Halfway Reflection

1. This course has improved my ability to work on a specific schedule and manage my time better. I know I have a certain amount of assignments each week for this course, and I know I have to schedule a certain amount of time to be able to complete the assignments. I've also gained the ability to be more open and think about things in a more creative way.

2. The moments I feel like giving up are every time I go on canvas and see that an assignment wants me to interview a bunch of people and upload it to Youtube or SoundCloud. I guess what pulled me through was the fact that I have to complete this course to be able to graduate in the fall. The biggest motivation is knowing that you don't really have a choice! I don't really feel like I have developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months, but I don't think changing someone's attitude is as simple as taking a course and doing a bunch of assignments. I think my attitude can be very tenacious in certain situations and regarding certain things, but I am not sure if I could say that describes who I am all the time. I think some situations call for a tenacious attitude and some do not. I think it is important to have different attitude towards different things because you can't approach every situation the same way. Sometimes you need to be tenacious and sometimes you have to be a little surrendering. What it comes down to for me is being tenacious about things you're passionate about, while also being able to be more relaxed about some things that you really don't need to take as seriously.

 

3. The three tips I would give to next semester's students are: 1. Know what you're getting yourself into. This class is more homework than I have ever had in any class in college and that definitely is a pretty big deal. If you don't put yourself in the mindset of knowing you will have to do a bunch of work, you probably won't have a good time. 2. Set aside times where you know you'll be able to work on these assignments. Nothing is worse than repeatedly checking the assignment and reading it over and telling yourself you'll just do it later. It just makes you dread the assignment and probably rush it. 3. Have some fun with the class and be honest. My favorite part of the class is that I feel like I can give my opinions on subjects and not receive a worse grade because I have a different opinion. For instance, in other classes it might be wiser for an assignment like this to just lie and say that you developed a super tenacious attitude for the class because you know that's what the professor wants to hear, but I think being honest is more important in this class and that is a great thing. It also just feels nice to get your actual opinions out sometimes and feel like you're not being judged. I think all of these tips help foster a tenacious mindset because they allow you to immerse yourself in the assignments as much as possible.

Smig

The word I decided to use as my portmanteau was "smig." It is a combination of small and big, and I came up with it as an easier way of describing something as medium sized. Small and big are very short descriptive words that describe a specific attribute, and it seemed like describing things as "medium sized" didn't flow as well as small, big, or smig. So the definition of the world is essentially medium sized, in-between small and big.

I used the word for two weeks with my friends and family, and it didn't go very well in regards to people taking it seriously. I'm known as a pretty jovial person and whenever I would use the world people thought I was just messing with them at first. Eventually it caught on a little more and people would no longer laugh when I said it. In the second week people pretty much got used to it and would either just go with my use of it or make a comment on how the word is dumb or something. A few times my parents used the word back at me, which wasn't very surprising because I think they just assumed all the kids were saying it nowadays. I don't think the word is too awful; I just feel like my personality held the word's potential back because my friends would think I just wanted to trick them. Overall it was an interesting exercise and I enjoyed using the word.

Reading Reflection No. 1

Week 7:         Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

1. Steve Jobs is one of the most fascinating entrepreneurs I have ever heard of. I think what honestly surprised me most about him what his early life. I had no idea at all that Steve Jobs was adopted after his birth parents had to give him up due to religious differences essentially. It is crazy that he ended up being adopted by a man who worked in a field of engineering, and that may have opened the door to what Steve Jobs would end up doing for the rest of his career. I think I most admired his determination. It is just so difficult to work that hard for so long and continue to have faith in your product and yourself. It takes serious guts to work on something you believe in for so long, even when it isn't necessarily going very well for you all the time. I wasn't a huge fan of his handling of the his relationship with Chrisann and the birth of his daughter. I think he just overall could have handled the situation better, and he may have been a little harsh. Although Jobs was already very healthy by his early 20's, he still encountered a ton of adversity. Many times, he really just kept innovating and adapting. He was willing to try and test out new things and not be scared to fail, and I think that is one of the major reasons he was so successful.

2. The major competencies that I would say Steve Jobs exhibited would be his dedication to his dream and working hard, and his ability to constantly innovate and think at a level where other people weren't thinking. When you have someone who is extremely intelligent and extremely dedicated to a certain idea or business, I think that is the most important factor in him becoming so successful and reaching the degree of success that he did.

3. I was fairly confused about the exact situation between his original birth parents. I understand that they couldn't get married because of religious pressure, but was it necessary for them to give the baby up for adoption. I think I was just confused about their exact reasoning. Ironically, I think I found the most interesting parts of the book were about the drama surrounding his family life.

4. I would ask Steve Jobs, how you find the courage to just focus on your dream and your idea and put everything else behind you? I would ask this because I think a lot of people struggle with having an idea, but not being willing to take a risk and go all out on it. I would also ask him, what his advice for a young entrepreneur would be. I know that is boring, but if you get a chance to ask the one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time for his advice I think you have to. 

5. I think his opinion of hard work is that it's one of the most important aspects of being successful. You can be a genius who has brilliant ideas, but if you don't put enough effort into what you do you'll end up being unsuccessful.

 

Idea Napkin No. 1

1. My name is Jared Pape and I am from Longwood, Florida. I think some of my best skills are being able to adapt to most obstacles that are thrown at me, the ability to think critically and analyze situations, and the ability to get along with my peers in social situations fairly well. My aspirations more than anything are just to be in a place and a situation that makes me happy and to be surrounded by people that I enjoy and improve my life regardless of what my career ends up being. I think any business concept of mine, unless I eventually found something I was extremely passionate about, would be in my life probably mostly just as a source of income.

2. I planned on my product being an app that people can download on their phones that lets them organize recreational sports events for various different sports. I think it would be nice for people who enjoyed playing sports at a younger age for fun to be able to meet new people that enjoy similar things and have a great time playing sports without officially joining a team. I think it would be especially useful for sports like lacrosse, where it isn't as easy to enter the sport, and it's harder to find people that play it. So even if you and your friends don't have enough people to play a pick up game of soccer or kickball, you could find people that are interested in playing in your area.

3. I think the great thing about this app is it could cater to a lot of potential customers. I think it would most likely be used by men and women in their 20's and 30's to try to get out and be active and play a sport they maybe haven't played in a while. A lot of the customers would probably be people who had played a specific sport in high school or college.

4. I think customers would pay money to use this service because it would give them a great way to meet new people and get outside and get active. Not everyone likes going to the gym and running on a treadmill, so I think people could use this app to have some fun with people who enjoy a similar sport and be healthy at the same time.

5. I don't think there's currently an app like this out there. I think it would be important for the app to be able to separate people based on the degree of competition they want in the game because naturally some people are going to take sports more serious than others. I think it could be a great app because it could maybe have a group where locals just wanna meet up and drink and play kickball, and then it could also have a group where people play serious, competitive soccer games.

I think these elements work fairly well together. I think the biggest issue would be getting people on the app to begin with and getting it started. I think another potential issue could be safety, which is always going to be an issue when people are meeting up with strangers. I am also not sure the best way to monetize something like this would be, because obviously if there's a high price just to get the app it probably won't take off very fast.