Personal Development Journey: Navigating Academics

Introduction

Personal development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time and energy needed to develop yourself’. Personal development is an ongoing process throughout life by setting goals that aims towards the end goal. This can be done by noticing my strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats also known as a SWOT analysis, to help me develop. Professional development is training given to develop knowledge and skills that is required as part of the profession. In this essay I am going to discuss my individual learning needs in a way of which involved me exploring the topics in more depth. This essay starts to talk about my personal development journey from where I was, to where I am currently and where I would like to be to pursue my career in nursing. Writing this essay is going to be a challenge as linking to my three elements, this is a piece of academic writing; this is testing my confidence of being a student and using time management skills, in order to complete this essay to the best of my ability. This is so that I can achieve the best grade I can. Throughout this essay I have used a variety of different resources to enable to gather as much references as possible to support my answer. These resources include journals, websites and textbooks. This has given me knowledge of how and where to find good references. I have cited and used quotations from other peoples work to support my answers and have referenced these appropriately.

Personal and Professional Development

Firstly, academic writing is a paragraph structured piece of writing that has an introduction, which is a small paragraph of stating what is the writing, a body which is the main part of the writing, using multiple paragraphs to break down the topics and finally a conclusion which is a summary of all the points made in the main writing. Not only is academic writing about the way it is structured but it is also about what is involved to produce a piece of academic writing. I didn’t realise how much there was involved in academic writing, so after doing some research I found that I would need to research the subject, read through the text, pick out the necessary information and put this into my own words to avoid plagiarism. This also requires appropriate referencing.

Four years ago, I studied health and social care level 3 extended diploma at Gloucestershire college. During the course we completed academic writing in our assignments, to aim towards university level. The lecture would ask us to upload through ‘turn it in’ to ensure that there was no plagiarism. This is one of my weaknesses because I am more of a practical person than academic. I think this is because of the lack of knowledge with academic writing. I currently feel anxious due to this and that I will need the knowledge to support me when writing my essays. I am easily frustrated when I do not understand something in the simplest form. I believe that academic writing is challenging and according to Cameron in the journal of demystifying academic writing: reflecting on emotions, know-how and academic identity, “it is practically challenging because they have limited experience of the writing process”(Cameron, J., Nairn, K. and Higgins, J. (2009). I agree with this statement as I feel that if I had more experience than I would feel more confident and less frustrated when writing my essays.

My Personal Academic Journey

I find it difficult to start essays or I will start a sentence then erase to try and find an improved way of wording and ensure that it makes sense. This then leads to me giving up easy and rushing to get the essay finished resulting the essay not being as successful, by giving me a disappointing grade. In Narciss article ‘computer-based scaffolding to facilitate student’s development of expertise in academic writing’ she compares expert writers and less-skilled writers. In my current situation I would say that I am a less skilled writer. In this article it talks about meta-cognition, which is the way individuals decide on their learning behaviours. Narciss states that “As a consequence, less‐skilled writers are likely to introduce errors into their text or to finish the writing process before they have properly explored the topic” (Proske, A., Narciss, S. and McNamara, D. S. (2012). I agree with this statement as if I am not sure what I am writing about than in my opinion it is impossible to start or complete an essay to an appropriate level. This goes back to knowing what is involved in academic writing for example, searching and reading about the topic.

This is leading on to a university student in general as academic writing is part of this. Going back to being out of education for four years in my opinion this is a long time as it feels like I have forgotten how to be a student. I think this will take me a while to adjust to being in classroom environment again. I need to remember to seek help if needed to enable me to not give up easily. Doing some research, I found that Fowler mentions in his article “such things as students’ “attitudes; motivation; level of self-confidence in an educational setting; degree to which students are willing to do academic work” (Fowler, P.R. and Boylan, H.R., 2010.). I agree with this statement as in my opinion having the right attitude would give me the confidence being in an academic environment and the motivation to complete the work set.

