Personal Reflection

The second day of my practice I felt that I had made some progress towards my goals of improving my time management and getting my documenting done earlier and providing relevant healing initiatives for my client.

I have had multiple clinical practices, however, out of all the experiences during my shifts, there is one particular event that holds great meaning for me. This event happened on my fifth clinical day of this semester, which was the day I first dealt with two clients.

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.

I had a stressful morning in the lead up to placement with some difficulties with transport. I needed to consciously leave those issues at the door. I believed I was able to do this and not let a bad day impact of my professional behaviour and conversation with the client.

My first client sat in silence, save for the occasional kissing sounds he made. He had been involuntarily committed under the Baker Act the day before. Since he lacked family or friends, I was appointed as his guardian advocate and became responsible for overseeing his treatment and protecting his rights as a patient. I mentally rifled through my training manual. It can get better. This phrase peppered the pages in my mind, but advice on helping nonverbal, slightly suggestive clients was scarce. Ask open ended questions. I heeded the manual's suggestion, but his stubborn gaze met each attempt. Frustrated, I left with a promise to return the next day.

Throughout the process of writing this paper, I have learned more about my topic than I thought I would. The original idea for this project was to outline the basis of why animal cruelty was wrong. Also to give ways to what we can contribute to the topic being researched. But, not only did I just do research and present it, instead, I dug deeper and got more involved in my topic. Although writing the paper took more time than expected. This piece of information did not come that easily to me the ending result was the result; it was harder than usual to write it definitely paid off. This by far was my most successful piece of writing and made me an even better writer.

Last semester, in one of my classes, I was required to write a letter to God. I do not remember the exact words, but I do remember telling Him that I do make a lot of mistakes and I struggle with issues that Christians should not be dealing with. I told God that I am not sure that I am the type of Christian that others should look up to. Although I knew the Word, I prayed often and never missed church, I still felt a void on the inside of me. I often compared myself to Hannah. I felt a barrenness on the inside of me and I did not know how to fill it. On top of the spiritual emptiness I felt, I also had to deal with emotional stress. When I started attending Regent University, I had several fears that tried to prevent me from proceeding. First, I feared my status as a double minority in a field that is predominantly male would prevent many doors from being open to me regardless of my academic ability. Secondly, I feared having a background in engineering and not biblical studies would put me at a great disadvantage in my classes regardless of my knowledge of the Bible. Whenever someone asked me a question, I would have an answer, but I was not sure if I gave the right answer because I was never licensed as a minister as a pastor. My role within the church was as a server. I cooked, I cleaned, I played with the children, I visited people, I hugged people, I sewed and I loved working with my hands. In fact, I was the one who usually served the pastors and I loved my work. In

Interning with Dr. Bunn and John Manor was a wonderful experience which I was able to learn an exponential amount of information. It also gave me a great opportunity to put my foot in the door by meeting professors that I potentially could be working alongside with at the Physical Therapy school. I was able to work with the Campbell athletes and test them on the 3D optical motion capturing system and it gave me the opportunity to develop new hands on and organizational skills I have yet learned in my undergraduate experience. John was able to teach me surface anatomy and dynamometry skills that I will not learn until graduate school, this puts me at a great advantage when I continue my education in Physical Therapy school. I also learned how to operate the motion capturing system which was extremely challenging, this worked to my advantage because now I now hold a skill that very few undergraduate students have obtained. Lastly, I was able to study about capturing, tracking, processing, and analyzing data. By applying what I learned in Research Methods, I turned the statistics I collected and transformed it into a poster presentation. In November, I was able to present it at Campbell University’s Academic Symposium and I also plan on presenting it at multiple events in the future.

Today has been a very hectic day in which, I totaled my car. I began talking about this very true statement because there are many ups and downs to life no matter how much you prepare there is endless possibilities for things to not go as planned. Therefore, I understand why you would want some individuals to track their expenses for a little over a month and then go back and review the information. First, I chose to track my credit card expenses by my bank statement, of course, I remembered to write down each item because in your bank statement it does not disclose the item description. It just shows the summary or the place you purchased it. Another thing, I chose to track all cash expenses by putting a certain amount of money in my wallet and then seeing how much was in it at the start of the next week, which yielded great results because I rarely use cash. Second, we started collecting all data towards the middle of October and I would not say I learned an extreme amount, but I did learn some very hard taught lessons throughout the process. Truthfully, I was glad I was already taking the necessary steps in money management. Honestly, I also figured out how economic struggles can affect your schoolwork and build up harmful stress. Third, I feel the Excel chart that I use paint a better picture of the breakup of my spending as a comparable whole. The plain charts show you how much you spent, when you spent it, and how often you spent your money in one category compared to

This unit, as well as the others, have been an opportunity to grow and to learn and to discover myself in areas that I had not considered in the past. It is causing me to look within myself and to bring out abilities that had not been tapped for years. The first was the desire to move to level two in the CPE program. The realization that the status quo was not adequate. So the additional effort that was necessary to do so has to be applied. Hearing the words for my supervisor when she said if you had not change the way you were doing things we would be having a different conversation. Admittedly I did not want that different discussion. Moreover, the look that she gave with that smile in her head turned to the side I knew we would not have been good. I do not want that look anymore, so I will make sure there is no reason to receive that look. I discovered that this exchange was necessary for me to learn a valuable lesson, that lesson was if we students are willing to put in the work I will supervisor will put the work in to help us/me.

Prior to this year I did not think of history beyond being another academic subject on my “must do” list. The exercises you put us through made its importance to success, especially in business, evident. My summer travel reading list of (put the 2 I gave you) was chosen to start to learn more on how to recognize what effects change in business and economies. It became readily apparent I am woefully undereducated. Looking to swim in knowledge, now I have a litany of history, politics, philosophy, and business books to read.

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.

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

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.

Back in the spring of 2012 I was at a crossroads do I reenlist in the army or do i simple just take my discharge and move on to a new path with a slower pace. The military had been all I knew for the last eight years. These where my brothers we had been to hell and back together. We came face to face with devil in the Middle East and walked away from it uninjured. However the continuous rotations overseas would break anyone down three months in country then six months back in the states it was a continuous cycle that never ended. Life in Ranger Regiment wasn’t easy the mission tempo was fast paced and demanding. I had seen a few guys from the unit break and go into a form of psychos an then med. boarded out. Then there was the guys that got out. It mostly went one or two was with no grey area. They drank themselves into the abyss or they would excel at the new path they ventured out on. All of these guys in every category I had the highest respect for.