As the ISM program kicked off, the first step of my journey was to set goals and try to come up with a plan of action for my year. For many in the class, this was a straightforward and simple process as they had a very specific path in line and specific goals to go along with that. For me, however, this was not the case. As I am writing this my specific topic area is law, which ironically is not very specific at all. So my first goal for my year and for my research which I plan on working towards in the coming weeks is discovering what specific sect in the seemingly all-encompassing world of law I want to focus on for my research.
On top of goal setting and planning steps for the year, the start of my ISM year allowed me to build on professional, public speaking skills that are extremely important, particularly in the world of law. While this was done through a simple 5 minute introduction speech to the class, it allowed an opportunity to write a speech that is interesting, for the benefit of the class who had to listen to 17 of those introduction speeches, but also to practice engaging an audience which will be necessary down the line in this program. Additionally, it allowed us to formulate a speech in short order as we had only a day of class time to prepare the speeches and two days of memorization before it was time to present. This prepares me to come up with speaking points easily and quickly and be able to be confident in what I am saying and prepare for situations quickly. This will come in handy for mentor meetings and interviews that I do along the way.
Goals for the coming week
My goals this week are to do research into limiting down my topic area from simply “law” to hopefully more specific sects of law, as well as to work on research skills by being able to quickly and thoroughly annotate documents and articles to prepare myself for the research I am to do this year.
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