more interesting to listen to.
ReplyDeleteI was very impressed with the architects that talked with us. Though I'm probably not going to pursue architecture, it was cool to see how architects plan out buildings and the time and effort that is put into something as seemingly ordinary, at least architecturally, as a school building.
I thought that the group day on Friday was a great experience to learn about the variety of careers that different interns are exposed to. It was exciting to hear about the projects that some speakers were working on, and to feel their enthusiasm.
ReplyDeleteI was very impressed by the group of architects that spoke with us. Since I'm interning at an architectural firm, it was interesting to see how their software contrasted to the stuff I'm using. I found that Autodesk Revit looked a lot easier to use than the current software I'm using, AutoCAD, because of the features it has. It's amazing how something so abstract, such as software on a computer, can help construct an entire building like a school.
Although it was difficult to sit through multiple guest speakers, I really enjoyed the layout of Friday's events. My favorite guest was Mr. Karantonis. His visit enabled me to discuss a fairly controversial project with one of its head coordinators. I also liked that we actually went out and walked around the neighborhood surrounding the Career Center. That was a great way to see how life has changed and developed in Arlington. I found it really interesting that there were apartments from the early 1900s ("Garden Apartments") mixed in with buildings so modern that there are grocery stores in the actual building. Also, it helped that the weather was nice and not too hot :)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed listening to the different speakers on Friday, not only to learn more about their careers, but to understand how they got to that point in their lives.
ReplyDeleteI found the Biologist's talk to be very interesting. I never appreciated the great quantity and diversity of species living around the GW Parkway. Also, I find it stunning that there are so many different species that humanity is currently unaware of. Though it is not something I see myself pursuing in the future, I would be interested in learning more about the GW Parkway's environment.
I really liked hearing the architects speak. I thought it was interesting that so much more goes into designing a building than just drawing the walls and windows. I liked when they talked about the process of rebuilding the country club because I knew exactly what they were talking about. I also liked how excited the National Park service guy was about his job. Even though a lot of people might say his job is boring or gross, I found that his satisfaction for his job made me want to go out and try some of the volunteer activities he mentioned. Although I found the speakers interesting, I don't think I was inspired enough to do any of their jobs.
ReplyDeleteI didn't find any one speaker significantly more interesting than another because, besides my mentors, none of them were from career fields that particularly interest me, and that didn't change for me on Friday. It was interesting hearing some of the speakers different perspectives, for example the doctor's take on her practice. I've always wondered why some doctors are opposed to prescribing medicine to patients, it just seems ironic, but hearing why she helps her patients the way she does was interesting. It's hard to think that just drinking more water can help somebody enough to take them off half of their medications, but hearing her stories was interesting since it was something new to me.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Friday's events more than I thought I would. I gained a new appreciation for Arlington as a city and a community. I never realized how specifically cities were planned.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite speaker was Dr. Shum-Brady. I thought everything she had to say was really interesting. I liked her idea that what we needed to focus on was staying healthy instead of just prescribing medicine to fix problems. If we can eat right and stay healthy naturally we won't need that medicine in the first place. I also liked her moral reasons for doing the work she does. Her practice probably didn't make a lot of money to begin with, but it makes her happy because she is helping other people.
I found the park ranger to be the most entertaining speaker. Although his job isn't something I would really want as a career, he was very excited about it loved his job, which is always a great thing. The doctor made some interesting points during her speech as well. The fact that she completely changed careers years after she graduated from college is reassuring in that if you find yourself in a career you don't like, it is possible to find something completely different. Nobody really inspired me towards a specific career field, but they did make many helpful points.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite speaker was Mr. Karantonis. I liked his talk since his career field, economics, interrests me. I found it to be interresting when he was talking about economies of scale and the best way to design neighborhoods. He is obviously very smart. I also liked how he showed us some of the different types of area planning in Arlington as it was nice to be able to stand up and walk around.
ReplyDeleteI believe Friday was a great experience to hear from a variety of speakers who got to their job today in many different ways. I learned a lot more about where we live, different occupations that are not always seen by the everyday eye, and the wide assortment of career paths that are possible to take.
ReplyDeleteA piece of information that I found the most interesting is the career path of Dr. Shum-Brady. I learned that it is not always too late to pursue a dream job and your life does not always have to have a "set in stone" career path if you don't want it to.
My favorite thing about this day is that almost everybody has a different favorite thing! How great is that?!
ReplyDeleteI was most impressed by our first speaker, Mr. Karantonis. He was very friendly and had a lot to say. I thought it was nice that he started by letting us share what we did. Through that I found out a lot more about my fellow PRIME interns. Also the walking portion was thought provoking and made me specifically think about what has to go into a reconstruction project like that. I also had no idea that there was a project about putting a street car on Colombia Pike. What I liked most about his presentation was that he did not only talk about himself he talked about his career so it would directly relate to us.
