Last Extra Blog

Guess I survived I-Poly then!

These four years at I-Poly have given me red hairs which will soon turn grey so thanks for that. I guess it also wasn't an average highs school experience, so that will be something most people won't have. Senior Project managed not to kill me so I am glad for that as well in a way.

I do not have that much to say I guess, but I just want to say that I-Poly has been really fun and really sucky all at the same time. I am glad I did come to this school though. I meant some amazing people here and pretty sure I wouldn't have made the same type of friends at a regular high school. And now we all move on into bigger and better things and I know everyone here will do great!

That's all I want to say!
See you in ten years!

Blog 23: Final Lesson Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your block presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

The thing I am most proud of is that I didn't really stutter as much as I thought I would when explaining my answers to the class. I tend to get really nervous when doing big presentations like this one and jumble up my sentences sometimes. I felt like I had some more confidence that I usually have when presenting.

(2) Questions to Answer

a. What assessment would you give yourself on your block presentation?

An P+

b. What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project?

An AE-

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

Everything worked perfectly for me. I was able to get my hours done and able to find my answers on time. Hardly anything went wrong throughout my senior project. I was able to find a new mentor fast when my first one had vanished.

(4) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

I wouldn't change anything. I was happy with my overall results. Plus, haven't you heard, you don't change anything in the pass because that one little change and start a butterfly effect and possibly destroy the universe as we know it.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?

Senior project has shown me what it is like to have an actual job and the many sacrifices you will have to make when it came to going to mentorship. It has physically, and mentally, prepared me to be a hard worker and gives me more confidence when it comes to find an actual job so I have some what of an idea to be looking at for.

Blog 22: Mentorship

1. Literal

• Mentorship log is updated and can be found on the right hand side of my blog.

• Jason Cox - JPM Comics

2. Interpretive

One of the most important things I had gained from this experience is how important customers can be towards a business and always trying to make sure you have merchandise in stock for them at all times. After doing this for months, it gave me a new perspective on how hard a business can work to just try they have everything they need to help keep their business running and how hard they work to always please their customers. Instead of just saying that they are only nice because they want my money, it shows that the employees and business owners actually do care for their customers and shows how loyal a customer can be to them as well.

3. Applied

I went to Mentorship a lot. If I could I would go every week for a few hours, which gave me a lot of experience inside of the store. I had learned a lot of things from my mentor and the store owner, they were both very supportive towards my project. What helped me answer my EQ was the fact that I had so much experience at the shop it helped me learn things quicker. Talking to all of the customers was a great help towards my best answer, reading whatever new book came out (or at least trying to) showed me how hard it was to keep up with every single book, and having customers help out showed me that they also like the experience of how it is to work like at the store. Throughout the months I was there I had learned so much that could help me when it came to my EQ.

Blog 21: Exit Interview

1. My essential question is "What is the best way to achieve customer satisfaction for a comic store?".

Three Answers:

• Know Your Products
• Communication/Builing Relationships with Customers
• Have Customers Feel Apart of The Team

My best answer is Communication/Building Relationships with Customers because it has shown to be very effective while mentoring at JPM, and it considered the "Golden Rule" at various retail stores. I have have used this method in the store myself and have seen great results from the customers and have even become friends with most of them.

2. The process I took to arrive to this answer was asking how important customer satisfaction was in my interviews and all answers came out to be that it was very important and should not be ignored. So I chose to focus most of my attention towards that specific answer and had found great research on it.

3. I ran into very few problems while finding my answers and going to my Mentorship. The only thing that would have been the main problem was the repetitive information on customer service for my WB, since a lot of the research could be the same thing but just altered in different ways.

4. My two significant sources would have to be the many online articles I had found online, my mentor and Jean Pierre, the owner of the JPM Comics. Although the articles gave me a lot of good sources on business owning and customer service itself, I found that my mentor, Jason Cox, and Pierre gave me the information better in a way that I could understand it more and have me chances to practice them within the store with them.

Extra April Blog

This past month has actually been very helpful towards my senior project. I had gone more to my mentorship during the weekdays than the weekends. This was really fun to see the different environment in the store. There a lot more people that come in on Wednesdays so it was fun to talk to all of the regulars and we how friendly they are to one another.

This helped towards my second answer that involves talking to the customer and providing a friendly environment for them. I got to work more with the owner Pierre and I feel like he has more trust in me the more I work with him. He even asked me to help out with Free Comic Book Day, which happens to be this Saturday because it is one of the busiest days of the year. So I will be going to help out with that.

Independent Component 2

LITERAL

(a) "I, Gabriel Marquez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 32 hours of work."

(b) The only source that was needed for my Independent Component 2 was my mentorship. Since all I did for Independent Component 2 was extra mentorship hours it was fairly easy getting my sources for it. I mostly did extra mentorship hours to get as much experience in the store and learn new things when I had the chance too.

(c) Independent Component 2 Log has been updated.

