Reflective Essay On Personal Development for Successful Career
Question
Task
Students are requested to write a reflective essay within 900 -1000 words count. In the essay, you have to write how and why you have developed as a learner in Preparing for Success: Knowledge and Creativity module.
Answer
Introduction
The reflective essay mainly describes my learning style, reading style, weakness, and the way to enhance my communication. The essay will also reflect the existing skill that I possess and the skills that are needed to be developed to carry a successful career ahead. Along with that, the study will reveal the key theoretical concepts that I follow to enhance my skills. The essay will provide a description of my weaknesses and my planning to overcome those.
Discussion
Enhancing the knowledge within oneself starts with adopting an adequate learning style, which helps an individual to learn in a rapid way. The learning style differs from one person to another person as people cannot learn things in a similar way. There are severe learning styles, and they are visual learning, auditory learning, verbal learning, kinaesthetic or physical learning, logical learning, social learning, solitary learning, and naturalistic learning 1. The characteristics of one learning style differ from another learning style. There is no such boundary that an individual needs to follow one learning style; an individual may follow two or more learning styles or change the learning style based on the situation. The learning style of people, and the selection of learning style basically depend on natural instinct, how a person feels he or she can learn new things more rapidly. Sometimes adapting an adequate learning style is an experience too. If a person does not feel a learning style suitable for learning, then the person may bring change in the learning style to make learning more easy and interesting.
The learning styles I mostly use are social learning and verbal learning. Both help me to learn things easily and helps me keep the lessons memorable. Verbal learning style is the learning style that follows most of the time whenever I read alone and tries to memorize things. Verbal learning helps an individual to learn things by uttering the words loudly. The verbal learning style not only helps me to memorize things but able me to excel in my writing. Being a verbal learner, I like to enhance my vocabulary by adding new words in my stock and always try to flourish my writing and reading skills. As a visual learner, I love to participate in group studies, which I feel an excellent way to learn new things and tough lessons more rapidly.
Another learning style that I follow to learn critical things in an easy way is social learning. Social learning helps me to learn new things and tough lessons in an interactive way by involving in group studies. The most interesting fact about social learning style is it allows an individual to learn new ideas, and though while interacting with others. Being a social learner, I like to study with groups and when the class is over. The social learning style is really an interactive way to learn new ideas and to memorize lessons very easily.
Communication is an important thing, which allows an individual to convey or express the feelings and thoughts with others. Effective communication brings people together and bridges the gap between two people and in groups. The information that is shared during communication helps individuals to understand the perspectives of each other and clears confusion. An individual who is unable to effectively communicate with others fails to express their feelings and cannot share their thoughts 2. Effective communication is important to maintain a good flow of information, coordination, and forming good human relations. Speaking is another crucial factor in effective communication. If a person can speak confidently in front of others and keep their thoughts in front of them, then the people on the other side will obviously listen to them. Effective communication is not only a requirement for current life, but it is fruitful for the future also. Effective communication will help me to work in a group while I will join any organization. Expressing my feelings, my thoughts, and my ideas will be possible through effective communication. As I previously said that speaking power is an important thing for effective communication, and I feel confident in front of speaking in small groups, but in front of large groups, I feel nervous. The skills that I am especially required to carry out my professional life successfully are interpersonal skills, effective communication skills, work flexibility, team working skills, and time management skill.
I am continuously working on enhancing my skills; however, there are some weaknesses that I want to take over on our impatience, attaching things personally, short-sighted, aggressive, and unorganized. These weaknesses may affect my profile will I will approach ay job or in my career. The weaknesses need to be controlled soon, and I am working on them. I have planned certain things to work on my weaknesses, such as reading articles to address the issues that I am currently facing due to my weakness, involved in meditation every day for at least 10 minutes. The small actions are helping me to work on my weakness and to enhance my skills.
Reading style is also important for an individual, and there are four types of reading styles that are scanning, skimming, extensive and intensive or detailed reading 3. Among all the reading style, I follow mostly the intensive style of reading as I feel reading short text is important to get detailed information within less time. I emphasize mainly precise learning and intensive style helps me to understand a lesson in a quick way. There are certain theories that I mostly follow are Kolb's learning theory, which helps me to understand the in-depth importance of learning 4. Along with that, I follow Driscoll's Model of reflection, which helps me to learn from my experiences and to deal with future decisions. There are three what's in this model- what, so what, and now what, and by answering the questions, one can find out the best way to solve any problem 5.
Conclusion
The essay reflects opinions about learning, reading style, and how one can be benefitted by adapting an adequate style. The essay also reflects the importance of communication and how speaking works as a key thing in effective communication. The significance of theories in an individual is also potentially expressed in the essay. The weaknesses that are described in the essay, and the ways to minimize them will successfully carry out with my hard work and practice.
References
Cherry K, “Kolb’s Theory of Learning Styles” (Verywell Mind, May 10, 2012)
?staff.ncl.ac.uk, “Style of Reading” (Ncl.ac.uk, 2021)
University of Cambridge, “LibGuides: Reflective Practice Toolkit: Models of Reflection” (Cam.ac.uk, 2013)
Smith M, “Understanding The 7 Types Of Learning Styles - Mindvalley Blog” (Mindvalley Blog, January 16, 2019)
1 Madilyn Smith, “Understanding The 7 Types Of Learning Styles - Mindvalley Blog” ( Mindvalley Blog , January 16, 2019) .
2. Vicky, "Communication: Meaning, Purpose, Importance, and Principles" (Your Article Library, June 22, 2015)
3. staff.ncl.ac.uk, “Style of Reading” (Ncl.ac.uk, 2021)
4. Kendra Cherry, “Kolb’s Theory of Learning Styles” (Verywell Mind, May 10, 2012)
5. University of Cambridge, “LibGuides: Reflective Practice Toolkit: Models of Reflection” (Cam.ac.uk, 2013)
