Twenty-Two Years of Classes

As I approach my final year in school, I have been reflecting on all my classes that I have taken.  Some of my classes were very interesting but had nothing to do with my major.  Other classes that were pertinent to my major have been completely useless to me and torturous to get through.  Now I know all subjects serve a purpose to help you branch out and learn more about the world.  Certain classes stick out in my head that have been favorites of mine.  Oddly enough, those classes had my favorite teachers.  If the teacher is passionate about the subject, he or she can make the most uninteresting subject amazing. 

Over the summer I took an investment class.  My professor was truly one of a kind.  Being a finance major some of the classes aren't the most lively because there is a lot of background you must learn in order to understand the subjects.  I thought investments would be one of these classes.  My professor, Professor Roth, truly loved his field of teacher.  He would come into class, start right on time, and speak with such enthusiasm.  He thought us important background details but we always touched on a lot of real world issues.  We would go over the movement of stocks by looking at The Wall Street Journal, and comparing them daily, monthly, and yearly.  He taught of class so many important things that he actually helped me get onto the track I’m on today.  Had I not taken his class, I would maybe have never found my interest in real estate.

One class that I don’t think I learned anything in was international business.  I know this is a very important topic and it can be quite an interesting subject, but my teacher was not engaging.  It was only offered as an online class, which I try to avoid because of the way I learn.  The material was in such a text book form.  Reading the material over and over again did not help me learn.  There were so many different things in the book that I couldn't understand on my own.  The online tests that we took were very long and covered so much material that I don’t know how anybody could have passed with an A.  If I had been an international business student, I would have switched my major.  Each subject has its own way of being interesting, but I truly believe that the teacher has the ability to turn it into something more.  

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Lisa has a lot of reading and writing for her job.  She is required to use the computer quite a bit.  Most communication is done online these days.  Lisa’s job has a range from reading emails to writing leases that involve the computer.  When she started at RentSFNow she had to learn quickly what was appropriate and what wasn't for writing emails.  Emails are a huge part of current jobs today.  Emails have a tendency to be informal since they are just a quick and easy way to communicate.  However, you must be careful with exactly how communication sounds because what could seem  perfectly fine may offend someone.  Here is some basic etiquette skills for emails.  Lisa must change the way she writes depending on who it’s to.  She would address a coworker differently than her boss or prospective tenants.  

Since emails are the easiest way to communicate, many people find themselves writing emails with incorrect punctuation and grammar.  A good way to learn the appropriate etiquette of an email is to look it up on the internet.  Here is a good site for email etiquette.  A lot of people that blog for personal reasons can get caught up on typing quickly and creating typos.  This also happens with personal emails.  It’s good to keep up a habit of always typing correctly. 

Lisa gets a lot of emails from people responding to her blog posts about certain apartment units.  She told me that she has seem some very weird emails that may discourage her from considering them as an applicant.  Lisa also always has to make sure that she is typing carefully and professionally when it comes to updating her blogs about buildings and units.  I wouldn’t take an ad seriously if it had numerous amounts of typos!  

 

The internet is evolving all of our lifestyles and it is simple to get caught up in common mistakes that can take place through email and blogging.  Just make sure you check up on yourself so it doesn’t become a habit!

A Day in the Life...

Lisa wakes up and starts the day with a cup of hot chocolate in hand and a lap top at her desk with two monitors attached.  Lisa is a leasing agent for a company called RentSFNow that works side by side an investment company called Veritas.  Lisa spends most of the morning returning emails about recent posts she’s put up on Craigslist and other networking sites that advertise the apartments that she is currently showing.  Not only does Lisa have to update current Craigslist posts, she also has to update their personal website for RentSFNow.  On this website, all of the apartments that are ready to be rented are on there as well as location, price, and amenities. Lisa’s goal is always to rent out the highest priced apartments—furnished and unfurnished.  She works with some of the most beautiful living spaces in San Francisco.  Her title is a leasing agent but she is also a property manager for a building where is resides for free.  Most of the agents are given these positions after working with the company for a bit.  She lives in a beautiful refurnished studio in cow hollow—free of rent.  I would definitely take this opportunity if it were given to me! While Lisa is returning her emails, she is also making up the rest of her schedule for the day to show apartments.  Since most people work during the day Lisa chooses to stay in the office for the first half of the day and then show apartment later when it is more convenient for her and her clients.  My goal is be break into real estate field.  I want to be getting people and families into beautiful apartments and houses that they will love and enjoy.  I really enjoy being hands on which is why Lisa’s job really appeals to me.  However it isn’t all hands on.  

 

There is a lot of admin work that Lisa has to get done.  Part of her time at the office is spent updating ads that are put out they have had recent price drops or putting updated posts on new apartments that are recently available.  She also has to update the status of vacant apartments.  This also means that she sometimes has to go to a certain apartment and take pictures and analyze it to come up with the decision to either fully remodel the apartment or just paint and clean it.  She enters all this information into a GoogleDoc and then sends to out to all the other leasing agents in the company.  Each leasing agent has their own admin work—the GoogleDoc is just Lisa’s assignment.  The leasing document Lisa works on daily doesn’t just have the status of upcoming apartments.  It also had all different kinds of information about each building including property manager names and phone numbers.  It also includes date of purchase, how many units in the building, neighborhoods, and historical rent.  

After Lisa receives an application from a prospective tenant, she has specific steps she needs to follow.   She receives their application and then has to run credit checks for all the prospective tenants and possible guarantors.  If the credit check comes back with a score of an A, then Lisa confirms the applicants are still interested in the apartment.  After this then Lisa puts together a lease through a program called Docusign.  It’s very specific regarding the rent, lease start and end date, signatures, etc. 

