Reflection On Self Reflection

Personally speaking, the result of this survey was exceedingly accurate. It was correct in saying I am in the middle of low and high self esteem. I am all right with certain aspects about myself, like personality, however, when it comes to aesthetics and how others perceive me, it would be helpful to have a little push here and there.

Self-reflection is one of the most challenging aspects of writing. Rationalizing why I deserve the Top Graduate award is a humbling task, but I feel as though I can present a strong argument. Consequently, the goal of this essay is to inform the board of my journey at Park University. My selection to compete for this award has been an honor in itself, and will do my best to give you my credentials. However, before I begin, I will lay out a concise background on myself to help you understand a little about who I am.

Knowing how I evaluate myself and how I prefer to view myself, I must always consider that my preferred view could have an effect on the reported outcome due to my own bias. Therefore, the assessment must be able to take this distortion into consideration when attempting to interpret the results of the

When looking at my second highest score, personalized power motive, it describes that person as the center of attention who wants to be

Festinger’s (1954) seminal paper explained how self-concept is obtained and maintained using social comparisons. Several researchers such as Marsh & Hau (2003) and Marsh & Parker (1984), have also supported Festinger’s (1954) studies by stating that social comparison is used to develop a self-concept. Corcoran, Crusius & Mussweiler (2011) also emphasised the importance of comparisons, stating that “comparisons between the self and others - are a fundamental psychological mechanism influencing people's judgments, experiences, and behavior” (p.119). Humans have a drive to have an accurate appraisal of their abilities, and social comparison provides an efficient way to obtain information about our abilities. (Corcoran, Crusius & Mussweiler, 2011; Festinger, 1954)

This is only the second class that I have taken since making the decision to return to college, and one in which I know has undoubtedly induced such a powerful personal impact, more so than any other curriculum I’ve studied. Reading the two books I was assigned required an enormous amount of self reflection and helped explain how certain occurrences shaped me into the person I am today, and taught me the necessary skills needed to elevate my understanding on the subject of biblical narrative, and how instrumental it is in developing my story. While both books discussed the topic of story, I appreciated how their different writing styles allowed me to gain a broader perspective on the subject in its totality. I took from Donald

“Mommy, why can’t we catch the water?” I think that was one of my earliest questions about the world. It was sometime before kindergarten, maybe even before preschool. A time when I didn’t even know what science was, but I was thinking about it. About the what, the how, and the why. I knew that I drank water, that I used it to wash my hands, and that it flowed. And yet I couldn’t take it at face value - I was familiar with it, but did not understand it. My first memory of curiosity, the first of many.

Starting from a very young age, before preschool, I hated crayons. I exhibited myself with fine art skills. I always cut out shapes and various images perfectly, along the thick black borders and colored completely inside the lines. In my 5 year-old-mind, crayons symbolized everything undesirable in the world. The dull wax lines left by the crayon when I drew was always uneven and bumpy, so it was nearly impossible to color completely inside the lines. The crayons always smelled like burnt rubber mixed with expired cheese and would break if I put a bit too much pressure on them. After every use, they would leave a permanent smell on my fingers and the wax was difficult to scrub off. They were absurdly hard to sharpen, even with the special sharpener that came in the crayon box, to get them back to the way they had come out of the box. I have felt the need to push myself to be perfect in every way possible. Through my preoccupation for perfection, I have learned the unfortunate consequences of attempting to make an abstract ideal a reality, finding that it not only prevents me from enjoying aspects of life that all people should experience but also keeps me from getting the satisfaction of fulfilling the unrealistic goals I have set for myself.

For me, this semester was all about getting out of my comfort zone and learning what I am capable of accomplishing. In addition, I learned how to effectively work with a diverse team and what I can do to make our work little better. When I started this semester, I was afraid to make mistakes at work and class. However, when I realized if I wanted to grow then I cannot be afraid to make mistakes and allow it to control my actions. One of the big accomplishments I attained was accepting that I need to stop holding myself back and push myself forward. Ariel, I disliked doing some of the reflections for your class, but I am thankful that you forced me to write what was truly blocking me from accomplishing my goals. Writing it down helped me to see what I need to work on and what I need to do to strengthen my weaknesses and strengths.

