This weekend I went down to Austin, TX with my Uncle Hugh and Auntie Mary to celebrate their friends’ son’s first birthday. Austin is 217 miles away and it took us 3 and a half hours to get there and a little longer to get back. I’d heard the saying “100 years is not long in Scotland and 100 miles is not far in America, but the other way round for the other country”. To Americans, this journey would be small. So, I am feeling pretty tired today after driving 434 miles in one day! However, the birthday party was lovely and it was great to see more of Texas (even if I am a bit sun burnt!)

But it’s back to the normal Monday here and I’m back at placement. Today I looked at menus with Ashley (Account Supervisor) and helped make her work a little easier by finding all the fonts used for each different type of menu that will be published in the coming weeks and putting them into an email for her future use. I hadn’t worked with Ashley before so this was a good opportunity to develop my own communication skills and allow me to see what her job entails. One of the SPRs that comes under professional commitment states that we should be “engaging with all aspects of professional practice and all members of our educational communities with enthusiasm, adaptability andconstructive criticality.” I feel that this is an SPR which relates closely to the work I have done today. Although it is not an educational community, I undertook the work in a professional manner with good enthusiasm that allowed me to complete the task in a productive way while working with someone new.

I have also done quite a bit of reading about advertising and more on how this affects children and young people which I will reflect on in a later post.

While I was in an Uber recently the driver noticed my accent and complimented it (Being in Dallas with this accent is great. So many people love it!) We were just talking about Scotland and he asked me the question, which I think is quite funny: “Was William Wallace real?” He then

went on to tell me that his favourite film is “Braveheart”. I told him that this film was actually quite historically inaccurate, but a good film nonetheless. This question then prompted me to ask if I could do a presentation about Scotland for the company which I have been working on a lot today. A lot of people are looking forward to this. I am extremely passionate and proud of where I’m from so this is a presentation I am very much looking forward to showing.

 
I’ve looked back at my audit of skills in section 1 of my folio and I’ve rated my self confidence at a 2. I do have confidence in myself but it is something that I want to build up on this placement. I believe by doing this presentation it will definitely improve my self confidence and allow people from other teams to get to know me a bit better. And most importantly, it will educate the people at Tracy Locke about a fantastic country and hopefully encourage them to come over and visit.