For the open houses or private showing, Lisa has to let the curious apartment hunters in the apartment and then help them with any general questions that they have.  Lisa answers questions about how her company decides who gets the apartment, where rent is paid, questions about utilities, and also questions about the surrounding area.  Other websites also have the available apartments available for the company.  I’m in a few real estate classes now so I’ve been learning about what Lisa can and cannot tell her prospective tenants about the apartment due to the integrity of brokers. 

Lisa’s job seems very interesting with a lot of room to grow within the company.  I’m very excited to learn more about this subject and I can’t wait to get into it myself!

Blog Analysis

Blogging is used for so many purposes.  It is a new phenomenon that is taking over the cyber world!!  Blogs are expression of yourself through your writing of a subject that is usually accompanied by links and visual aids.  There are different options for what you want in your blog.  

 

Here is an example of a blog I like: http://sfist.com/ .  This blog has a main topic of San Francisco.  I live in San Francisco so the subject interests me and I can really relate to this blog.  I like how unique this blog is because it actually breaks down itself into different categories: news, art and entertainment, and food.  There is section for each category with perfect visual aids that seem to be very current photos.  The visual appeal is what I first noticed about this blog.  Some stories and articles are even accompanied by a backup news clip to give even further information about the subject.  This is a great representation of a blog because of the visual appeal and the ability to take a reader further into the subject.

This next blog, http://worstseoblogever.wordpress.com/, really doesn’t impress me.  There are no visual aids and the subject seems to be not intriguing.  I took one look at this blog and decided to go onto another option.  After forcing myself to scroll through the blog, I have noticed that there is not one single visual aid.  I know we all pretend to have grown out of children’s books but come one, everybody loves pictures to go with what they are reading, especially when the subject is uninteresting.

So there you have it: blogs should be interesting and eye catching.  It’s nice to have a lengthy article once in a while, but short and sweet works too. 

Expression Evolution

               Expression through writing has always been growing and changing.  At first it was a slower growth, but it has evolved so much since the ink pen and the type writer.  We now have computers to type on and we have articles to read at our fingertips.  Since the internet has been invented, there has been a boom of information that’s now available to us in record speed.  There are no more library hunts to find information for research papers—it’s all online!  Newspapers used to be a huge place to turn to for information on what cars are on sale and what jobs are available.  It even had opinion and advice columns for those that were interested.   The newspaper is still around but there are so many other places to look for that kind of information.  Blogs have made a huge impression on our generation.  There are so many different types of blogs that you can choose from.  Blogs range for craft ideas to social media blogs.  Blogs are defined as a webpage that is frequently updated with posts appearing by newest post to the oldest according to “The Blogging Genre: Identity, Anonymity, and Consistency—Why We Blog.”  Some people compare blogs to journaling which can hold some truth.  A lot of people chose to put their journaling ideas into blogs and then give the option to the readers to post replies and comments on the entry.  This encourages interaction between the writer and readers. 

                Before blogging and even the internet were around, literature and books would hold a certain genre for what they were classified as.  They were categorized into different types such as romance, comedy, science fiction, horror, etc.  These are very simple classifications.  Each one is defined very differently than the other.  But since our writing during this new generation has grown and become more complex, the genres seem to be harder to determine.  So what exactly is the genre of a blog?  “Thoughts on Genre: Blogs and Genre” was arguing that blogs have their own genres within themselves.  The genres range from litblogs, political, techblogs, personal media blogs, etc.  This is interesting because it seems that so many people are trying to classify blogs into one big genre, but it turns out that sometimes there aren’t any similarities between two blogs except for that they are both considered blogs!  Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are all blogs for social media purposes which would be each blogs’ genre. 

Considering that there are genres within genres, blogs must be defined as a whole that links all blogs together.  In the article “An Attempt to Define Blogging as a Genre” the two main characteristics of a blog are links to articles or other blogs you are writing about and the comments the readers are contributing.  Blogging is never ending and it is meant for more of a social outlet than anything else.  Blogging is informal and personal.  These qualities have a positive reaction for the understanding of blogs.  Since blogs generally are accepting of responses and feedback, the writer and often times the readers begin to understand the topic better by rethinking the writing and offering counter ideas in the forum.  Blogs sometimes can seem like an open debate on the web.  Blogs attract followers and bring a personal connection between you and your readers which can also help you determine what information your readers want to be reading about and what issues matter to them.  Finally, with the writing and rereading and adding on to the original blog topic with other links and ideas, the writer tends to show reflection of the writing.  In general, all blogs hold these distinguishing factors which help to define the genre of a blog.  All blogs are about being open and ongoing.  They aren’t about the final product—blogs are about the development it takes to morph and idea into something larger.  Bloggers rely on comments and reflection from their readers to evolve their ideas.

                There are an overwhelming amount of art and music blogs that have surfaced.  To the naked eye it would seem that blogs are only around as an outlet for fun and entertainment.  However, there are quite a few scholarly blogs out there.  For students that are researching for papers and dissertations, they will turn to scholar blogs instead of entertainment and opinion blogs.  This is where the genre of an individual blog helps you figure out exactly where you need to look depending on what information you are seeking.  The genre of a scholar blogs holds more reliability for the information.  For example if I’m going to research about what is going on in real estate for the day, I would turn to The Wall Street Journal blog or The New York Times blog before looking for opinion blogs on the topic.