Academic Self-Management - Essay Example

Academic Self-Management Self-management as one of the directions of management has become extremely popular and necessary aspect for the last two decades. It is natural that modern people need to improve themselves as workers, learners and personalities in order to keep pace with time and vigorously developing society. Thus, self-management skills can be considered both a crucial feature of a successful and thriving person and an important direction of the persons activity. No doubt that people who possess self-management skills pose more interest for employers in the dynamically developing economy as they are likely to be more efficient workers and bring more benefit to the company. Similar to workers, we, the students, also need to acquire at least minimal self-management skills in our academic activity as it helps a lot to adjust the process of knowledge acquisition for ourselves in a way that would show the most fruitful results. Setting right goals, developing a strategy of their achievement and reasonable and considered time management are inseparable parts of being successful academically, i.e. successful learner. However, successful learners are not those who simply know more that others, they are also students who have more efficient and effective learning strategies that help them access and use acquired knowledge, possess steady motivation and self-monitoring skills (Dembo & Seli). To my thinking, the most successful learners are those who organize and manage their academic activity and time so smoothly that they avoid stress and are never overwhelmed with exhausting homework, they take learning easy and at the same time manage ti achieve favorable results. What is also important, academic self-management should enable students to maintain balance between serious learning process and fun campus activity. Gaining control over the factors that might influence learning and academic performance – and there are plenty of them – the student will be able to eliminate unfavorable factors or at least reduce their impact to the very minimum. It is fully understandable that we all are so different and various factors may produce different impact on us and each of two students studying the same major may feel their effect to certain extent. What is extremely stressful for me, might be harmless for someone else. Thus, the primary task is to explore our psyche, inclinations and personal peculiarities in order to learn to regulate, monitor, evaluate and reinforce our life and academic performance in the most efficient way. Willing to learn and understand ourselves is a natural and typical desire for those who are on the way of self-improvement. Thus, I take great pleasure in this course as it presupposes an opportunity to learn something new about myself and reveal features I havent thought of. Moreover, such courses should exist in all educational establishments as they are not just plain and uninteresting theory, they are very useful, and the knowledge of ourselves and self-management we acquire will be applied in practice in our everyday life. Proceeding with considerations about self-actualization as a fundamental building block of academic self-management, I would like to offer my reflection concerning results Ive got. First I would say that not all of my result are to my complete satisfaction, bot – nevertheless- they identify the areas that require my attention and self-improvement, and this is very helpful to me. First, my LASSI scores have proved to be rather interesting for me, with some of them being surprising. The score on Anxiety Scale (ANX) makes up 50%. Taking into account that this scale is interpreted in the reversed way, high percentage should indicate low level of anxiety in terms of academic performance and learning process. However, the result I have got is average anyway. This means that the extent to which I worry about my academic performance is neither too much nor too little. To my thinking, this is a golden mean as I care of how I will perform academically for many reasons but I try not to let this worrying overwhelm me, cause stress or impair concentration. However, I realize that I could attach more importance to this aspect. Second, Attitude Scale (ATT) shows 60%. As this scale points to how interested I am in learning, this is a rather positive result. Again, I realize the importance of education and want to get all knowledge needed for becoming successful in my future life. In terms of concentration, I understand that I need to improve this skill. The score of 50% shows that the level of it isnt very high, and I fully admit that sometimes there are considerable difficulties in concentrating on academic material either during lectures or while doing my homework. Self-Testing and Study Aid Scores (65 and 65% respectively) are rather satisfying to me, though I would be glad to improve them and develop techniques that would help me to monitor this abilities. Time Management Scale (TMT) showing 65% implies that I have some skills of regulating my time and generally manage to cope with the tasks given to me without harm to my spare time or sleep, but sometimes I find it very difficult and thus need help in improvement of this skill. The score that has proved to be rather surprising to me is Selecting Main Ideas (SMI) – 25% - as I have always thought this type of intellectual activity to pose no difficulties for me. Another aspect in which I have got low percentage is Test Strategies (TST), and I absolutely agree with this result as it is often really difficult to apply the knowledge given to us in classes during tests, to make them useful and controllable. Finally, talking about the four domain in which we actualize ourselves as personalities, there are several characteristics typical for me. First, restorative – as I really do enjoy fixing things and situations; overcoming obstacles and solving problems adds much to my satisfaction and self-esteem. Moreover, I feel myself useful, powerful and needed when I do that. The second feature belonging to the domain of relationship is positivity – I always try to look at the world and people around me from the positive standpoint, emphasizing their favorable sides first. At the same time, I think that it is optimists who run the entire world, not pessimists, as optimists enthusiasm and “sunny” and amicable attitude towards the surrounding reality is the source of all good things and achievements. In terms of strategic thinking, I am a learner. Taking pleasure in acquisition of new knowledge that I will be able to apply successfully in the adult life, I feel very strong and energized as I understand that Ive learnt something really useful and interesting. Last but not least, the domain of influence. Here is significance as the feature most typical for me. I think it is even natural when positive people want to stand out. The need to be recognized (and I admit it) moves me and motivates me. However, I wouldnt agree with the statement that I want to look significant in the eyes of other people – to my thinking, this is an indicator of excessive ambitiousness and seeing yourself as a better person that others. Work Cited: Dembo, Myron H., Seli, Helena. Motivation and learning strategies for college success, from: file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/Academic%20Self-Management.pdf Read More