Category: Mock Consultations

I survived my third mock consultation! In theory this should’ve been one of the easiest ones because it was just a lot of font issues. In reality though? I didn’t know how to do most of the things Mayday asked of me. Oops.

So to answer the question of what parts felt tricky, I would say the entire consultation. To handle this, I did some Googling (unhelpful) and asked Shannon (very helpful).

Were there any parts of the consultation that made me feel confident? Ehh… perhaps the only thing I felt confident about was that I knew what the student wanted. I figured that out by asking questions to gauge what Mayday’s purpose was behind the formatting issues. I think this helped build a friendly relationship and make the consultation come out overall positive even if it took me forever and there wasn’t a satisfactory answer to one of the formatting problems.

I was able to successfully help Mayday add categorized blog posts to her menu without enlisting the help of anyone else, so that made me feel better.

Next time, I will make sure to ask more clarifying questions on the scope of the help they need. Since I didn’t ask Mayday how many formatting issues she was having, I had assumed the font color was the only thing she wanted to change. Little did I know the battle ahead of me over image wrapping and indenting.

From this experience, I learned that my consulting style is still unsure of myself, although very encouraging of my clients. I hope to build more confidence in the future as I get more practice and poke around more with WordPress.

Stay tuned for more practice consultations!

I have to start this out by saying that it was absolutely brutal to watch half an hour of footage of myself giving a consultation.

Now onto the reflection!

The part of the consultation that I felt most confident in was establishing the subdomain. This is because I was able to practice that skill in my first consultation, so it was fresher in my memory. I got a little tripped up on pro themes, but I asked my fellow consultants for help and Katy gave a great explaination.

By far the trickiest part of the consultation was trying to add a social media button that would lead directly to May Day’s LinkedIn. Since I’m not using my website in a strictly professional manner and I don’t have any social media, I hadn’t even considered how one might link their social media to their website.

After I had her aimlessly click around for a while, May Day took pity on me and discovered the social media button. Even then, I couldn’t figure out how to link it. Oh well. Zoe helped show me afterward, so hopefully I can do it next time.

Another tricky part was figuring out the best way to put May Day’s resume on the website. I think the way I had her do it is wrong. In the future, I believe the best way to link a resume is by inserting a PDF file? (Feli or Zoe correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.)

As for how I went about figuring out the student’s needs, I had May Day pull up the assignment so I could read it myself. I also just let her talk while I listened to what she was highlighting as important for the assignment.

From this experience, I learned that my consulting style right now is “let’s figure this out together.” I would like to say it’s because I want to empower my clients to become more tech savvy, but it’s really because I don’t know much about WordPress or the troubleshooting of it.

Next time, I will try to cut down on the aimless clicking around to figure stuff out. I will do this by asking my coworkers for advice, using the DKC guides (both online and printed), and not being afraid to Google things.

Maybe I can also use my own computer more and see what happens on my website for various things?

The heading says it all! I had my first mock consultation today with Mayday (played by Zoe). I had forgotten most of what was asked of me (oops), but by utilizing the DKC guides as well as asking my fellow consultants, I was able to help Mayday set up a Doman of One’s Own account!

Feeling: victorious.