Although I feel that I do lack confidence in being a student again, I need to challenge this so that I can pursue my career in nursing. I think that if I have the right support then I will be able to do this. I would like support from my family, friends, lectures and my placement managers as I think they would be willing to answer any questions the best they can. This comes down to my confidence again, as I feel I could approach them with any question or to seek help in general. The support from my friends and family would benefit more as they know me well enough to feedback information in a way for me to understand, due to me struggling to retain information. I think It is important to have the support from people I know because this is another example of keeping me motivated and willing to complete the work. In evidence to this according to open university (OU), students “friends and family who know them best are very important in ensuring they are coping with their study and keeping things in perspective”.

Therefore, another source to support me during my time as a student and managing workload is being resilient. Resilience is thinking of a way to change to enable to cope with times that are difficult. For me at this present moment is balancing placements, assignments and daily life. Resilience has been proven to build confidence and that without this it can affect relationships and make people feel like giving up. In all honesty I always feel that I am failing and feel like giving up. Come to think of this I feel that I have worked extremely hard to get to where I am now and that I wouldn’t like to throw all my hard work away.

Impact of Stress on My Development Journey

Having stress has affected me in lots of ways. Firstly, by taking my emotions out on those who are close to me. According to Cotterall (2013) “excess stress can severely effect physical and emotional health, concentration and memory”. I agree with this as when I am emotional, I don’t realise that I lose concentration and forget what happened. There are ways of controlling this by knowing what the trigger is. I would say that my trigger is thinking too far ahead and focusing on too much at the same time. I feel that I need to learn to focus on one thing at a time. I have a feeling this would reduce my stress level and help me to concentrate.

Furthermore, taking on this workload also links to time management. Time management is a way of organising activities stress free and completing these effectively. The time is myself being specific on how long it will take for me to complete each activity. Having poor management can result in the activities I have planned not being completed properly or even attempted. In karim journal of American science “Researches done showed that aspects of the practical problems that some people, especially students, during the study are faced with are related to time management; because in high school they are usually managed by their parents or teachers”( Karim, Sevari , Mitra Kandy ,2011). I agree with this as at school we used to have a support teacher in the class along with the main teacher. I also used to get support with homework from my parents when I was at primary school. It wasn’t long after when I became more independent in secondary school and college with my studies and at times did not think to ask for help.

Time management is very important to prevent my triggers and balance my workload. Sometimes I can have good time management skills giving me motivation but, when something is added to the workload then I forget about the load I already have, meaning I push it back. In practice, I create lists to help me know when things are due because of the busy environment. I think what could help me develop this is creating a priority organiser. Setting priorities in an order of what is more important and linking to focusing on one thing at a time I think would lower my stress levels and help me concentrate. This could also help when I am easily distracted. According to (Kirillov 2015) journal of Asian social science “The key to successful management of time is that it is necessary to focus efforts on the end results, but not on the process of work”. In one way I agree but another I disagree because it is important to focus on the effects of the end goal, but I also think that the process leading towards the end goal is extremely important. Without the process being focused on then the end goal would not be as successful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay has been a challenge as it has made me think about my personal and professional development. This subject has given me a better picture of where I was, to where I am now and where I would like to be to pursue my career in nursing. This has also made me think about my strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. Apart from the three elements I have discussed throughout this essay which was academic writing, confidence of being a student and time management, finding the references was also a challenge in order to support my answer clearly. This is evidence that I am not the only person who struggles in these areas of being a student and having the skills to manage time and create a piece of academic writing. Judging by the research I noticed that I have agreed with majority of the authors statements as I can relate to them. I found that I elaborated in areas by thinking of ways to improve my weaknesses and I feel that this has given me more confidence and motivation to aim towards my end goal.

References

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10. Cameron, J., Nairn, K. and Higgins, J. (2009) “Demystifying Academic Writing: Reflections on Emotions, Know-How and Academic Identity,” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 33(2), pp. 269–284.
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