Welcome & Introductions

  • 1.  Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 08:58
    Hi BGS community,
    During these unnerving times, as many of us  are trying to adopt, there was lot of self-learning and resilience that we all showed. Just checking in to see
    1. What is New Normalcy for you like in your business/schools/professional life? 
    2. What did you learn/any new skills/tools/techniques/lessons
    3. What worked
    4. What do you expect to stay and what do you really hope to stay 

    Wish you all great success
    Sareer Zia

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    Sareer Zia, MD, MBA
    Marion, IL
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  • 2.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 11:26
    Edited by Kathleen Kelly 06-24-2020 11:26

    Hi, Sareer! 

    Thank you for starting this thread. I am curious to see what everyone has been up to during quarantine.

    1. I am an incoming senior at the University of Connecticut. The last half of this past semester was spent online, which was very new to me. I personally had video lectures made available that I could watch at any point instead of live lectures. All exams were also taken online. I had to focus on prioritizing since I no longer had a strict schedule to go by. During the last two weeks of the semester, I interviewed via Zoom for a few internships. I was lucky enough to be offered a position as a remote marketing intern for The Direct Ascent Group in Phoenix, AZ. Working remotely has been a learning process so far. Since I am not in the office I am forced to teach myself, which has its positives and negatives. My boss and I usually have short video meetings once a week and keep in touch through email. One thing I miss is having a team to work with in person, I am sure a lot of people can relate to that. 

    2. I am currently taking Google Analytics for Beginners (which is free for anyone with a Gmail account) and plan to start a course through Udemy for the image editing program GIMP. If anyone has any free course recommendations for a marketing major, please let me know!

    3. To be honest, I am still trying to figure out what works for me and the business I am working for. 

    4. I expect virtual meetings to stick around post quarantine especially when people have to work from home. I hope that businesses stick with flexible hours. It is nice to be able to choose when I work since I have a lot of family responsibilities at home. 

    I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to say about this. Thanks again for creating this thread. 

    Have a great day! 

    Best,

    Kathleen Kelly



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    Kathleen Kelly
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-a-kelly/
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  • 3.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 16:11
    Hi Kathleen! 

    While I'm not sure about courses specifically for marketing majors, there is a wide selection of Coursera courses being offered for free until July 31st. There are courses on career development, soft skills, understanding COVID, and many other topics. Here is a link to a list of those courses. I hope you find something that's of interest to you!

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    Lea Grgich
    www.linkedin.com/in/lea-grgich
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 20:13
    Hi, Lea! 

    Thank you so much for providing that information to me. I will try to take a few of those courses while they are free.

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    Kathleen Kelly
    The Direct Ascent Group
    University of Connecticut
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-a-kelly/
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 22:00
    Congratulations Kathleen on your new position. The quarantine has been a stress test for all of us. Some of the bigger organizations are already allowing their employees to work from home. In healthcare, tele-health services are exploding as well.
    The convenience and flexibility are definitely positives and as you appropriately mentioned that maintaining focus while working from home, making priorities and schedules, trying to keep professional and personal lives separate - basically the Work From Home Hygiene - is something that many of us are in process of learning.
    Before COVID, part of my job was somewhat remote, with virtual meetings, telephone conversations etc. Some of these also involve conflict handling over phone or virtual meeting, which you can imagine is not the same as handling the conflict in person, where one can have the option of choosing the location, timing etc. But over time as we keep talking and keep connecting virtually we built a great relationship and we saw positive outcomes.

    I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

    Sareer Zia

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    Sareer Zia
    Marion IL
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 15:51
    Edited by Lea Grgich 06-24-2020 15:52
    Hi, Sareer! 

    These are great prompts and I'm looking forward to seeing more answers. As for me...

    1. I recently graduated and received my Business Finance degree from Sonoma State University in California, so I'm currently job searching, which would definitely be a big change regardless of COVID. However, graduating and job searching in quarantine has definitely pushed me to make more use of online resources that I may not have otherwise considered. I've connected with quite a few people from BGS on ConnectBGS and LinkedIn, started some of the free courses that Coursera has made available because of the pandemic, spent more time perfecting cover letters than I would have out of quarantine, and refined my resumes over and over again using many different online tools. (And since I'm on the subject, Resume Worded is my favorite resource for resume feedback and revisions.)

    2. Though I'd always known the how important a schedule and keeping a clean space is for staying motivated and productive, quarantine felt like the ultimate test in practicing this. Not having a strict schedule was difficult in the beginning of quarantine, and setting a schedule for myself at the beginning of each week has helped keep me from feeling burned out.  Also, I'm taking courses via Coursera to keep my mind active and to continue learning new things, both for fun and for career advancement. 

    3. While I definitely don't have everything worked out, making an effort to virtually stay in touch with friends and meet new people during quarantine has helped me a lot during the pandemic.

    4. I expect working from home to become a more widely available option in the future. I hope people will continue to use less paper since we've realized that so much can be done electronically, and that we will continue to recognize how integral essential workers such as healthcare workers, custodians, grocery store employees, and others are to a healthy society.

