Hey, Nice to Meet You - #1

August 30, 2021

This past week was the beginning of the beginning of our ISM journey. To start with, we had our first introduction speech where we presented to our classmates about ourselves and what our ISM journey would look like. Just from this short 3-5 minute speech, I feel like I improved as a public speaker. I learned how to organize my speech to make it more engaging and got to think about the importance of leaving a good impression to the audience with effective communication skills. I am usually not a "talk about myself" type of person, but through this experience, I realized that I am more than capable of gaining the audience's attention solely with my words. While writing the speech, I also got to think about why I want to study music production/business and how I became so passionate about this career path. It was definitely a moment of personal growth through re-thinking about what I want my future to look like and whether that future is truly for me. We also set up our LinkedIn accounts and our digital portfolios. I personally think that these had more of a professional tone to them due to the amount of time that I spent on creating them. I got to network with some of my peers through LinkedIn and take a look at how their ISM journey would look like compared to mine. I loved how diverse everyone's profiles were and thought that there was beauty at the fact that we can be so similar, yet so different at the same time. For our digital portfolios, we had to create our own individual websites. I would be lying if I said that I was not discouraged by the fact that we had to make a whole new website for ourselves, but this was one of the things that I have always wanted to try since I was little. I always dreamed about creating a personal brand out of myself and leaving a mark of who I am, and digital portfolios were a perfect way to do so. I decided that my color scheme was going to be a subtle but colorful tone with a pop of red for impact. These colors reminded of the type of music that I listen to which directly relates to my ISM topic. It was a challenge to figure out how to work the WIX app, and I did struggle with a lack of confidence about how my website would turn out, but with the help of Coach Goff, I was able to gain more faith in myself and decided to trust the process. I also wondered if my mindset of being hard and judgemental on myself has had a big impact in my life. This was something that I realized during a conversation with Coach Goff. With her advice, I decided to become my own best friend, and be more supportive of my dreams. This week, I want to work more on being able rely on myself as well as see what I am capable of once I throw away the negative perception I have of my abilities. I will work on my confidence to be a more optimistic ISM student and learn more about the specific areas in music production and business that I want to focus on along with the kind of study that I want to get done throughout the year. I learned so much from this class just in the span of three class periods, so imagine the kind of person I would have transformed into at the end of my ISM journey! I am extremely excited that I get to have this opportunity, and I cannot wait to continue my journey with such amazing friends, peers, and of course, Coach Goff.