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.

I believe I can have a lot of respect for the players, the server, and its reputation. I try my best to be as respectful to others because I want to be treated with respect. I've always treated people with respect (except for minor toxicity in the past), especially on this server. I've loved this server since the day I joined back in 2014, I don't know what it is but I always wanted to apply for staff, and I think I'm old enough and mature enough to help the server now. When I first joined Arkham I was playing in other communities as well (soup pvp, potpvp, etc.) and I couldn't not only dedicate time to the server, but I was quite toxic then. I've gotten better over time and have learned to control my "toxicity" so that I could be a nice to new players as possible.

At the beginning of the semester, my main goal was to declare a major and this class was supposed to help me. After attending this class a few times, I was not sure it was the class for me. The syllabus included resumes and activities that did not involve declaring a major. Now that the semester is over, the activities that involved declaring a major helped me tremendously and the ones that did not still have benefited me. Even though I thought I did not need to learn more about those other topics, I learned more helpful tips on top of what I already knew. With this class only being once a week, most of the content has helped me learn about myself, future, and the work place.

My Journey into social work thus far has been extremely challenging from the time I enrolled onto the Social Work programme. By this, I mean I have experienced a placement breakdown, which delayed my overall development. This led me to have a negative outlook on social work professionals. I also experienced high anxiety/delayed stress, within my final year of university, which brought on a whole host of physical symptoms, which has been difficult for me to express to others, and deal with personally. Positively, I have had two brilliant practice placements and gained a wealth of knowledge and skills. Therefore, I feel the above information is relevant for me to highlight, because it will give you a real feel of my journal to date.

According to Polit and Beck (2017), “the ultimate goal of research is to develop and expand knowledge” (p. 3). Through my education in the Doctorate of Nurse Practitioner program, I plan to expand on the knowledge I already have and develop new knowledge that will help me become a successful student and nurse practitioner. I was first introduced to the concept of research during my undergraduate nursing program. During the program, I took a class that taught the basic knowledge of research and how it is used in our daily practice. It was in this class that I learned about evidence-based practice studies and how to find articles that were based on nursing research. I have no professional experience being involved in a research project or completing research on my own. I have been a part of implementing evidence based practice (EBP) interventions at work. Some of the interventions included implementing the ambulatory blood pressure monitoring system, new practices for lab draws and ways to decrease infections in central lines.

Throughout my senior project, I wanted to gain a better understanding of how our government works. I have taken American Government, but I wanted to get an even better understanding of our government through first-hand experience. That is why I decided to be a part of the City of Payette’s advising comprehensive plan committee. Throughout this committee, I, along with about 10 other people, discussed certain topics that will help further make Payette a better place to live in. Some of the topics of discussion included that of property rights, land use planning, transportation, economic development, and more. The purpose of being a part of the committee was to help me get a better understanding of how a local government works. I also wanted to find out the careers that are related with any facet of government.

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,

This semester I had a man in his mid-fifties who has a severe stutter. One long term goal that we worked on was having a more positive experience with stuttering, as well as difficult speaking situations. We have this goal to reduce the amount of negative thoughts he has about his speech, and to prevent him from avoiding speaking situations.

Throughout the course of this past semester I have been able to learn many valuable things about myself, such as my work ethic, my time management skills, and my need to leave an impact upon the populations I surround myself with. In regards to my work ethic, I have realized that I will stop at nothing to make sure I achieve my goals, so to do this I complete all assignments and attempt extra credit in all areas where it is allowed, further I reach out to students and professors to ensure I understand the material in class. Further, my time management skills have improved drastically throughout this past semester, as I have been able to manage my class work and assignments while maintaining high performance in conjunction to balancing extracurricular and a job. In order to delve into impacting those around me, which I have realized is my ultimate goal, I have joined many student organizations that seek to improve student life on campus and to impact those who do not have the same advantages as I do—this is why I have joined clubs such as Undergraduate Student Government and Us United.

Developing an awareness that there are layers of meaning to an idea/concept; openness to finding patterns and connections and exploring the multiple possibilities and interpretations.

During the course of an individual’s life there are highs and lows along with remarkable and terrible times. These occurrences do not define who we are but they do form a portion of our personality. In the world, there are countless amounts of personalities and everyone is different in their own manner. Learning how to work with and be a part of a team where dissimilar personalities exist can be a challenge, but is gratifying if the team thrives even through their differences. During this project, I have found numerous items that will help me in my professional career. Once I accomplished project 2 assessment I discovered that I scored high in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, meaning my personality traits are more trustworthy, amiable, dependable, and accountable (Kinicki & Fugate, 2016). Additionally, another characteristic I found extremely fascinating is that I favor Theory Y over Theory X in my leadership style. Furthermore, I have learned that communication is not a strength of mine, my interactions with individuals is a skill I will need to improve in the future. Communication is imperative in all the interactions we have every day. The better we communicate, the better our private and professional lives will be.

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.

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

Since early on in life, numerous individuals have been hearing people talk about college. Parents usually encourage their children to go to college, get a degree, get engaged on campus, be someone great in life and be important in the society. Hearing people talk about their college experience can push someone to go there and see what is there and how is that going to improve himself/herself. When actually going there, then come the experiences and the hard work and experiences come along in every aspect, such as academic, career, and personal facets of someone’s life.

I slept through the cry and pain and woke up with joy knowing I would be alright when I receive the Doctor’s report. The genesis of my book initiated in the 7th grade, a kidney condition that could possibly end my life instead gave me life. I grew up in church, however, I did not value nor understand the rituals. As I matured, I adapted a unique personality. I built walls to prevent hurt. In secret, I cared and loved, yet I thought speaking hateful and bitter words would showcase my boldness; I associate boldness with aggression. The struggles I faced, included me, myself and I against the world because I did not want to worry my parents. In Addition, I humbled myself and went before the Lord in prayer, promising that I would change. A few weeks later, I received my healing and continued leaving in ungratefulness and doubt. A shift occurred when I joined Generation Next (bible club) at North Miami Beach Senior High school. I battled depression once again. For the first time I enjoyed school because I kept my mind occupied with work. Unexpectedly, walking into bible club feeling hopeless, a guest speaker spoke about how our communication with God required honesty even though He knows it all. That evening at home, while opening my bible I said these words; “Lord if you see my ache whatever I lay my figures upon will filled this voided”. I landed on psalm 29: 11: “The Lord give strength to his people and bless them with peace.” Since that day, I decided to walk with Christ and