    Thanks for starting this thread! I'll definitely keep my eye on it. 
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    Lea Grgich
    Elk Grove, CA
    leaagrgich@gmail.com
    www.linkedin.com/in/lea-grgich
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  • 7.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 21:34
    This is great Lea. Thank you for sharing this with us.
    To learn = To progress
    This is great to know that you are using this time on your professional growth.
    These times are like trials and errors for many of us. The important thing to know is that we are more resilient than we'd thought and more creative than we'd imagined.
    You are absolutely right!. We knew that virtual/online platforms would be ubiquitous some day, we dint know it would be this fast and this soon. COVID has definitely pushed us out of our comfort zones.
    Tremendous gratitude for everyone who willingly gave up their liberty and freedom during this time to reduce the risk for others.

    Sareer Zia

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    Sareer Zia
    Marion IL
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-24-2020 22:41
    1. What is New Normalcy for you like in your business/schools/professional life?
    - At my workplace (healthcare) just like many healthcare organizations, the new normal is reusing the PPE instead of discarding them after one use. Not only that everyone wears masks, but also no makeup for the  frontline healthcare workers since it will create problems with sterilization process of the masks.
    - We are also using more telemedicine services.
    - We started doing more virtual meetings, though now we are trying to resume some of the in-person meetings. 
    - Families couldn't be at patients' bedside, now we are re-visiting the restricted visitors' policy.

    2. What did you learn/any new skills/tools/techniques/lessons
    Learnt using telemedicine , listening to my patients heart and lungs through bluetooth stethoscope. 
    Connecting with new people and learning from their experiences.

    3. What worked
    Telemedicine services working (or work in progress)  for many - patients and physicians because  its convenient, less time consuming (when work properly), no travel time, no transportation cost for patients. Many though still like to have face-to-face encounters.

    4. What do you expect to stay and what do you really hope to stay?
    I expect Tele-medicine to stay and expand. I hope that more and more organizations and people work on adapting  virtual medicine and improving access to healthcare for everyone.

    Sareer Zia

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    Sareer Zia
    Marion IL
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  • 9.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-25-2020 08:48
    Sareer, 
    Excellent start to a open discussion.
    Thank you. This telemedicine is definitely a learning curve. I was intrigued when you mentioned using Bluetooth to monitor heart sounds and lungs, I was wondering how that was working out. IT comes natural to some and others its a whole new world and trying to explain over the phone or internet has created challenges.
    I was speaking with my uncle last night and he was mentioning how different coding/charges are now with using telehealth. 
    All so new, and exciting to be a part of a historical timeframe.
    I saw that you are in IL and so I looked you up to see just where you are located, its too bad we weren't closer in mileage.

    Lea, thank you for the Coursera suggestion. I have been looking into different opportunities such as this and haven't dove into them yet because I truly am burnt-out from school. I too recently graduated and have struggled to want to sit and learn. Even though I know I should be. 
    I have been reluctant to really focus on anything that involves 'school work'. Yet with so much FREE out there I should be taking advantage. 
    I too am applying and working on resume and CL wording and re-wording.....yet so far rejections have been the daily emails. I haven't used any resume helping-sites as of late, I did look into jobscan and then never proceeded any further. So I think I will focus a bit more and check the site you gave as well. Thank you

    I will agree with all who have posted, a schedule is necessary. I get up early and workout. For the past 2.5 months I was in clinic seeing patients, so I would have clinic hours then come home and repeat...M-F. Yet since June 8th I haven't been working and so my new normal is: workout, then work on CL, resume, job searching, trying to networking, find opportunities to help me with job searching, etc. And I do that until 12pmish....@ that time I get out of the chair and get outside and work on projects.
    Been trying to reach out to family and friends to keep in touch yet I struggle with focus when on Zoom.


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    Laurel Mills
    Metamora, IL

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  • 10.  RE: Checking In

    Posted 06-25-2020 13:20
    Thanks Laurel.
    You are right, change is hard and especially during times like these. Its a learning curve for all of us.
    For our inpatient telemedicine and bluetooth technology , we have an iPad and bluetooth stethoscope in patient's room. When a nurse is present at bedside and the physician is online in some part of the hospital building, they get connected and (s)he sends the stethoscope link to the physician. Once we click, then staff puts stethoscope on patient's chest and we can hear the lung sounds and heart sounds. They tell us which side and which lobe of the lung they are examining. Its new and we are trying to adapt to it. We are doing it for our COVID patient population. Its like a cardiac monitor (tele monitor) the patient is connected to, and we can see the rhythm on monitors located (outside patients' rooms) at nursing stations or in tele unit. 
    COVID has pushed us to think outside the box. Now some companies are even working on ventilators that can be controlled via remote control from outside of patients' rooms.
    Necessity is mother of invention.
    Once there is more structure into virtual health and guidance on coding/billing and people get used to it, my hope is that there will be no look back. It will hopefully be more cost effective and more accessible option for healthcare provision.

    Sareer Zia

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    Sareer Zia
    Marion IL
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    Original Message


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