Emilie CO #5

Date: October 25th, 10:50 - 12:30 | Speaking w/Olivia James

This ended up being a very unstructured albeit somewhat entertaining class--even though I was an observer, really I ended up being more of a participant, haha! The class was supposed to center around elevator pitches and while some of the students had prepared their own elevator pitches, the class time focused on helping a student who actually needs to give a pitch to a professor soon in order to get funding for his Master's degree. He and the teacher practiced on Zoom and the class gave advice; however, it was clear a more direct approach was needed and in the end the teacher, me, and another student modeled an interview for him so he could see what we meant. We emphasized that he should be mostly listening and responding to the other person, not focusing on a prepared statement or what he wants to say. There was also intense debate about whether he should use his legal name or the name he commonly goes by; in the end we settled on the legal name which I hope won't prove an issue in case anyone accidentally brings up the nickname. It was my personal opinion that while we should use the legal name, it may be beneficial or even just inevitable to bring up the nickname eventually and that most people can/should be able to hold multiple names for their friends. If an (American) friend refuses to put in the effort to learn someone's preferred name, they're a lacking friend, in my personal opinion. However, we wanted to use the legal name as it sounded more "professional" for the resume. I hope his interview goes smoothly!

Key Takeaways: It's very important for everyone to come to class on time as we had some issues with partners for conversations arriving late. We also had some issues with Zoom, underscoring the importance of both teachers and students learning technology in today's world.