The past few months at Northside Elementary have been full of memories. When starting the fieldwork process I was not sure how one hour a week with a group of ten to fifteen students was going to be able to provide me with multiple experiences on the community partnership level. However, I quickly learned that every student has a story to tell and a lesson to offer. I spent the majority of my time with a ten-year-old boy by the name of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was initially very shy and not receptive to learning from a girl, thankfully that quickly changed and on Monday’s around 3:30 I could see him inside the waiting at the cafeteria windows for me to arrive to school. On the outside a child might seemingly have everything they could possible want with their new shoes or their new iPhone but Jeremiah taught me that the outside appearance is not always what it seems and dynamically at home there could be some family issues or at school there could be delays in academic success making the student feel helpless and worthless. Over the past several weeks, I tried to recognized and practice this philosophy as a volunteer, and even share with some teachers, that as a teacher you can never fully understand what a student in your classroom is going through when they walk through your doorway that day, so it is essential to be patient, kind and choose your actions along with the words spoken carefully.

I read some of the chapters from these books and the two articles because after completing about two years in family based, I started to realize that as I was attempting to become a more systemic thinker, I started to lose sight of the unique contributions that individuals bring to the family and relationships. I loved the masters program at Eastern University in Clinical Counseling as it has prepared us for understanding individuals at a meaningful and deep level. However, I only had one class in marriage and family systems during the program, and when I started the job as a family based therapist, I found myself anxious at the thought of engaging multiple individuals in a therapeutic conversation. I tend to respond in two ways when I sense a limitation within my skill level. One way is to become overwhelmed and avoid having to be reminded that I am not competent, and a second response is to take it upon myself to practice rigorously. Because I was fascinated by family therapy, I started to immerse myself in learning as much as I could, through workshops, supervision, trainings, and books, and including applying to this program. Meanwhile this has helped tremendously in my job; I started to sense that I was focusing more on the process that I was expecting the family to be at based on predictions from previous families I worked with similar dynamics instead of maintaining the uniqueness of each family, and especially of each individual family member. I therefore was become

First, in relation to the work, I believe that if I cannot make better efforts on normal tasks, even the trivial one, then how can I expect to do more challenge things in the future? Everyone wants to reveal their abilities and to be famous including me. But, maybe I should focus on small things and prepare for big things’ coming. If I do not want to do something routine and trivial, I can figure out the creative method to be more efficient. I believe that the companies and managers would like employees could make more contribution in a smart way and save more cost and time.

The social comparison theory suggests people learn their abilities and flaws by comparing themselves to other people (Weiten, 2015, pg, 171). We compare ourselves with other who are similar on to our characteristics or self-worth. We compare ourselves to others when there is no influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. When I receive an average grade in a class, I compare myself to a student received an A. This motivates me to look up to that classmate as a mentor to enhance myself. It is important to have the attitude that you are cable and you can improve rather than the opposite, I am unable and I can not improve. This method is called the upward social comparison, which can make us feel worse or they inspire us to do better (Weiten, 2015, pg, 171). I am guilty of downward social comparison when I receive a bad grade (C) on a test. If the teacher announced that half the class failed, my mind would be at ease. Downward social comparison can make us feel better (Weiten, 2015, pg, 171). The reference groups that I compare my academic performance with is my fellow colleagues.

Szy@ manski and Harkins (1987) did exactly this in an experiment in which they asked participants to generate as many uses as they could (i.e., do-your-best instructions) for a common object, regardless of the creativity of those uses. Pilot work with this task showed that participants felt that they knew how many uses they had generated (their output). Therefore, to manipulate the potential for self-evaluation, Szymanski and Harkins either provided an evaluative criterion by telling participants that at the end of the session they would be told the average number of uses generated by participants in a previous version of the experiment, or Szymanksi and Harkins withheld the criterion by telling participants that to preserve confidentiality they would not be given this information. When the participants were provided with the evaluative criterion, they had an opportunity for selfevaluation by social comparison. This manipulation of the potential for self-evaluation was crossed with a manipulation of the potential for experimenter evaluation. Half of the participants were told that at the end of the session, the experimenter would come in and count the number of uses that they had generated (experimenter evaluation), whereas the other half of the participants were told that the experimenter was interested in average performance so their individual outputs would be pooled with those of

The self, the architect of our thoughts, feelings and actions, is also the center of our judgments of others. Many people assume that we need to discern external factors to best predict the outcomes (such as satisfaction and happiness) in a relationship, yet a closer look at how we feel about ourselves significantly reveals more than we think. As psychologist Schultz (2008) pointed out, asking one hundred people what adjective comes first to their mind to