Recipe Revisions

Hello classmates! Hopefully you are all wrapping up the class assignments this week and feeling accomplished for everything we’ve done so far. The GroupMe ended up being an excellent way to get in touch with everyone in the class as well as Dr. Martin himself. I think GroupMe ended up being a better mode of communication than the Coffee Shop chat room on BOLT simply because GroupMe can be conveniently accessed on our mobile phones. I’m only 50 pages off from finishing Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf, one of the books I planned to read over my winter break. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to finish Dante’s Inferno or read the other novels I was hoping to read. I think the course work as well as my work schedule are the main reasons why I couldn’t accomplish all the leisure reading that I wished. But I will have plenty of time to read during the summer, especially during my family’s beach vacation. With nearly six inches of snow outside the only thing I’ve been dreaming about is that beach trip!

This past week we had to make the recipes we developed and we also had to have family/friends perform a usability test on our instructions/recipes. My recipes were sweet potato avocado toast, a cheese omelet, and a chocolate peanut butter banana smoothie. In one week, I tested my recipes on my own twice and then had two others test my recipes. My tummy is completely stuffed with omelets and sweet potato avocado toast. Maybe all the beta carotene from those sweet potatoes will give me back the 20/20 vision I had when I was younger.

I did have a lot of fun with my childhood best friend and my grandmother as I filmed them making my recipes. They both provided me with good pointers and tips about revising my instructions. My grandmother is a retired English teacher so she was delighted to take my post-test questionnaire and “grade” my work. Surprisingly, she wasn’t overly critical with my work and was pleased with how all the food turned out. She didn’t even share any of the omelet with her two dogs which is quite uncommon and acts as proof that she enjoyed the dish too much to share!

Last week we also had to write cover letters for the job ads we found earlier during the course and submit rough drafts of our resumes. My job ad lacked a name of someone to contact for the position as well as a phone number. So for my revision tonight I had issues contacting someone who could give me a name for the department so I could include a name in my cover letter address. I ended up finding a list of board of directors and leaders of the company on their website. I scrolled through the names and titles until I found one titled “Staff Coordinator” and ended up using her name for my cover letter. It was the best I could do because when I called the company’s number the man I spoke to said he wouldn’t be able to tell me who would be performing the interview for that position because the interviewer doesn’t get decided until I receive a call after submitting my application. I think I’ve learned that it isn’t easy to find out who will be hiring you in the future, but that if you put in this extra effort to personalize your cover letter, that will speak volumes to your possible future employers.

We started working more directly with our peers today because we had to submit our revised recipe instructions to our group members. It will be helpful to receive feedback from classmates because they understand the project better than the people who performed our usability tests. You can never have too much feedback!

-Anna J.