(d) What I completed during my extra mentorship hours was what I usually do during my regular hours. I will run register, put together bags and boards, do some order forms for the new books coming in, and other small things here and there. What I also did for about the last three days of my extra hours was go in during the week, since I usually go in on the weekend. It is a completely new environment during the week. There are many more people on Wednesdays due to the new books coming out. Everyone is talking to each other since they are all friends with each other. Other than that I learned how we stock the new books and the special rules when it comes to the new books. I would say what they are, but it's a secret. I also got to work more with the owner Pierre and gets some hands on experience and tips from him.

INTERPRETIVE

These are some of the regular customers that come to the store every Wednesday to pick up the new books that just came out. As you can see, they form a circle and just talk among themselves.

This my view from behind the register when I ring people up. When the picture was taken there happened to be no one in the store so my mentor Jason Cox decided to be in the picture.

This is what he do when we put new books on the shelf to prepare them. See the white comics in the back of me? They are just turned over, so when it's time to sell them we just flip them back and sell them away!

APPLIED

This helps me for my EQ because it gave me more experience dealing with new customers I have never dealt with before. I quickly befriended them and I talk to a lot of them as well. This becomes very helpful information towards my EQ that deals with employee/customer relationships within the store.

Extra March Blog

I have started to learn how to do order forms at my mentorship. The are fairly easy. Just very tedious. I may start doing full days on Sunday now and might also do weekdays to just knock out a few more hours during the week. I will be mentoring during spring break to help myself out as well.

As for my independent component, I might start watching comic book documentaries and taking Cornell Notes when I have time to do use up as some hours too.

Blog 18: Fourth Interview Preparation

1. How does growing close relationships with customers make them want to come back to your store?

2. Do you find it hard to keep up with the new material? Why or why not.

3. How is the experience of owning a comic book shop?

4. What makes a happy customer?

5. How do you try to get the word out about your store to draw in new faces?

6. How are you guys when it comes to customer satisfaction?

7. How helpful are websites, like Yelp, when it comes to people seeing how your store experience is?

8. How are the different location of comic stores affect the way a specific book is sold?

9. On average, how many people would you get in the store per day?

10. Do different days affect the amount of people coming into the store?

11. Have you ever had a customer what has had a bad experience here?

12. What would be the best way to deal with a stubborn customer?

13. In your opinion, what would be the best way to sell a book?

14. Are there certain ways you do your sales pitch?

15. What would be the best way to deal with children that want to buy something?

16. How often would you have special deals for the store?

17. How helpful is it to keep a customer updated on new material that is coming out?

18. Are there ever days that are just completely dead?

19. How do you deal with "dead" days?

20. What is the busiest day you have ever had?

Blog 17: Answer 3

Essential Question - What is the best way to achieve customer satisfaction for a comic store?

• Answer #3 - Have customers feel more involved with the employees and the store as a whole. Let them take surveys and help give feedback on how their experience was (hopefully it was good) so they can feel apart of the team.

• Subway does this with the online surveys, which you get a free cookie if you do, and this allows them to see what they can approve upon. Yelp is a great way to have customers give feedback on your store. If you have a website, which JPM Comic does not have,  you can have a section where customers say how the experience was great in the store so other new comers can see it.

• My mentor Jason Cox is a very important resource to this answer. Various different articles have this as an important way to achieve your customers' satisfaction. And personal experience.

• Even though this is a very helpful answer that goes toward my essential question, it is not the best answer for my essential question.

Extra February Blog

The time has finally come, we finally have food to eat! We aren't starving anymore, so that's good. Anyways, I have talked to my mentor Jason about teaching me more of the business size of a comic store. He agreed to show me. Also, he agreed to show me how to do some computer work (order merchandise, check if we have stuff in stock, etc.) so it can help me more with my final presentation. My first mentor, Kevin, is finally coming back after being gone for three months. He is returning in about two weeks, and I have no idea if he will become my mentor again. I like Jason better though as a mentor.

We will see how things work out in the end, but hopefully I can keep Jason as a mentor.

Blog 16: Answer 2

1. What is the best way to achieve customer satisfaction for a comic store?

2. My first answer is to always know your product and always knowing what your customers want.

3. My second answer is to grow close relationships with your customers and always have them be involved in what you are doing.

4. -When you are nice with customers they tend to give you good reviews and would want to come back to your store

     -Get to know your customers personally, it shows that you actually care for them and are interested in them as a person

     -When you are not nice to customers they tend to act the same way towards you and can possibly lead to a bad review on your store and rumors that talk trash about you personally

5. The best printed source that supports my answer is my Interview #3

6. Other sources that help supports my answers are "6 Keys to Improving Your Customer Service Skills" and "10 Ways to Make Customers Fall in Love With Your Business."

7. Customers are a very important factor in your store/business, they are the ones that keep you in business. So make sure you pay them back with the respect that they deserve.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. What I plan to do for my independent component 2 is to do more mentorship hours at my mentorship.

