I think going through this process of curating my ePortfolio helped me improve my professional presence significantly. Before my ePortfolio was very basic and it didn’t look all to professional. After curating it and personalizing it more it has grown more professional. I do believe this more professional look will help me in the future. There wasn’t a whole lot in my ePortfolio at first. There was a bland background and a few pictures of me. The organization wasn’t the best. When I curated it, and changed the background to look nicer and changed the types of picture I had of myself to look more professional but still tell a story, I think it improved the overall concept of my ePortfolio. My favorite part of my portfolio is, honestly, the whole thing. I can’t pick one part that I like over the others. However, the background picture might be my favorite aspect of the portfolio. I never really wrote blog posts on here before but now that I have I feel they bring more substance and a personal aspect I didn’t have on here before. I have learned that the blog posts will, in the future, allow me to keep an update of my endeavors throughout the rest of my college career. The most challenging part of this process was curating the aesthetic look of the portfolio. Having to make sure that the background looks nice but also allows the views to be able to clearly read all the information was a long process. Figuring out what kind of pictures to put on the about me page was a bit difficult because they had to show a bit about me and at the same time have a professional feel still. For those going into the ePortfolio process for the first time you must know that it is not as easy as it sounds. Although you might think it’s easy to make something look aesthetic it’s not. I spent multiple hours going through different layouts, images, fonts, and colors to make it look as nice as I could. One suggestion that I think helps my portfolio is adding papers that you have worked on in other classes that show your academic skills and knowledge. Having these other works, especially if they are in different forms will help to give future employers a wide range of your abilities.
Nonverbal Communication as a whole was very interesting. I learned a lot about aspects of communication that I wasn’t aware of before. It has made me more observant of my nonverbal behaviors and cues. To make sure I am giving off the correct impression. It has also allowed me to see more into other people’s nonverbal cues and behaviors. Which has made it easier to understand people and relate to them in a more personal way. Taking this class ensured me that I am in the right major for me. Being able to have these skills to understand people in a deeper way will be incredibly helpful in a future career. The short film analysis was such a fun paper to write. I found it very cool to be able to tell what is going on in a movie just by looking at nonverbal behaviors. I would have never thought about the nonverbal behaviors affect how we interpret films as much as they do. I feel having to analyze and interpret this film through nonverbal behaviors allowed me to be able to apply these behaviors to my real life and interpret what is really going on and if a person’s nonverbal match what they are saying verbally. I think this course has and will benefit me in my future career. With all the things, I have learned I can bring them into my everyday life to improve my communication skills to be appropriate for the situation.