Creating a Facebook Page

Link to screenshot of my facebook page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67752795@N03/6170086634/in/photostream

Creating the facebook page in lab made me realize how not a lot of people have facebook or other public profiles on the internet that they could show to employers or colleagues. Even if on the surface a profile may look fairly appropriate when you look more extensively there are no doubt a few wall posts with profanities or a picture hiding in the archives of a drunken first year party that they forgot to untag themselves in. Oh and of course their isn't much about employment experience or other skills since if the profile is more of a social one then why would they? But as a report from CNN say employers are now looking at our online profiles to see if we are "appropriate" for the job.

When I was creating my facebook page I found myself enjoying myself much more than I thought I would. It was fun to actually put a more professional 'me' out there to tell those interested about the other things about me that they wouldn't find on my facebook profile. Actually within the first few minutes of me making the page one of my friends liked it! and he also created one of his own. For one it was flattering, and as he said it is also the new way to network.

When I went looking at some of my classmates blogs and found Sydney's, and saw her introduction I realized that her facebook page probably didn't talk about her love of nutrition articles or expressed her probably extensive knowledge so that if an employer found her facebook profile they might not be overly impressed. Of course I could be wrong but I'm also fairly sure that her facebook page wouldn't show off her writing skills either since their is very little writing that goes on facebook unless you really like writing notes. I'm very interested to see how some of the other peoples pages turn out.

Hello World! (I mean ALES204)

My name is Hilary, I'm a fourth year Animal Science Major who is trying to get into a DVM program.

In agriculture, especially when animals are involved, people have a lot of opinions because they're concerned about their food being safe or because of possible animal welfare issues. Social media like this can be detrimental and/or a positive force because a lot of times messages get distorted and a picture or phrase gets put out of context and the farmers and industry leaders end up getting loads of flack. On the reverse side I think that giving people more access to information about where their food is coming from and the struggles that the farmers go through to get the food to their plate can make people more conscious about how they're spending their dollar at the grocery store.

There are also loads of topical blogs that can keep us fellow aggies in the know about specific topics from Agriculture in Africa to changes in agriculture laws and policies in Canada. Being able to streamline news like this makes it much more efficient for those in my field to keep up to date (think of the last time you saw an agricultural policy story on CNN?).

I will leave you with a picture of my dog, Bandit:

My parents also have two other dogs and I have two Linnies (you should look them up, they're amazing birds).