Last Post!

For the last post, provide your fellow students with a brief description of how you felt overall about your experience. Would you do it again? Would you recommend one of them try to work there? Use this as an opportunity to provide a brief glimpse into your final term paper, which your fellow students will not get to see. Make sure you read other's post and comment on at least one person's post. It can be anything job related.  Finally, tell me what you would have done differently if you were the supervisor. Saying nothing is a fine answer.

Prompt #4

A lot of discussion in business journals lately revolves around the impact of upward social influence tactics. Upward social influence tactics can be understood as the way subordinates (you guys) attempt to positively impact the relationship with the supervisor in order to improve their own ability for promotion. Some believe influence tactics are strictly conscious while others believe that sometimes an individual might perform influence tactics without necessarily knowing it. An example of an influence tactic would be to ingratiate yourself to your supervisor by always complementing their work. Another influence tactic might be always staying late or being their early. Or, you may be the first to volunteer for a job nobody else wants to do. Do you in your job notice yourself purposefully engaging in social influence tactics? In what way have you performed social influence? Do you believe it is having a positive effect on your relationship with your supervisor? Have some tactics backfired?

Prompt #3

There has been a lot of debate among scholars regarding the changing relational aspects of organizational behavior. Specifically, scholars have been interested in the idea of individuals working together in "teams." As part of your internship, how often are you expected to work together with other interns or supervisors? If you often work in a group with others, have you had to deal with others not pulling their own weight? How do you make sure you do your part without encroaching on your group members creativity? If you have not worked in teams, do you wish you were working in a group? Are you happy working independently. Also, feel free to share any other thoughts that you have.

Prompt #2

Talk a little bit about your experience so far. Have you enjoyed your job? Is it what you expected? Are your bosses treating you fairly? Have you encountered a situation you were not prepared for? Do you have any advice for handling awkward situations? Feel free to discuss whatever you want (related to your internship of course).

Prompt #1

For your first prompt, I would like you all to introduce yourselves to one another. Clearly, you should not use your names, but instead you can come up with a nickname for yourself or just not refer to yourself in the Lebron James 3rd person way (watch this to see what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrd9T-hny84).What I want you to do is explain your internship to your classmates. What are you doing for your internship? What kind of workload do you anticipate having? What do you hope to get out of the internship? What kind of hurdles do you think you may have to overcome? What job would you ultimately like to have? What do you think you need to do to get to that point?

Go into as much detail as you can and feel free to respond to each other. Make sure to check the responses every once and awhile to see if someone asked you a question. It would be rude not to reply in turn. I look forward to hearing your responses. Let me know if you have any questions. 

Due: Wednesday, September 7th.