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.

As a result of the traumatic injuries which I sustained on December 4, 2014, while working as a police officer and on duty, I am unable to perform my duties as a police officer in a safe and effective manner, without jeopardizing the safety of myself, my coworkers, as well as the public’s, which I took an oath to serve and protect.

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.

While reading Systems Thinking, The Systems View of Life and Learning as a Way of Leading, I felt as if I was experiencing many contradictory things at once. I felt as if i was in the past and the future, i was growing and shrinking, peering into a microscope and peering through a telescope all at the same time. I was taken on a journey through the micro and macro while weaving simultaneously through my own internal and external mental models of the world. This immersive reading experience sparked a strong desire in me to seek new perspectives and try to understand what others internal and external mental models look like, what they mean and what they feel like. The concepts and theories presented in the readings have helped me to solidify some of my own thought processes and ways of thinking about the world so I can put them into action and apply new practices into my community work and in turn create change. I do know one thing for sure, I want my contributions to be positive and go towards the common good. The readings reminded about how interconnected everything and everyone is and how fragile life can be. The readings have reinforced my desire to do good, be creative, think of others more than myself, but to not lose touch with self.

When meeting others, the observations I make are immediate. I often assign traits and characteristics to them without being conscious of the fact that I am doing so. How I react to them – and whether or not I desire another interaction with them – is dependent on these assignments. The characteristics I admire in myself, and the attributes that I observe in others form these assessments. The Role Construct Repertory Test allowed me to recognize what traits I value in others, understand my personal constructs, and given me insight into my own cognitions.

I can remember when I was back in 4th grade; I used to attempt to write books or stories. When I was younger, I loved to read with my mom and then would try to write something similar to the book I had previously read. My Mom would help me read books like The Magic Tree House and would simplify and slow everything down for me so I could better understand what was going on and why. Nina Sankovitch, a reader who blogs about what she reads captures my feelings when she talks about how “I discovered new wells of resilience and joy, empathy and beauty” (Sankovitch). When I was younger, I didn’t know how to always capture these emotions, but my goal was always to make a story and try to recreate those feelings. It was a real accomplishment for me because at the time when all this was happening I struggled with reading in class. When I first started reading: I would dread being called upon, but I liked to write stories of what I read on my own, and now I do not like to read anymore.

Jenny Moon (2004) states in her paper, A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice; reflective writing can be classed as ‘cognitive housekeeping’, or a ‘sorting out, clarifying process’. It’s useful to reflect on my first trimester at Swinburne Online, to clarify my newly learned skills and attributes in preparation for the rest of my degree.

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.

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

Throughout the first semester of English 101A, I had struggled a lot because English is not my first language and it is not an essay class for me as a foreign student. And I did not have a strong basis on writing because I did not use to write a lot. I started learning English properly after I got in the U.S in 2013 from Ethiopia. Most of the time I focused on reading books that the teacher assigned to me and answering the questions. And sometimes we summarized a chapter from books. And starting English 101A as a freshman in college it was very hard to get familiar with the writing style because in high school we did not have specific writing rule like MLA formatting. And a high school writing was very different from college. As a result, I had to review MLA formatting and work cited when I started taking English 101A in college. I worked very hard in English 101 because it is an important course in order to succeed in my all college courses. Even though I have seen tremendous progress on the recursive writing process and writing a detailed essay with good examples during the last semester in English 101A, I have to continue to work on improving grammar and practicing timed writing.

I am Samantha pressdee and I will self assess myself for this quarter. I will discuss my attendance, my grade,work ethic and my overall attitude in this class.

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.

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.

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,