Week 2 Blog Course Objectives

The course objectives are very important to my success not just in the course itself but also in my career. I believe that taking this course will help me develop better communication skills and the ability to properly manage larger tasks and use new time management methods to my advantage. Developing professional qualities from a class allows me to integrate professionalism into the workplace. Learning professional skills like cooperation gives me the chance to work with co-workers in a very professional manner and the better I'm able to work with others the higher my performance will be in the workplace. Higher performance could lead to raises or promotions.

Communication is of the utmost importance in my job. I am not the best at communicating and I am usually pretty quiet and keep to myself, but to be able to be successful in any career you must be able to communicate effectively. I could easily apply this to my work by being able to communicate with my boss and the farmers that need-to-know important information such as crop stand and problems in the fields. I'm hoping this class helps me to better articulate my thoughts on paper, which hopefully will carry over to verbal communication. 

Being a crop consultant, I have to be on top of my game. In the agriculture field there are so many new advancements. Forever changing chemicals and new seed types are constantly emerging. I have to learn knew knowledge every year, then integrate this new knowledge into my job and bring this information to the farmers to give them the highest quality services possible. Being able to properly communicate this knowledge from consultant to grower is imperative to providing high-quality services to the farmers in order for farmers to grow crops to the best of their ability. 

Managing projects are at the top of the food chain for a crop consultant. Each field is its own project that needs to be managed very diligently. Looking at the specifics for each field and not mixing them up with any of the other hundreds of fields that I have to manage. Learning management tactics in the classroom setting will allow me to be able to integrate them into the workplace. Managing several different farmers and fields will take more than just one class to be able to do it properly, but it will give me a good basis to start using proper management techniques.

Developing professionalism from a class will give me a good start before learning more from the work environment. Wandering blindly into my first interview would not be great, so being able to learn many basic skills from a class builds the groundwork to be able to learn even more from the work environment. A good way that I could easily learn new skills in the work environment would be if I could shadow any veteran employee.  They have so much knowledge to share and pass on to the younger generation of the workforce. If employees are able to communicate effectively and learn how to be professional from other employees, by bouncing ideas off of each other as a team, is a building block for success. Giving others effective strategies to succeed at work in a professional manner will also be beneficial.