Personal Reflection

College is an opportunity to truly discover who you are. Often enough, you hear people saying “You should really major in this field, I think you would really enjoy this career.” or, “Do you think you really want to study that? Have you thought about what you will be doing ten years from now?” filling your mind with self doubt, uncertainty, and the anxiousness of not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Mark Edmundson wrote an article titled, Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?, published in Oxford American addressing college students and their families how the most important thing college students should focus on is personal growth. When students take their courses seriously their engagement can help finding out who they really are and which future career will lead not necessarily to great financial success, but to a career and life that is very satisfying. Edmundson wants to inspire his audience and have them take what he is saying seriously. Edmundson uses satirical informal language and hypothetical situations to effectively persuade college students to focus on their personal growth in order to create a life and career that is deeply fulfilling.

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.

When I arrived at the agency, the room was crowded and many people were waiting for their turned to be served at one of the several tables. The person that I interviewed for this assignment was Emily Hampshire, the coordinator of one of a program called 180. Emily has been with the agency for over a year and is currently the coordinator of the agency’s newest program. This program is a gang prevention and intervention program and was created for the local at-risk youth in an effort to prevent gang related crimes and help youth “change their life around”, as Emily mentioned. This program was created in collaboration with the local Police Department and the Mount Diablo Unified School District and in

Throughout this semester I’ve done my best to address these eight specific aspects of myself and how I can apply them to my life. Out of the eight, My two highest scores are Discovering Self-motivation and Adopting Lifelong Learning. Even in the beginning of the semester these two ranked in the top three. My lowest score on the second test was Gaining Self-awareness, which was also a low score on my first test. I definitely plan on assessing this principal and try to incorporate it into my thinking more. I also plan to continue to work at developing my emotional intelligence. Though in all reality, all of these principles are equally important to success.

From a young age, I knew how I wanted everything that concerned me. When I had to do something, whether it be an assignment, task, or chore, I knew how I wanted it done. It was frustrating as I could not portray what I was thinking to anyone else. Nevertheless, I didn’t stop trying. It became easier when I grew older and I learned how to research, generate lists, and create vision boards. When I found out about this method of communication from my mother, I fell in love with it. She taught me to prepare, and moreover to be proud of productivity. I applied everything I had learned when the “new” iPad 4 came out four years ago. I believe in the power of planning.

Participating in the Sixth Year in Administration course work at Sacred Heart University has allowed me the opportunity to develop myself as a researcher and professional author through writing a thesis. This process took place over three classes with the final class running simultaneously with Internship II. The tertiary course involved conducting the specific research, analyzing the data collected, and writing the analysis and conclusion chapters of the thesis. Creating a useable survey was a more challenging process than I anticipated. With appreciation, I was granted permission to use a survey developed by Wertz, Carpenter, and Fewell as the foundation of my thesis. Items were added or deleted to meet the needs of the North Haven Community. To gain face validity, I reached out to professionals in other districts to review my survey and share suggestions to improve it with me. After the survey was disseminated, the responses trickled in. Upon receipt of responses from various staff members, I realized that I would need to convert some of the verbal answer choices to a numerical code prior to being able to analyze the data. Luckily using software such as an Excel spreadsheet this could be done without much complication.

There is a quote from Claxton (1998), ‘If the roast potatoes are slow to brown, you can turn up the oven. But if you try to speed up the baking of meringues, they burn… The mind, too, works at different speeds.’ It stimulated the idea of the individualism of learning and thought, and how every person has a unique learning identity and approach.

I was shown many types of different ways people use items or things in life to learn. I was shown my own path today by taking a survey and reading about different types of intelligence. Visual learning seems to be my cup of tea. I learn best through demonstration. When I watch, someone working on cars; I can easily do the same on my car. I am a quick learner as long as it is demonstrated. Math is another example of this. I watch my instructor do a math problem on the Smart Board and now I can do that math problem easily. The types of intelligence I went over today made me realize my personal strengths. Besides my strongest learning ability, there are others that pertain to me as well. I use the logical-mathematical intelligence is a very good learning tool. Functions in math are a very good example of this, getting shown functions in the class are very easy to pick up on.

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.

This MPX years has been very valuable to me as a learner. This year, I have greatly expanded my knowledge and skills as a learner. My Success can be observed in my POL and past projects. I would also like to explain MPX was the right choice for 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.

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

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.

Introduction: Transitioning from high school to university is a big adjustment for many students. To help with this change, the book “Becoming a Master Student” provides students with concepts that can help them become more successful in their university career. This reflection will outline some of the articles that BMS has that enhances the student experiences not only academically, but also personally.