Professionalism

Students and young adults just beginning their professional lives, need to collect a list of vital survival skills that will help them navigate through what is considered "professional" and what is not. However this set of rules is not exclusive to young people - there are many "experienced" people that are well into their professional lives that still have many important lessons to learn about the meaning of the word "professionalism".


For instance, I was shocked yesterday to have had a conversation with a friend about her supervisor who accused her of being unprofessional, only moments after he had thrown a muffin at her. Yes! It's true - after this man had thrown food at her - he decided to tell her that she needed to learn to how to be more professional.

So I have searched around and found some of what I would call the best posts from my favorite and most popular blogs on relevant topics that are related to business, office and academic etiquette.

The first and likely the most important is an email checklist which can be found here at Seth's blog:

email checklist

This university actually outlines what it's expectations are from it's medical students as they relate to professionalism and professional behavior:

professionalism and professional behavior


This is an excellent article from about.com that discusses image, personal appearance and how you can communicate a professional image - there are also links to other articles that discuss how to extend your professional image into your writing communication and strategies for networking.

image


Finally, and this is my favorite, this is a definitive guide to how to have a perfect food fight. I've found nothing about throwing muffins...

food fight and food fight


Post Script: I have decided after reading all of these that there is little to no professionalism in academia, it is a farce for this man to have accused anyone of being LESS professional than him, and that if we ever want to be taken seriously by the rest of the world we should consider behaving more professionally. Not even people who hold food fights would accept us into their society!