By Riley Dawson
Leaving college is a scary time. We no longer have institutional education to guide and motivate us to learn and advance our intellectual knowledge. Post graduate life is different and since I can’t speak from experience in this field, I must speculate on what I’m planning to do to further my own intellectual growth. As I graduate and delve into various endeavors in the hopes of landing where I want to, I find it beneficial to take advice from someone who’s figured it all out, Dr. Ellen Ensher. Through her I have learned the importance of mentoring and Blog posting. I have gone through and learned much about mentoring and experienced first hand the benefits there are to finding and acquiring mentors for various necessities in your personal and business life.
Blog posting is another way to gain necessary knowledge and experience to further your business and personal knowledge. Moving into graduate life, I don’t see myself too involved in creating my own blog posts, however I have recognized the importance of subscribing to daily blog posts from established companies and successful businessmen. As a routine every morning I will be working to adopt these blogs. From companies, I will be reading the Walmart and CocaCola company blogs that identify brand relevant content, as well as personalized information about employees and customers. This is a great way to get informed on how two of the largest companies in the world continuously succeed in the business world. As a leading website in professional social media, I find it imperative that every one reads the LinkedIn Today blog as a daily dose of what’s happening across all business sectors.
In terms of personal blogs, I want to focus on A VC, Fred Wilson’s personal blog about his experience and expertise as a managing partner of two different venture capital firms. The knowledge he has gained from over two decades working as a venture capitalist transcends the business knowledge we see in the average professional blog. The other personal blog i’m very excited to read is that of Mark Cuban, the Blog Maverick. I have followed Mark for a few years and am intrigued by the success he’s had with his own company as well as the Dallas Mavericks.
I understand the importance of Blogs, but my concern with them in terms of a news source is that there are preferences by the writer. We are conveyed information that they want to share with us rather than an understanding of everything that is going on. Because of this I must supplement my daily dose of information from blogs with that of news media. The three magazines that I think will best guide my intellectual growth in the business world are: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The LA Times. These three newspaper publications are longstanding, trusted sources of news media. Recent graduates are the future, and we must prepare accordingly.