My First Job

1.       1. The worst paying job I ever had was working at ROSS (Dress for Less).

     Some of my primary responsibilities were as followed:

•             Do all sales and return transactions

•             Assist customers finish their purchase politely and courteously

•             Maintain the daily balance of my register 

This job in particular wasn’t enjoyable to me most of the time because after a while the manager wasn’t cooperating with me on a certain level so I started to take the initiative and slowly accept things the way he wanted them done. This process became a constant nagging and I started to get irritated in a nonresponsive manner. Eventually I quit because I felt that was my best option rather than waking up to a job I wasn’t able to enjoy. Actually I acquired a lot of skills that can be useful in my internship from ROSS such as: 

·         Having patience (even in ridiculous measures)

·         Staying focused on site while working

·         Keeping a positive attitude

·         Using my resources (reporting to the boss about incidents and listening to other co-workers while they gave me feedback)

·         Open to learn and master any task that was given to me

·         Doing what was best for me overall

The lessons that I learned from working there was to expect the unexpected, go with your first best instinct, and understanding how to work with people in general whether it was with staff or your customers. I also learned that I handled myself pretty well knowing that ROSS was my very first job I ever had.  At the end of the day I know gave outstanding customer service while it lasted so it was a great experience to have.

"Freaknomics" Review

“Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is about different situations leading to circumstances that vary and statistics to back it up. I believe the author wrote this book to explain and break down the different situations so that us readers can understand and see it from another perspective. The book also has statistics to show how bad the situation can be and how it affects everyone even if we don’t know it. On page 148,from the chapter “What Makes a Perfect Parent” the first passage caught my eye because the author writes about how the baby’s early life as in his or her first two years the brain is critical and should be allowed to just play out. By playing out I mean, if a baby was to cry the baby shouldn’t immediately be held and should cry for about 15-30 minutes because his or her mind needs to stimulate correctly. This passage specifically left a good impression because it makes sense and is very true. The effect like I said earlier should play out by itself. The reason why I chose this passage in particular is that I’ve noticed that every time my godson would cry when he was a baby I would always pick him up so that he wouldn’t cry, when really I should have allowed him to cry. Therefor I learned something new and I take it in full consideration now. Would I recommend this book to anyone? I’m going to have to say that I would definitely recommend this book to someone because it’s interesting and the chapters are really in depth.

My Process of Reading

Reading has been going great so far. Some active reading strategies that I have employed are using my free time to read, only because I’m interested in the book I’m reading in particular.  I also have employed to relate to some of the perspectives within the book and use it to my knowledge. Annotation is when while you’re reading any type of text or diagram and as your reading along, you write down whatever thoughts, questions, or concerns you may have at the moment. It’s as if you’re writing your creating and jotting down your own opinion or thoughts that you have concerning the text. To me, annotating was a big help because it gave me a clearer understanding of the text and where I need to understand the text.  Some advice I would give to a reader is to annotate and go over what you read and take your time with understanding the text. Unless you are specifically assigned to skim through some text you should never want to rush, make sure  your reading thoroughly because then you wouldn’t be able to get the message or story behind it. I make sure I give myself time during the day to catch up on the reading and spend it wisely so that I don’t fall behind. For example, 20-25 minutes a day is my set and active goal and when I feel that I have time to read more I can deviate my reading for more than twenty-five minutes. I personally like to read in my room sometime before I go to bed.