Personal Reflection

self-reflect on who I am as a person as well as opening me up to more career goals that match my

The feeling of being overwhelmed was emotion that grew larger as the days progressed . Lastly, my first two years of high school, I never made my mental well being and emotional health a priority, my lack of self care not only contributed my academic demise, but my personal as well. For my second half of sophomore year, I had panic and anxiety attacks daily , which made my day to day life miserable . After I acknowledged the errors of my habits , I made a conscience effort to correct my behavior in the upcoming years. I took classes that I took interest in, I found a system of organization that as effective for me and that I still use , I only participate in activities and extracurriculars that I have time for and most importantly I made sure to make myself a priority. These four changes not only improved my grades , but also my overall happiness increased. The failure of my Advanced Geometry course landed me in the classroom of success, not only for my senior year but for the rest of my academic, personal and professional life

A topic that has been covered during class that has made an impact in my life as a student for this current semester would have to be money matters were we look at our money making choices. It has made an impact by showing me how to budget my money and seperate my wants and needs. Helps me navigate my money more towards my needs which are more important than my needs. I have learned that my needs can wait and aren't necessary which allow me to save more money for future purposes. With this in mind I would like to take the budgeting skills I have learned through this course and use them in real life situations. Furthermore I would like to have save enough money saved in order ro be able to buy a necessity like a house

Is your life integrated? Are you able to be the same person in all aspects of your life—personal, work, family, community, college, classroom? If not, what is holding you back?

Thinking about school sometimes hurts, especially about important assessments. Quiz on Friday for this class, test on Thursday for another class, it's a rough week. It is a Tuesday, and there were no worries in my mind as I enter school that day. Suddenly, I realized that there was a language arts test in 1st period! I zoomed to my locker, quickly went to my class, and snagged a book from the counter and started to study. As I frantically cram in information about The Odyssey for the test that is anticipated in 10 minutes, I begin to think how I should have studied the night before. Similarly, I notice many of my other peers doing the same. When the time passed by 10 minutes, our language arts teacher, Ms. Paschal, informed us that there was no test. Though having mixed emotions about this, I kept my composure and awaited what was planned for the day. Ms. Paschal informed, "I know you are disappointed that the test was canceled, but instead, we are going to write a comparative essay on The Odyssey instead. You will choose one book or movie to compare to The Odyssey. The factor that we are using to compare The Odyssey and your book or movie is the hero's journey." The class suddenly exchanged worried looks as if the essay was the end of the world. I thought to myself, "Oh, this won't be so bad." I later regretted this statement.

Growing up, I was never good at writing and struggled with it. In eighth grade, we had to write a paper on our superhero and I wrote about my mom. I saw everyone wrote two or three pages while I wrote one. I felt a bit weird about that and I knew it was not a good paper. Prior to sophomore year of high school, we had to read a book called Jane Eyre. I did not like reading and read only half the book and just looked up summaries online. I had Miss Figueroa for an English teacher that year, and I was so scared and nervous because she was a difficult teacher. We discussed the book, and then we wrote a rough draft essay about it. In October, we had to take a P.O.W. Exam on this book, which had three essay topics to choose from. I remember my rough draft was the same exact topic as the one on the exam, and I thought this is going to be easy. A few weeks later we got our results back, and it required a three to pass and I got lower than that. I made mistakes on grammar, my paragraphs were not consistent, and my introduction and thesis were not being well- written. This made me so sad because I could not graduate high school without passing this exam. We had to write in-class essay on novels we read and essays at home. I remember struggling to come up with topics to write about and forming ideas. It took me so long to finish these essays, and they were never well written. I was never good with timed essay tests as I felt like I was being rushed and had no time to check my work or

For each of us, there comes a time when we can look back and pinpoint the exact day that altered the course of our life, for me, one of those days was April 13, 2010. I was 14 years old when I fell off my bike and broke my elbow. After consulting multiple orthopedics, I was told I would never regain my range of motion, but with the help of a certified hand therapist, I was able to regain full range of motion and prove the doctors wrong. Months later I had surgery to reconstruct my elbow that had not healed properly, but again I was able to regain full range of motion thanks to my therapist. While the doctors were able to fix my arm, it was the therapists who were able to give me my quality of life back. It was at this moment that I knew I wanted to be a therapist. During my freshman year of college, I began to develop an ulnar claw which eventually led me to undergo ulnar nerve transposition surgery. After spending countless hours with a certified hand therapist I knew this was what I wanted to spend my life doing. I had been going to school with plans of applying to physical therapy school, but the experience I had recovering from ulnar nerve transposition led me to alter my course of study and transfer schools. Today no one would ever know that I had something wrong with my arm or hand other than the scars which motivate me and remind me of the impact an occupational therapist had on my life, and my ultimate goal; become an occupational therapist.

