Week 3, Assignment 2

Finding Books

For week 3 assignment I chose the book “The First Great Financial Crisis of the 21^st Century: A Retrospective, by G. G. Kaufman and J.R. Barth.  First off, I want to add that it hasn’t been the easiest for me to find sources as I initially thought it would be.  It has definitely gotten much easier after these past few lessons and readings from the Badke text.  After applying the methods from the lessons, it’s like a whole new world opened up for me.  I was getting a little worried for minute there!  This week however, I was able to do much less keystrokes (ok maybe not much less), but definitely able to find much more substance than before.   I don’t feel so handicapped.  Previously I was thinking that due to my topic having two different parts to it, a lot more research was going to entail to find all the information that I would need.   After this week I don’t think this will be the case.   With the new book and additional sources I found while searching for the book; it seems the information I will need is in these sources.  I’d say I am a happy camper with at least this aspect since I feel like I am finally moving forward and not backwards. 

Some of the things that worked for me this week were definitely experimenting with different key work combinations, and using the hierarchy tree a little bit.  Prior to this week, I was using full sentences and phrases.   This week I learned how to cut out the words that weren’t helping.  Learning how to filter my searches more often so that I didn’t have to comb through the lists as much this time around was a sigh of relief as well.   That alone cut my time in half.  I am still learning how to navigate through the Leatherby Library, however, since I am a first time user - and it’s frustrating; but the practice is helping.

  

As my research continues, it’s definitely getting more interesting now that I sort of know what I am doing - I think.  So far so good and I don’t want to toot my horn too much right now, but I definitely feel a little more confident than before.   Nevertheless moving forward, I think that it will be a little more exciting for me stringing all these sources together and learning about my topic.  This is what I intended since the topic is an interest of mine.   Furthermore, I think learning how to research better is only going to help me from all angles in my professional and personal life.   This, I look forward to!

Week 2, Assignment 2

For my research topic I chose “Business Triumphs and Downfalls Since the 2008 Recession”.  Because I am a new student attending college and its been numerous years since I have actually had to do research on a topic, I feel this assignment had started out as a challenge.   However, since I began the research and finally got a grasp how to navigate and utilize the available resources on the internet and sources provided in our textbook, things got much easier.  I started out in the Leatherby Libarary search tools and did an online search of available topics through its e-book collections.  Although at first I wasn’t able to locate a huge amount of available resources, there were some topics that led me to do other searches on the web that helped tremendously.  The textbook has many resources outlined in Chapter 6.  It actually turned what could have been a nightmare for me in to interesting research.  I have learned a lot about the topic, and feel that it will help me in my current profession.   

One thing that led me to desire further research on my topic, was the lending practices that small businesses had to incur since the recession.   I found this particular interesting because that aspect of the industry has changed dramatically since the 2008 recession moving forward.   Armed with the new resource strategies that I am now learning in the textbook and through this course, I feel I can now expand in to this particular topic with much more depth.   This is particularly exciting for me, as I feel like it may shed some new light in to my current profession, as where I may have not had the audacity to find on my own. 

LBSU 302

         

Introduction

Hello, my name is Edward and I am a new undergraduate at Brandman majoring in Business Management.   Getting my bachelors degree has been somewhat of a personal pursuit these days, as I had spent the last decade or so building a business and I had put college on hold.   I also have an 18 year old daughter living with me full time, so as a single parent juggling a self-employed business and a kid, things got too overwhelming I suppose - not that this should been an excuse!  I have always considered school of the upmost importance and as my daughter started college this past fall - I feel I shouldn't be a hypocrite.  Nevertheless, I look forward to this class, as I feel that it will be super useful to me with my current career.    My business is in raising business capital for small and large businesses and I am sure the lessons learned in this class will not only help my company grow.

As far as where I want to be at the end, I am uncertain.   Maybe I will stay in school, maybe I will start a new career.  I think that research is important, and finding the correct information and where to find it is undeniably important in my field, and/or starting a new one.  Currently I am constantly researching new ways to market and manage my business, and I want to be better prepared to extend the life of my career.   Hopefully with the tools from this class, I will be able to educate myself on industry trends and be able to gauge where the market is going much better than I can now.