ReplyDeleteI enjoys hearing Takis Karantonis talk to us first thing in the morning. I've spoken to him many times and have worked with him and many capacities, but what never ceases to amaze me is his constant enthusiasm and passion for what he's doing. He seems to have one of the most rewarding jobs around, as he strives to create a community that is both new and functional, but one that still caters to every type of people with every type of lifestyle. I really enjoyed listening to him talk to us and learned a lot from him about the future of out county.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed what Doctor Shum-Brady had to say. There were two things that I took away from her talk. First, It's never too late to change careers. She did medical school a lot later in life than most doctors, and arguably got a better schooling experience. Second, you don't have to work for a big corporation to be successful; she was self-employed and in many ways an entrepreneur. I hope I can be as happy as her in my future careers.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by many of the speakers but I was especially interested in a certain piece of information that Dr. Shum-Brady said. She went to NOVA and experienced a closer relationship with her teachers than kids that went to Ivy League schools and had to sit through huge lectures. Now for her that may have been very true, but it strikes me as odd since colleges are always advertising that they have a high faculty to student ratio and that a majority of their classes are 20 kids and under. Also, NOVA being a community college, it would be quite huge and would be opposite of the Ivy Leagues. However, I think that since Dr. Shum-Brady was in pre-med at NOVA, and many NOVA students don't have those aspirations, she was quite lucky.
ReplyDeleteThe most valuable thing I learned from Friday was from the speech Dr. Shum Brady gave. While I have no real interest in the medical field, I liked how she told the full story of her education, and it was the epitome of how flexible your academic and career paths can be. She was able to go back to school as an adult where she was able to not only study what she wanted but afterwards go on to actually employ herself in the career of her choice. Its good to know that with some persistence you can work to do something you want.
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ReplyDeleteIt was a great experience on Friday to listen to five speakers because it allowed me to hear about many careers in Arlington that I might never have thought of before. A speaker I especially enjoyed listening to was Mr. Karantonis because he works on improving Columbia Pike for everyone in Arlington and I never really gave much thought before to how much work goes into it. It was nice that Mr. Karantonis tried to keep us engaged by asking about our internships and to name different cities for him to tell us about. I also liked the biologist’s presentation on Turkey Run because he was very excited to speak to us and was prepared with a slideshow that taught us about different insects. The speakers from the architectural design firm piqued my interest as a potential career field. I was intrigued by it before, so their presentation with an actual model made me want to learn more.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at how interesting all the jobs sounded, even ones I previously had no interest in, like the Park Service, were nice to hear about. They were great to learn about, but now I'm even more confused since there are so many possible choices. Every single person there seemed incredibly passionate about what they did, and thus their presentations were interesting. I may have enjoyed the architects the most, although it's hard to choose. Their computer program seemed like it would be a lot of fun to create buildings with, and, as someone who loves statistics, very informative. I'd just love to play around with that.
ReplyDeleteWhat particularly piqued my interest about today is Mr. Karatonis' talk about Columbia Pike and Arlington's history, because it is always good to know more about where I live! One interesting thing I learned is that Columbia Pike might be home to streetcars in the future! The most remarkable thing I learned however was that someone in PRIME will be naming a bug, which is so cool! Perhaps the speakers would be a little more engaging if we had little breaks in between!
ReplyDeleteI found the Biologist's speech to be very interesting, because I never realized that our area was so biologically diverse. I always thought that to be in the field of zoology, you needed to go to the rainforest or Africa, but never thought about how there are so many different species all around us. I can definitely see myself going into this field, because I love biology.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed hearing from the different speakers and liked that the jobs were so diverse. My favorite speaker was Dr. Shum-Brady because of the unique path she took to becoming a doctor and the type of medicine that she practices. I found it very interesting how she found her career later in life and how she actually did her missing Pre-Med requirements at NOVA so that she could apply to medical school. Her methods of treating patients was also interesting because she said she tries to care for the whole patient which includes both mental and physical. It was great to hear a different perspective on medicine.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to hear about the street car they are trying to put on Columbia Pike. My dad is actually involved in that decision to some degree, and I had heard him talk about it before, but I sort of wrote it off as something that would probably never happen. A street car on Columbia Pike just sounded so out there to me, but after listening to the discussion on Friday, I can imagine it now. I think it's a very cool idea, and I hope it works out.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to hear about different careers in Arlington that I wouldn't have immediately thought about. All of the speakers seemed to really enjoy their jobs, which reflected in their presentations. I was surprised how much thought and planning went into Columbia Pike. Mr. Karantonis' presentation was more interesting than I thought it would be since i had never considered a career in the field. I also enjoyed going outside and walking around since it was a nice break.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to see some careers that are in Arlington and how the speakers got to do the career that they were in. I was surprised to learn about how late some people choose to go into there career and how advanced planning software for architecture is.
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