Final

Final post
Not really a good post. I ended up going home last week end to sort some things out thinking that I had to give a group presentation on fri (today) instead I missed the lecture and did not get assigned a time slot which means no final coursework entry

There was an email 3 hours before the lecture saying this but that not really helpful when people are in another lecture and are travailing after. It may as well have been sent 5 minutes before the lecture.

Week 10

The lecture today was about security and privacy. Which I have been learning about since I’ve been learning about computers and ict in school (a long time)
It also happens that my group chose encryption as a subject for a computer networks coursework.
Its lectures like these that make me sometimes think that they are for people with practicaly no experience in computing. Just a short entry today as I have allot of coursework deadlines coming up.

Also had to find partner for last coursework took a while as didn’t all the people I did no were in groups. I guess I wouldn’t have minded a list of every ones names or something.

Week 8

The second piece of course work was due yesterday.
This time we had been made to mark to finally year student’s project work. I m under the idea that that we were secretly being made to do this so they didn’t have to mark them sneaky!

they coursework didn’t seam hard but they sheer size of the two projects made it harder, they were both about 50 pages long which meant they did take a while to read.
I felt another problem with this coursework is that it felt like I was being bias to one of the projects. It may have just been worse, but I think I marked the second one down just because it was second.
I fairness is a skill you learn when teaching or when you have more than two project to chose from.

Also after reading the two projects I must say that I’m not looking forward to having to do one myself.

on another point I saw my friends business placement website today and was amazed at how detailed it was one page was literally 100 of placments each with document about the job and company. Clearly a highly detailed site like this for computing student would be liked.

Week 6

Yesterday I had my interview with bob champion. I was a bit tense before hand, which is something I’m sure everyone gets even if the interview is a fake. I was probably tense because I’m not much of a talker and don’t like being put on the spot. I suppose fake interviews like this are here to help me with that.

I wasn’t sure if I should turn up in a suit but wore one any way. It turned out that most people did which made me feel better as I wasn’t the odd one out.

any way after waiting for a little while I had my interview it started ok but turned into me relying on my projector slides too much I defiantly should have spend more time preparing stuff like prompt cards and learning the details

After the presentation I was asked some questions which seemed more relaxed than the presentation, and bob seemed quite genuinely interested in some of the experience I was mentioning. A nice way to round it off.....
Apart from him saying he wouldn’t have hired me based on my CV.
the irony.

Week 4

Today was the hand in date for my first piece of coursework. We were basically made to apply for a pretend job. The coursework required us to send a CV and a covering letter.

A piece of advice here is to always make sure you have your CV backed up. thinking that I did I left this assignment a bit to the last minute thinking I wouldn’t have to completely have to rewrite it, my mistake.
Any way I decided to apply for the fake job with Hyundai as it seemed the one I was most familiar with. after finishing my friend advised me to go to the careers centre to get my cv looked at but apparently had gone to the wrong place even though some one looked at my cv the help wasn’t as good as the other people may have given.

not that it mattered I wasn’t going to go try and find the right place so I submitted my work and started on my other courses work load.

Week 3

In today’s lecture we learnt about application forms that are sometimes given out when you wish to apply for jobs as well as C/V’s.

The lecturer made it clear that sometimes when you write something on you CV that it’s not what you really mean. For example "I have understanding writing C programs" does not necessarily mean your skill full you may only understand how to make a hello world program. In this case it would have been better to use more detail.

Another of he's examples were when people talk about using team work and instead of explaining what they did spend more time explaining what the team did.

This just goes to show that you should be carful what’s on your CV as you may be just as good at making yourself look like you have a wide range of skills, as making yourself look like you don’t have any experience

Proff

This is the first entry in a blog that I will be keeping for my professional skills and issues module at oxford brooks. I am a Computer student and am in my second year at brooks.

I have noticed that this module isn’t really related to my course but am hoping that it will give me a head start for applying for jobs and other things.

Last week I attended the first lecture for this module. It started with Samia Kamal explaining what the module was going to be about and whet we would need to do. She also talked about how appearance was an important thing when going to interviews. By going to an interview in professional clothing it shows that the interviewee has put effort into preparing for it, which in its self tells us a few things.

The person hasn’t left the interview to the last minute and has prepared showing that they will also do this in their work as opposed to someone in jeans who may as well woke up five minutes ago from a night in the pub.
They care about how other perceive them meaning they care about what others think of their work, which in turn will make them work harder.
The interviewers will take you more seriously because a person in a suite looks like their ready to become a businessman, but a man in his underwear looks like he’s unsure where he wants to be.
Finally wearing a suit changes the way you thing, it will make you feel better about yourself and encourage you to give more intuitive answers instead of half effort answers.
To conclude this are just a few things that I already knew and have been reminded of. I will instead say that it’s always a good idea to research into the company you are applying to as this is my downfall. Being asked about a company’s history when all I really want is a wage at the end of the week.