What is #PBandJterm?

The first thing I’ve learned this week is the meaning of the class known by the name of #PBandJterm on Twitter. The real name of the class is “Creating and Managing Online Personal Brand.” At first I had no idea what exactly this class was about. But after a week I finally know and I’m really glad to be in Professor Jill Falk‘s class. If I have to define it I’d say that this class helps us for 3 different things. First of all it permits us to understand what personal branding is and why it is important for students like us. Then it helps us to create and manage our personal brand by using different tools such as Twitter, WordPress, Linkedin, etc.

Dan Schawbel, the person of the week.

During this first week we had to make a presentation about a blogger who has an impact on personal branding. Every student had different bloggers assigned, and mine was Dan Schawbel the “Personal Branding Guru”. To be honest I had no idea who that person was but I learned a lot about him and about his work, and I have to say that he is inspiring.
Like I said in a previous article Schawbel dedicated his work to help people managing their personal brand. And the more I read on his blogs the more I become aware that personal branding is important for our future. I’ve learned that we just have to change little things to make our “big” careers better and easier. So, again I recommend everyone interested on personal branding to go on his two blogs -Personal Branding blog and Student Branding blog-  and follow him on twitter.

I’am someone on the internet.

This J-Term class also taught me that I have a presence on the web. I’m not popular but I exist in this big fake world. According to Google I’m a french blogger who’s studying at Lindenwood University. I did a presentation about Dan Schawbel and I was really surprised when I saw that my presentation -which was suppose to be for the class- received more than 300 hits. Apparently, I could interested someone and I didn’t know that. But this class also confirm something to me. I hate talking about myself. We had to make a presentation about ourselves with pictures and words that describe us. That was a really tough moment because I really didn’t feel comfortable. I think that there is so many people to talk about who are more interesting than me, and I think it is a waste of time to talk about me who didn’t do anything special.

Great class experience.

Finally, I learned about my classmates. I like to know who are the students I’m sharing the class with, and last semester I didn’t really had the chance to learn about them. But in this class we had the time to learn about everybody and it’s a real pleasure. First of all it permitted me to be less shy and as the only freshman of the class I felt more comfortable. Then this class became a real experience with a certain solidarity that I rarely experienced in a classroom.

Tags | #PBANDJTERM, branding, Lindenwood, personal, university