Disney University

Well, I wanted to fill you in on my Disney classes and what’s been happening in them. I have two courses – Marketing You and Leadership Exploration Series.

Marketing You is all about, who, me! Each week I have class for four hours and we cover different topics. We had a Dream Job Strategy week discussing what we wanted to be when we were little and what we are studying now in school. Later, we covered transferable skills and our personal development.

For homework, we did a career interest inventory where it asked a million questions about what we like/dislike and then gave us a report of what type of things we would work well with. Then, we did a “30 second commercial,” which is basically learning how to formally introduce yourself to people. We also had to order personal business cards. We wrote a paper with three achievements on the college program and I attended an alumni speaker series with people in the field of communications for networking. I also had a formal interview with one of my managers discussing how he got to where he is, why he likes it, and all that jazz.

Just today we turned in a cover letter, resume, and reference page. Next week will be our professionalism paper basically wrapping up all the assignments into a five page paper of what we’ve learned and discovered throughout the semester. Finally, our last week is presentation week, where we present about a job we are interested in. It will be set up like a science/job fair. I chose to research a Computer Programmer so we’ll see how that goes!

My Leadership Exploration Series is a bit different. There is no homework for the course. It has not quite been what I expected, but it is interesting. We only meet for 2 hours each week and so far it has been lecture stuff about leadership within the company. I guess my impression was that we would meet more leaders and hear from them, but we’ve only had one guest speaker so far. I’m pretty jealous that Teresa’s Heritage Class met Meg Crofton, President of the Walt Disney World® Resort.

I am constantly learning more and more about the company and the people within it. I think it’s really neat that everyone has a story of how they ended up at Disney and why they chose to stay. I am really interested in coming back out to Florida for a Professional Internship within Management or IT once I graduate.

There are days that I regret taking online classes because it can be a lot to keep up with between working 35-40 hours a week, attending the two mentioned classes, keeping up with dishes, laundry, and roomies, and enjoying the Florida area. But, the pros always outweigh the cons, because I would have lost my Presidential Scholarship and what not if I had not stayed full time. I have two online classes – Microeconomics and Statistics, two arranged classes – humanities and business communications, and then my two Disney classes. Whew.

Enough about class work, I need to go enjoy the rest of my day off at Epcot with Betsy!