Towson University

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It's that time of the year for juniors in college! My friends and I are all either looking for internships for the summer or have just found out that we got one. It is such a stressful time because this is really the only time that we have for internships if we want to get jobs right out of school after we graduate, so we have been applying like crazy and going on all of these interviews and being stressed out while still having all of our homework to deal with.

I think it is hard because a lot of us are looking for medical jobs or something in that field after we graduate, like pharmacy or optometry and it is hard to find an internship or a job before you graduate without any experience. It is hard to get experience though if you need it to get a job in the first place, it really is frustrating.

I was also surprised to see how much effort they put into things like background checks and drug testing. I felt like I was interviewing for the FBI when I interviewed for a position at a nursing homes pharmacy clinic. I can defiantly see why they take these precautions, you can never be too careful and I don't have anything to worry about, I passed both, but it is an eye opener as to how people view the world now and how they need to be so careful.

Thankfully though I just got an internship doing something that I want to do in the future which is really exciting (and I relief for my dad I think ha) but I can't wait for the summer to start. It will be weird though having to work every day from 9am to 5pm like a real adult. I am so used to getting up at random times and working at the computer lab between classes and making my own schedule. And if I didn't want to or couldn't work I could just call someone to fill in for me or tell my boss and she would clear it. This summer will defiantly be something new for me, but also something exciting (and maybe a little bit scary) but I definitely can't wait to get up in the morning and put on my white lab coat and go to work!!

To be honest, before I saw the words oscommerce hosting in the Google search results when looking something else up, I had no idea what it meant and I had never seen them before. So I was curious to learn what oscommerce was and I looked it up online (I am definitely terrible at computers but I have gotten really great with googling info! Ha)

Oscommerce hosting allows people and businesses to create both small and large ecommerce websites. There is even a website with the top sites on it. The website is great because all on one site you can compare ten different hosts as well as their prices, web space, traffic, domain name, and even read reviews from other people that have used or visited. On this particular website most of the reviews are great ones because they only have the top ten sites listed. But when you go to other sites you can find people negatively reviewing them which is good because you can get honesty about the product that not all companies will give you before you put your time and maybe money into it.

My favorite part though when I was looking into the oscommerce hosts was the part with the templates. There are websites full of oscommerce templates that people can use for their businesses or companies website. Some of them are really plain and more businesslike and appropriate and others are fun and colorful. They serve for a large number of clients and some are even custom made like ones for computer companies or jewelry stores. It is interesting to see how the templates that are given on the website for certain things like jewelry really do look like a lot of the websites that jewelry stores have.

Overall though these websites can help you research into different hosts and templates and decide which the best is for you and your companies and which fits your needs the best. You need to decide what your company is looking for in a website (serious, playful, funny, and professional) and then go from there. But thankfully we live in a day and age where you can do basically everything online with just a couple of clicks with the mouse so it shouldn't be too hard and after seeing all of the cool templates it kind of sounds like a little bit of fun too!

My sister just lost her job and doesn't have much of a savings to fall back on, so obviously she is watching every dime that she spends. I took my niece Harley while my sister went on a job interview last week, and she showed me her danceware. She had the cutest little outfit, but I could tell she had it for a while and it was beginning to look a little worn and tattered. I decided that since I had just got back my tax refund that I would take her to the store and get her some new danceware and some custom ballet shoes. Well, after we had her measurements done, we found some incredible items that were half off and so we picked up some incredible dance outfits and shoes. After that we decided to go to McDonalds for lunch, which was a lot of fun.

I don't have any children of my own, but having Harley in my life is a wonderful way to enjoy having kids without actually having them. A few people actually thought I was her mom, but that's okay with me. After all, she is a great little kid and we have such fun together. Having kids can be really expensive, so I think that it will be a while before I have any of my own, but I am so enjoying watching Harley grow up. She will be having a recital in just a few weeks, and I am really looking forward to it. I am actually working on a scrap book for her, that I will give to her when she is older, that documents most of the big events in her life.

When we got home, Harley put on a fashion show for her mom, and my sis was thrilled. She thanked me over and over again, which I assured her was not necessary. And the best news of all, she said that the interview went really well, and although she will have to wait to hear back from them, she thinks that she got the job and it actually will pay her more than her old one. I know that will really help them out.

As a college student I guess you could say I have a spirit of someone of another generation. I look around me every day on campus and the things I see people doing much of the time seems to go against the whole purpose of us being here. The attitude that people often bring to class makes me feel like an outsider because I think that if is important to have fun but the main purpose of us all being here gathered together is to grow and become professionals and responsible adults for the next generation of this country to be a better place. Unfortunately I don't think most other students either feel this way or ever even consider their behavior to be an area where they need to grow. Instead they think that academics is everything, when in reality that is just not true.

That having been said, I want to also say that I have thought about this a lot because I am going to become an educator. Even among people in my education classes, I am one of the few people who reads reports from the U.S. Dept. of Education. I guess I am just of the mindset that I must make the best of this experience, and every experience for that matter, and in doing so I will come out of the other end with skills needed to handle my own classroom. A big part of what I am trying to do with my spare time is to get some independent online training. Online computer training is super important for anyone going on to something professional in the future, but for teachers it is quite important as a tool within the developing educational atmosphere. The Growth of e-learning in today's classroom is such a big deal that many of my professors feel that it is just as important to understand your subject areas as it is to understand how to use technology properly. By the time my own future students reach their professional careers their training with technology may be the most important skill they learn before going to college. Elearning is something that is undeniably part of the future for us as educators and we must make ourselves prepared to teach in that world.

I was watching a documentary on TV about the history of marketing and advertising. It was interesting to see (like when they actually had war ads) all of the ways they advertised before they had all of the media that they have now.

Today we are so used to getting mobile marketing sent right to our phones. Or we go online and we print off coupons to bring in to the stores or open our email to a ton of ads. I feel like the mobile marketing association really has us down. I probably check my email about fifteen times a day (at least) and I have my phone on me all day everyday and even when I sleep I turn it up to make sure if someone calls or text messages me that I can hear it and wake up. So it is no surprise that mobile advertising is on the rise right now.

I read on this website called www.advancedtele.com that there is even text message dating that people are involved in. It is so scary to think how much people depend on their phones now. I remember at a family party last year my grandpa was telling my sister and me about this time right after he got his license when he was 16 when the car broke down. The first thing I said was, how long did it take your dad to get there when you called him and my grandpa just looked at me and my dad and they both laughed at me. It is weird to think that they dealt with all of their problems without a cell phone. When my tire goes flat I immediately call my dad and I would seriously have no idea what to do if I couldn't (but I guess that is just the day and age that we are in right now).

We use our phones to look up directions or to find phone numbers to places or even to check movie times. It is sad, but true that if I didn't have my phone for more than a day or two (and this goes for almost everyone I know, including my parents and maybe even my grandparents now) I don't think I would feel safe. I use it so much that I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have it with me. I guess it does make sense that companies are using phones for advertising, people use them more than they read or watch TV now!