Thoughtful Ramblings of Food and Science Nerd: A Semester in Review

Another semester has once again come to an end; I swear it comes quicker every year. Looking back over everything we covered I’m starting to realize how much I actually learned. I started ALES 204 believing I understood enough about social networking to get me through life. I had a Facebook and twitter account. I knew how to look up peer reviewed scientific articles. Wikipedia’s unreliability was not a surprise. I had even watched RIP: a remix manifesto so creative commons was already a part of my vocabulary. To summarize this rant, I felt very secure and informed in my ability to navigate social media sites. As a result of this confidence, I walked out of ALES204 after our first class and was a tad bit flippant. Who was this young women teaching me how to use twitter!? And why on earth does more than half my class actually needs to learn this!! Dr. Jessica Laccetti soon earned my respect and attention. Not only did she introduce me to vital professional sites like LinkedIn, but Dr. Laccetti slowly began to awake my passion for the growth and future of social media.

In attempting to write this final reflective blog post I literally “wasted” 3-4 hours. Why you may ask? Well, I really couldn’t pick one topic to focus on. As I started to look deeper and deeper into futurecasting, our final lecture, I began getting excited about all the amazing things to come. I was browsing a yahoo article that outlined the 7 things Stephen Abram, and international librarian, thinks will happen in 2012. Smartphones for all, commerce on Facebook and advertising via GPS and geotagging are just a few that blew my mind away. I don’t know if any of you have seen the move The Minority Report, but they were futurecasting in that movie. Check it out!

The Minority Report. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaiKsYUdvg

In the above scene is an example of geotagging, aka advertising tailored to the consumer. Abram predicts that businesses will be able to write a consumer profile for us and advertise directly through our phones based on that profile. That’s unbelievable! I can only imagine the opportunities as a dietician. A quick scan on google tells me you have frequented weightloss and fitness sites and from there I can sent you promotions that suit you. A world where you could be potentially at everyones finger tips.

But beyond the weird and wonderful, I really did learn something about professionalism and social networking. It no longer terrifies me to have more than one social profile on the Internet. Before ALES 204 I was worried I couldn’t maintain an Internet profile as professional as my performance in person. In fact, I am excited and enthusiastic about building on the basics I worked on in class. Detailing my CV, connecting to past, present and new employers on LinkedIn, blogging and discovering professional blogs related to my field, there is a world of new job opportunities I never knew I had. Alike the picture below, I have been given the musicians to orchestrate a job profile for employers all over the world.