Throughout my writings in English 2201, I have become a better writer, where my work in both the Category 1 and 2 project shows my abilities. Each category was designed to help and develop my writing and I believe it did that. There were many process that took place while writing and I think it allowed for much improvement. Each part of my writing process played an effective part in having an overall successful paper during the semester.

I arrived at the Churchill County Library between 4:55 pm and 5:00 pm. My sister, who works there part-time, texted me at 4:36 pm telling me to bring my dog to the Library, as she had put her two weeks in and her coworkers wanted to see the dog before she was gone. I have brought my dog to the Library on three (3) or four (4) separate occasions for this same purpose: a simple visit. I left my house at 4:45 pm. I can not definitively say how long the visit lasted. Factoring in the 10min drive to and from my home to the library, my best guess is approximately 35mins, as I arrived home at 5:45 pm.

When it comes to a person’s characteristics, preferences, and beliefs it can be hard to make the distinction between the three. Not only that, but when asked a simple question: “What are some of your defining characteristics?” It’s so easy to just draw a blank. It may not even be that you don’t want to brag, it’s hard to talk about things like that on the spot. Almost as if you were asked, “What’s your favorite movie and you’ve suddenly forgotten every movie you’ve ever seen. In other words, self reflection is difficult. Namely, making a distinction between the different aspects that make up who you are as a person.

I am 18 year old female who lives on campus and am a first time college student with a full time course load. I do not have a job, but I am an athlete (I play golf). In Unit 1, for me, the most helpful topics we learn about were the learning styles and time management. The three learning styles are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. I discovered that I was a visual and kinesthetic learner. I already knew I was a visual learner (someone who learns best from seeing things), but was unaware I was just as much of a kinesthetic learner. A kinesthetic learner is someone who learns best by doing instead of just listening or reading. Kinesthetic learners enjoy hands-on learning. After learning this new information, I started to make an extra effort to practice the material I was learning in class instead of just listening to the lecture and rereading my notes and the textbook. This was most beneficial in my chemistry class. I practiced completing equations over and over until I got the correct answer every time, which paid off in the end because I ended up not missing a single equation on the test. I use my visual side of learning by in psychology by picturing the information as real life scenarios and in speech by writing out and rewriting lines to help me memorize my speech. It is imperative that as a student beginning at IUSB, that you understand your learning style since studying with the wrong learning style would make it difficult to succeed. Once a student knows their style,

After more long and stressful weeks, the first marking period was coming to an end. I checked my gradebook to see how I was doing so far. I winced at my grades. “A zero? I thought I handed that in… Why is this such a low grade? Oh yeah, late points… Hey at least I passed that test, I didn’t get an A though…” I was disappointed in myself. Where did I go wrong? I thought high school was going to be easy.

Growing up I was taught to be nice to everyone. Even if they treated me wrong I was expected to “kill hate with kindness”. Now that I’m a young adult I’ve had a chance to reflect on this motto that I’ve grown up with and realized that this advice may have done more damage than good.

Before going into my reflective essay, it is important to first know what is reflective learning and journal writing. Reflective learning is the system of internally analysing and exploring a problem of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which ends up in a modified conceptual angle (Boyd and Fales, 1983). Journal writing on the other hand, is the recording of each day events, personal reflections, questions about the environment, and reactions to experiences (Dyment and O’Connell, 2003). According to Kerka (1996), journal writing is considered to be vital factor of expertise processing and that it enables the learners to “articulate connections between new information and what they already recognise”.

I was not concerned about politics as a child, I was more concerned with the next level I was playing in Mario or the next Spider-Man movie. As far I was concerned, racism ended in the 1960s, the opposing side of the war were just bad guys from movies. and taxes were beyond my comprehension. So when I learned that we were going to have a new president in 2008, I was engrossed by it. Still though, I knew nothing about politics. All I knew is that my parents must know what’s good, right? My parents supported Barack Obama in 2008. They were tired of President Bush’s policies, and after the 2008 Financial Crisis, they, like many Americans, wanted change. Nine-year-old me didn’t realize what was going on, but the fact there was going to be a new president got me excited.