Personal Learning Profile of a Student - Essay Example

 Personal Learning Profile As a student, I believe in success. To me, success in education will enable me to get a high profile job that will eventually make to attain financial and life-long success. This is what everyone aspires for (Secunda, 2011). However, for a student to know much about their strengths and weaknesses, they should carry a personal assessment. So, for me to have a deeper understanding of myself, I had to do the same. It was a good platform for enabling me to ascertain my strong and weak areas in which I need to make the necessary adjustments. The information used for self-evaluation was retrieved from the daily journals I had been keeping throughout the semester. Before carrying out the assessment, I had a different version of my profile. However, after the entire analysis, I found out that I have a very different kind of personal learning profile than what I had taken it to be. One of the beliefs I had in myself before this course is listening skills. All along, I had assumed that I possess excellent listening skills. I thought that it is my good communication skills that have put in the right path for establishing good interpersonal relations with my colleagues, teachers, parents and anyone else with whom I have been interacting on my day to day basis. It was not so, I would not have learnt to communicate with them (Knapp & Daly, 2002). After all, I was once taught that no one can listen to you if you don not lend them your ears. The other thing I knew about myself is that I am a good time manager. This is another trait that in my opinion, I believed would make me to be a good student. Time is a very important resource that should be properly managed at all times. Being that I would adhere to the school routine and accomplish all my tasks in time, I thought that I was a good time manager. Since I joined this institution, I had never had cases of absenteeism or lateness. Meaning, rather than being punctual in all my activities, I have never skipped classes. The daily attendance of all my classes made me to excel in my curricular and extra-curricular activities. At the same time, being organized gave me enough time to use for accomplishing all my activities. Thus, I could describe myself as a responsible student who had excellent time management and interpersonal skills. Mean while, I had taken myself as an honest student who has been so sincere in most of my deals. As a religious person, I always believe that I should be truthful at all times. It is a virtue that everyone should have because it can strongly influence the kind of relationship between me and other people both within and out of the institution. If everyone perceives me as an honest student, they will not fear working closely with me no matter what it takes. However, insincerity can be a bad thing because it can greatly contribute to my down fall. So, in case I am sent by anyone, I have to ensure that I do not cheat whatsoever. The same is repeated whenever anyone comes t seek for any information from me. So, it is this quality that has been winning me a lot of admiration from my peers. If it were not so, no one would be interested in associate with me since they believe that my dishonesty can disappoint them even at a time when they need me most. Actually, the lessons from this course really transformed my life. The emphasis on the daily keeping of journals granted me an opportunity to keep records of every experience that I had throughout the semester. At the same time, it was an ample opportunity to conduct an objective self-assessment so as to evaluate my own profile (Allen, 2001). For this reason, I was so pleased to do it for it enabled me to know my real identity through the affirmation of my beliefs and learning much more about my profile than I would have ever known. To be precise, the journal affirmed to me that I am indeed a critical listener. Critical listening, as I had been taught, is a fundamental skill that everyone needs to have. It has an important role to play in one’s life right from childhood to adulthood. With critical listening skills, one is able to keenly listen to other people and in turn get listened to. Listening is a two-way traffic and can only be granted to a person if he does the same to others (Knapp & Daly, 2002). I discovered that I possess this quality after conducting a rigorous self-assessment of the journals that I had been keeping all through. In a number of days, I had recorded that incidences in which I was communicating with my peers and tutors. The conclusion was marveling because I had never interrupted anyone while talking to me. Besides, I realized that I do give people time to talk to me and listen to their opinion without disregarding them even if I do not agree with them. Besides, the journal affirmed to me that I have been a good time manager. From all the records in my daily journals, I discovered that I have been consciously managing my time. According to the records in my journal, I realized that this began on the day when we had a counseling session at the student counselor’s office. From that day, I started keeping records of my time management efforts. Upon a thorough scrutiny, I found out that the counseling changed my life because I never had any cases of lateness and absenteeism. The first step I took was to have a personal time table. Here, I scheduled all the activities that I had to perform on each and every day without failure. I found out that proper time management has become a very important skill because it has enabled me to be a well organized student who plans all the activities and execute them as planned (Lakein, 2007). On the other hand, the carrying out of this task adequately prepared me to have a deeper understanding of myself as an industrious student. This is a new knowledge that I never had before. Since most of the records in my journal were mainly about my day to day school activities, its evaluation opened my mind to ascertain that I have been a very hard working student who knows exactly why I have been spending a large portion of my life studying (Secunda, 2011). Since the journal had a record of all the efforts that I had been putting while in the lecture hall, library, discussion groups and field, I came to know that I have not been joking at all. My seriousness, as revealed in the journal, has enabled me to score high grades in my class assignments, Continuous Assessment Tests (CATs), mid semester and main examinations. In conclusion, I would lie to point out that the keeping of journal is a very important activity that all students should undertake. As taught in this course, a personal journal can be a significant activity for every student. It can be a better tool for carrying out a well-informed self-evaluation, an exercise that can equip one with adequate and up top date information about their profile. Had it not been for this journal, I would not have known much about my personal learning profile as I now do. Now, I know my strong and weak areas in which I should make the necessary improvements. References Allen, D. (2001). Getting things done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Viking. Knapp, M.L. & Daly, J.A. (2002). Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publishers. Lakein, A. (2007). How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. New York: P.H. Wyden. Secunda, A. (2011). The 15 second principle: short, simple steps to achieving long-term goals. New York: New York: Berkley Books. Read More