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Jeff Park

Mr. Speice

Independent Study and Mentorship

4 October 2019

Reflection on Business Symposium

Research Assessment 4

Date: 4 October 2019

Subject: Business Symposium

As expected, I am encountering a lot of failure in my attempts to contact professionals.

However, I was quickly getting discouraged despite the reassurances that I would be fine if I

kept trying. Attending Business Symposium has helped change that. Business Symposium was

an eye-opening experience to networking, and it has given me a lot more confidence in my

ability to reach out to people.

One of the highlights of the event was being able to talk with ISM students from other

high schools. Since it was an environment where everyone was encouraged to talk to each other,

it was a lot of fun being able to talk to many students in a short period of time. Through this, I

was able to quickly build connections in LinkedIn, which will hopefully aid in my search for

professionals to interview. Talking to other students gave me confidence in my ability to interact.

The students from the other schools are still strangers, but they all have a common goal in mind

of growing, which helped in facilitating communication. Despite how advanced they all seemed,

I realized that they were all normal people, and I realized that there was a lot I could learn from

them. For future reference, I will use my new ISM connections if I ever feel like the resources I
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have are not enough. I also got a lot of feedback about the way I carry myself, so I believe that

now I would be able to talk to strangers with a lot more ease than before. Now, when I do cold

calls and look up professionals, I will have access to more people and have the hope to continue

trying.

The professional interviews gave me a lot of insight on the career I am researching and

the ISM program in general. An ISM II student told me to not burn myself out trying too hard on

my research. This is reassuring because I felt pressured to do something grand, so being told to

regulate my efforts gave me a lot of comfort. This has taught me to be mindful of the effort I put

into ISM because I imagine that if I am not mindful, I would quickly burn myself out. I have a

history of trying too hard on certain topics, so I will keep track of this in the future. The software

developer told me to make sure to fully understand concepts instead of just memorizing

everything. This information did not seem particularly useful to me, but he gave me an idea of

the type of mindset a software developer needs to have. This should allow me to better

understand the reasoning behind the software people I interview in the future.

Overall, the ISM Business Symposium was an enjoyable experience that gave me many

new connections and confidence in interacting with both students and professionals. Using this

experience, I will be in a better position to reach out to people. I hope to have a smoother ISM

experience from this point on.