1000 word blog post

Hi, my name is Emma Ciulla, I am from Phoenix, Arizona and this is my first semester that the University of Arizona. Although I am technically a freshman, I was lucky enough to attend Xavier College Preparatory, an all girls Catholic school and St. Thomas the Apostle for 1-8^th grade. So I am very used to a very rigid and strict learning environment. I say I am lucky because I had the opportunity to take dual enrollment courses with Rio Solado community college while I carried out my four years. I only had to take 1 online communications class outside of my regular course work at Xavier. In doing this, I was able to graduate with my Associates in Arts degree 2 weeks before I graduated from high school. This makes me technically a Junior at the U of A. I really really wanted to take advantage of all the extra time I would have available. I am in Greek life and have decided to pursue the undergraduate law program but, would will still have too much time on my hands, so my counselor suggested that I look into the esociety major to add as a double major. So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed the esociety courses.

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In particular, I have found extreme interest in this course on collaboration. In the past I have never really been a big fan of working in groups. I have found it hard for to trust others and to come up with cohesive final project. But, I have learned over the past 10 weeks that there is way more to collaboration. There are boundless ways one can use technology to contribute to a greater end good. This excites me because I know that our world is moving full speed ahead towards an almost completely digital society. As a woman, having this sort of knowledge is so powerful. Statistically speaking, only 5% of tech startups are owned by women, only 11% of executive positions at fortune 500 companies are held by women and only 25% of IT jobs are held by women. But, women hold more than half of jobs in the workforce and social media accounts. This goes to show that the women are out there but there is a major gap. We are far past the days when in high school a girl had the options to be a secretary or a stay at home mom. My grandmother and great grandmother speak about their experiences as a young women trying to find their purposes outside of the two accepted professions and struggling to find fulfillment.

While there are many “socially accepted” careers available to women these days, there is a huge calling for our generation to have our women take initiative and break down past barriers in the technology world. Although I do not see myself as a coder or a IT person, and in fact plan on attending law school, my mother and father’s careers as lawyers have shown me how important it is to be able to use the highest forms of technology for the industry. My mom is a stay at home mom, PTO president, and owns her own law practice out of our home. She is a commercial real estate attorney and 90% of what she does involves online collaboration. As a commercial real estate lawyer, their main duty is to write leases, review edit/revise leases, look at blue prints and building plans. She does this buy using collaborative documents with her clients. She writes the leases, has the clients add comments/ideas/changes and they go back and forth until there is a perfect finished document. All from the comfort of her own home, with her own hours to fit her schedule of raising 3 kids ranging in age from 8-19. 

My father is a personal injury attorney. He uses online collaboration everyday as an essential part of his job as well. He uses a software that every one of his employees has an account with and they scan and upload documents for each client’s digital folder. Each employee works on every case but has a unique job or assignment. Then, one by one as each of his employees complete their parts, they upload it to the digital file, and add notes to keep each other informed. So essentially, each client has their own “mini website”. 

In short, I have realized that no matter what type of law or even if I switch majors, I know that I will be using technology to collaborate with others and will be able to take away the skills and lessons I learn during this course and during my participation in the esociety program will be greatly beneficial and I urge everyone who has not thought about it fully but to participate in some sort of technology class because in the way our world is moving, it will come in handy at one point or another and those who have stayed away in fear that it is a “man’s” world or it does not apply to them will be left in the dust. Even as young as 4^th grade, I remember learning to perform somewhat complex computer tasks such as Google’s shared document system, using quizlet (an online study platform that’s main feature is being able to share flashcards and even collaborate together on them), or making PowerPoints with their class. And has we progress it will be more and more common. Our parents were not as lucky to have such advanced skills and technology available and I cannot even imagine what things will be like ten to fifteen years in the future when our kids are growing up and what they will be exposed to and taught. And as I have seen with baby boomers such as my grandparents, they are very out of the loop in regards to basic devises such as an iPad or iPhone that some toddlers can probably operate more efficiently. It just goes to show how important it is to stay current on as many things as possible.