14-20 October Reflections

Last week’s reading and activities covered WtW Chapters 6 and 13, the Herrick reading, the Recommendation Report PowerPoint, and the Proposal PPT.

Our next project involves making a proposal on a research and drafting a recommendation report on an investment strategy to proceed with. This week’s WtW readings provide a great resource to prepare us for the Dr. Nerd project. From Chapter 6 I learned how to conduct research for a document. I especially enjoyed reading the section on evaluating research sources. While the Internet provides myriads of resources on every topic imaginable, it is often difficult to determine the credibility of these sources. An Chapter 13 provided guidance on writing proposal, which, again, comes very handy as we have a research proposal to write in relation to the Dr. Nerd project. I appreciate the fact that real life examples are provided in WtW in great abundance.

Jeanne Herrick’s article And Then She Said: Office Stories and What They Tell Us addresses a widely entertained notion that men and women talk differently in the workplace. Herrick argues that the differences are mostly due to factors other than gender. Specifically, she uses the example of two business women that demonstrated completely different talk styles and yet they both were women. According to Herrick, such factors as ethnicity, race, education, age, and professional background may play a greater role then gender. From my experience, and based on her argument, I tend to agree with Herrick’s conclusions.