Personal Reflection

This reflection will discuss personal diffidence and how it has influenced my academic studies, including my practice within placement settings. Gibbs reflective cycle (Gibbs, 1998) has been utilised as it illustrates a clear structure for the process of reflection. To conclude this reflection will draw together the themes which have emerged and highlight a clear action for future learning that will be used in order to enhance my future practice.

NCSSM Residential and Online students must have a high level of maturity, whether living away from home or working daily without teachers or supervision. Please help us understand why you are mature enough to manage your own deadlines, schedule and academic interest.

The nature of a human person is to learn new things and improve his capacity as days move on. Experience is described as the best teacher by many psychologists and people are encouraged to include their experience even in job application. This shows how important experience is. Positive psychology assists so much in asking questions which in themselves when answered can have a very positive impact on an individual (Kolb,2014). It is mostly concerned with things that are tasked to make the person happy. A famous saying says that the secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others add their troubles. The question asked at this stage is to ensure that they inspire and cultivate positive emotions and nurture relationship with the major aim of making the person happy.

With tears falling down my face, I reflected on what I had gone through for the past seven months. I was talking to a crowd of concerned parents and depressed kids that were looking for help. I started thinking about where I would be if I wasn't as strong as I know I am now. I was thirteen, the youngest out of three speakers at an anti- bullying conference at my church. We were telling our stories about bullying. It was my turn to speak, my heart started racing, and it felt like it would drop to the floor. Even with flashcards in my hand to keep me on track, I felt like I couldn't speak. My pastor, Angela Jones, saw how nervous I was and came to comfort me and help me to calm down. She told me to tell my story and tell my testimony, so I did.

First semester of my senior year has taught me a lot about my writing abilities and how to be consistent with fluency, while increasing the maturity level being used within my writing. I have always thought of myself as a good writer, but having the opportunity to receive criticism from others has truly opened my mind to different views.

A personal reflection that I discuss is my personal experience in my K-12 education with an educator I consider to be a “white ally.” It was informative for me to read the excerpt of “Becoming an Ally Breaking the Cycle of Oppression,” by Anne Bishop (2015). Here, I discuss my personal experience with my elementary school teacher, Ms. Erickson (a white ally) and proceed with my exploration of this educational experience in relation to power, privilege, and education. Then, I reflect on the impact being in Ms. Erickson’s class has provided me and working with diverse students.

In the Fall of 2011, it had been decided I was going to have a surgery called pectus excavatum repair in September of 2012. When I was age five, my mom had started noticing my chest sinking into me like there was a person pressing on my breastbone. She immediately took me to my pediatrician to get me checked to see if there was anything wrong. The doctor diagnosed me with a pectus and told my mom there was a surgery to fix it, but they would have to make an incision from my collarbone to my belly button, then put a metal rod in me. After major discussion, my parents decided to wait for a new, less invasive option. We had waited a few years, and my condition had gotten worse; it had become time to rethink surgery.

The first four chapters reading were really helpful to understand more about yourself, self-worth, your personality type, your circle control, also help you understand about how people that you interact with react in a positive or negative way, and how to deal with different type of behaviors or personalities. I like all the truth of 1 to 4, but I picked truth #2, which explained about your circle control that contains 4-P personality style, specific self-worth, and external support system. Working with older people can be challenging because different residents/clients or staff may have different personalities and sometimes it is hard to approach them without knowing them or their personalities. However, the longer you work with them, the more you will be able to identify their personalities and able to approach them without a problem.

Emotional distress, at that moment, far exceeded the past physical pain which I had endured, where, as my body fought for survival, my mind yearned for death. Bound by judgemental onlooking eyes, I stood in the grounds of my school, where they consequently studied me for a sign of vulnerability; begging for me to collapse into my self-fabricated darkness. Like a spineless criminal, I slumped, trembling irrepressibly in the middle of the secluded balcony, where I implored myself to “stop” as I yet again had a crippling anxiety attack which incarcerated my whole body. It was punishing enough to wake up in the mornings, though faced with the immobilizing guilt that my therapist had contacted my parents concerning my suicidal ideation, evaporated my self-esteem. Tears filled my eyes like an overflowing river and cascaded down my face, though freezing in the silence. Proceeding to coerce myself repetitively to “stop it”, as I repulsed that mental illness was the corruptive reality of my life, I cowered as the flashbacks uncontrollably replayed in my mind. I recollected the words that any mother would dread to divulge to their child; that “sometimes I think that it would be better that you were gone, because then, you wouldn’t have to feel this pain”, contradicting this by expressing to me that “I know it’s selfish, but you can’t leave me”.

My summer has been amazing! I came home from GHP two days ago, where I had some of the best weeks of my life. We talked about it so much beforehand, I thought you might want to hear how it went. GHP is a learning environment like no place else. I had the opportunity to meet so many welcoming people (my hallmates, classmates, RA, and teachers) who were so similar to me in character, but also brought a wealth of different experiences. I learned so much academically, but mostly about myself while in Rome.

I found this exercise very helpful, reading the scores form each of the sections has given me a lot of insight into what I am good at, and what I can improve on in my field. I scored high in the adapting practice and in linguistics competence and health and health care disparities. To me, this shows me that I am good at communicating effectively in terms of making sure clients understand what options they have and how we can help them find the best decision which will benefit them the most. The results indicated that “Items contained in this…adapting such care to individual patients in the practice environment.” (National Center for Cultural Competence, 2). I have just recently experienced something similar to this, and I can see that even though I am at an internship, I can still see myself taking these things into my everyday life.

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.

Business has been an interest of mine since I was a child. From selling lemonade at church on Sundays as a 9-year-old to starting a successful retail business as a young adult. I founded and operated a successful retail business for seven years. It was featured on August 2008 edition of Glamor magazine and the 2008 October/November edition of Siempre Mujer magazine. My customers included an Olympic runner and a few celebrities, but most importantly It allowed me to be a blessing to others by being a part of various non-profit organizations.

My favorite high school English teacher once said, “You have to want to be a better writer. I can’t make you a better writer without at least some effort on your part guys.” The implied lesson in this quote, about writing and effort, is something I remembered throughout high school and coming into college. In English 109H, I wanted to understand how to transition my writing to a meet a college level. Through in-class peer-editing exercises and identifying and improving problems consistently identified in my writing, I was able to improve my understanding and performance in the course goals of Conventions and Critical Thinking and Composing. However, I still need work on wording changes within Reflection and Revision.

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.