2. I will be doing the same thing like for what I did for independent component 1 and my regular hours, I will go to JPM Comics and do the hours necessary to reach the 30 hour mark for independent component 2.

3. It will help me learn even more things about the store and maybe even expand into new work (ordering new merchandise/products or learning to use the database) to do than just doing almost the same thing every time I am there.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

• Literal

(a) "I, Gabriel Marquez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 31 hours of work."

(b) The sources I used for my independent component is doing more mentorship with Jason Cox, who is now my current mentor.

(c) Look at Mentorship Hours link on my blog.

(d) While doing my independent component with Jason, he continued to show me the basics of running the store (JPM Comics) from where my first mentor, Kevin Mitchell, left off before he left due to foot injuries. I have learned a lot more about the basics of the store and the even learning the tips and secrets to use when using the register or to restocking the shelfs. I had even met the owner of the store, Pierre, and he has been very helpful and supportive when it comes to my senior project. I am learning currently on how to close the store since I stay until closing time (7 pm) and have opened the store once (opening time is 12 pm) and opening the store is a lot faster then closing it. I hope to learn soon on how to order comics and other merchandise and learn to use our database better because I do have some information on how to it, but not that much hands on experience. It also helped me a lot to get to know most of the regular customers that go in every week. We have built rather friendly relationships to one another which is very important to do when working at a store that involves retail.

• Interpretive

As you can tell, this is a picture from inside of the store.

This is the "front desk" of JPM Comics where I actually sit most of the time because I work the register a lot of the time I am there. As you can see by the register, it is my first mentor Kevin before he left. (In the red shirt)

JPM Comics also sell "statues" (as seen above) and action figures/toys. Unfortunately, I do not get to sell much of the statues or any of the toys since we rarely get people wanting to buy them and since they can be very expensive.

• Applied

By doing more mentorship hours with Jason, he helped me get another point of view of the way things are run from what Kevin thought. I could use both sides of information and put them together so I can get the best knowledge of what I am doing. What both Kevin and Jason did to help me out was for me to work register as one of my main jobs to actually experience talking and interacting with the customers and engage into conversations. This helped me with one of my answers "Get to know your customers" because they aloud me to have the very helpful experience. Another thing that is very helpful is that they let me take comics of the shelves and read them and just put them back. This is a way to keep up with popular titles (Spider-Man, Batman, etc.) and to let the customers know my feedback and recommendation on what to read or not. This would fall under my answer "Knowing your products."

Extra January Blog

This month was really the as every other month. I am still learning to close down the store. I am starting to learn the regular customers names and begin to grow friendly relationships with them. They are also getting to know me very well. We fixed the TV in the store so now they customers (and us) can watch movies and enjoy our time while we work. Next we are going to try to clean up the mini-fridge and microwave so we can actually eat while we are there and not starve during the day.

I still work the register and so little things here and there. Like restock the quarter bins, return comics, and do bags and boards. My mentor has recently showed how to set up the way the new books come in every week. I may learn soon how to open up the store.

Blog 13: Lesson 2 Reflection

1. The thing I am most proud of in my presentation is that I felt like I was able to get a majority (I hope everyone) interested in my topic and was able to grab their attention. Also, it was good to get a few laughs throughout the presentation as well.

2. A. I feel like I derserve a P on my presentation.
    B. I may not have cited my sources, but I think I said a lot of good information and got my point across.

3. I think my activity worked out better than I thought it would. At first, I thought less people would participate, but I got a few people to participate and it went well.

4. I would rehearse my PowerPoint more so I can give out my information out more smoothly.

5. My answer #2 would be grow close relationships with your customers, get to know them better.

Blog 12: Mentorship 10 Hours

1. I do my mentorship at JPM Comics in Glendora.

2. My contract is Jason Cox who is an employee at JPM, and has been working there for 8 years now.

3. I do not know exactly how many hours I have, but I should have a close count to around 40 hours. That is way past 10 hours.

4. During my mentorship I have learned to close down the store, learned some background on it, how to use the register, how to return comics, still in the process on learning how to order comics, how to interact with customers and to give the best service possible, how to restock the comics on the shelves, and have done other small things here and there.

Blog 11: Holiday Project Update

1. I think it is good to work on senior project during both breaks or when we have school. It really depends when you have available time to do your senior project, because you may be busy doing fun stuff over break or stuck during homework during school. During my break, I went to mentorship twice and did my usual four hours and actually extended it to 5 hours. 2 pm - 7pm.

2. When doing my senior project over break, I learned somewhat of how to close down the store once it is time to close (which is 7 pm). I am planning to learn how to open up the store next after I learned everything about closing down.

3. I would do my ten question interview for my EQ on my new mentor, Jason Cox. I have gotten to know him very well and we work great together too. It will also give me a chance to get a little more depth from him corresponding my EQ.