Practical Applications for Personal Development Plans - Essay Example

Student’s Name: Bani Hammad Ibrahim Instructor’s Name: Coarse Code: Date Assignment is due:  Personal development planning Introduction I believe that if I fail to plan my life, someone else will do it for me. Your guess is as good as mine, that other people can never plan good things for me. If they can do it, they cannot do much. For this reason, I am going to plan my own life. In fact, I have been doing this since I embarked on elementary education. When my parents exposed me to the values of intellectualism, I took it upon myself to explore the heights of education and become empowered. Tamkin says that education is empowerment (35). Right now, PDP is helping me achieve my personal development goals through a scholarly perspective. Where I want to be I want to be a fire safety and risk manager soon and a UAE civil defense expert later on. Towards the achievement of these twin goals, I have gathered as much experience as I could along this career line. I have undergone 6 months’ police training; I have another six months’ training in ambulance and rescue services. In addition to all this exposure, I have worked as a fire rescue service attendant for three years. On top of all this, I have an experience of six years in active roles relating to risk management. I spend eight months getting training at a fire service college. This is the training that enabled me to get an employment opportunity in fire rescue services. For a whole year, I studied English at Leeds University. After that, I studied foundation and first year at UCLAN University, and my major was BHs (Fire Safety and Risk Management). Where I am now I want to work in a management position in fire rescue services or another related area of community service that relates to emergency services. I want to be of use to a community that has been of help to me. It is the society around me that has shaped me into a morally upright person that I am today. However, I understand my weaknesses which are caused mainly by the circumstances I found myself in when I came to know myself. I believe I am not a good manager; I am not good enough to be entrusted with management of people in an emergency situation where lives require to be saved. However, I do not believe I will always be like this. I am confident that the education that I am currently receiving at this university will make be a better manager. I have already started to see some managerial changes in myself. My close friends say the same thing. Immediately after graduation, I want to go back to one of the companies that I have worked for in the past and show the managers there my latest improvement in my resume in the hope that they will offer me a bigger, better-paying and more challenging job. Once I get employment, I will expect to work hard and get one promotion after the other until I become the head of the organization. I guess this may take some time but I am sure it will ultimately happen. My role models say that I have very excellent communication skills. All my lecturers say the same thing too although none of them has ever appointed me to be the class representative. I am multilingual: I am proficient in Indian, Arabic and English. This is a strength that I cherish a lot since few people here can speak as many languages as I do. In fact, the few that they speak, they do it with terrifying difficulties, unlike me. Anyway, back in UAE, where I come from, I believe that I can use the ability to communicate with people of different backgrounds in order to build a business empire. I would also like to participate in civil defense when I complete studies. I believe that our country faces a terrible challenge in this area. I understand how better a country UAE can become with an improved and efficient civil defense in place. People would free to invest, move around and interact freely without having to fear criminals, terrorists and arsonists. For now, education is a top priority. I want to learn as much as I can so that I can confidently speak on international platforms and forums in the future as I argue my country’s case. To get there, I admit will not be easy. If it has been difficult getting here, I am sure it will be more difficult to rise to the national level in areas of career, leadership and corporate advancement. I would like to pursue all these goals concurrently. I am willing to bring a stop to one area of achievement so as to focus on other areas by exploiting all the corresponding opportunities. Again, this too will be difficult but I will do it nevertheless because I want to become a holistic leader and professional. I attribute much of this counsel to my parents, close friends and career mentors. Although majority of these people have not achieved much in these areas, they often express optimism that I can rise up to the challenge. I believe them mainly because, although there are new challenges, there arises even more opportunities each day. Additionally, whenever I ask these people to help me in suppressing these challenges, they are always there for me. No wonder the drive to improve my lot and repay these people one day become stronger by the day. How am I going to monitor and review my progress? Since I decided to pursue a fire rescue service management, I have been trying to review my progress. I often rely on my lecturers, supervisors, educational advisors self-evaluation and assessment tasks to review my progress, something that is very difficult to. I always do everything to ensure that my review as accurate as possible. For instance, whenever I set goals, I always ensure that I achieve them. Whenever I fail to do so, I never console myself. Rather, I look for ways of compensating for a drop in performance. The guidelines offered in personal development planning courses have been of great help in recent times, especially throughout this year. I have been doing everything possible to ensure that strict and difficult to as they are achieve, I always follow the personal development review guidelines that are prescribed in various lecture notes. Whenever I am reading my PDP notes, I am either revising for a major test that is beckoning or I am checking this or that guideline relating to personal development review. When I was eighteen, I planned to be through with my undergraduate studies by the time I was 24. I have not been able to achieve this goal since I am one year behind schedule. However, other things have cropped up that I had not envisaged when I was 18. One of them is police training. Although it only lasted for 6 months, it was an important to do with my life as I waited to join university. I hope that I am not creating any excuse for not achieving a goal that I had set earlier. However, I am always worried whenever I am reviewing my progress because by arguing in this way, something in me gives a hint that I am looking for an excuse. Meanwhile, the truth of the matter is that even if I did not go for police training, I could not have found something more important to do in order to develop my career even more. I believe that personal growth is a continuing process that comes with new challenges, unforeseen changes in circumstances and emergence of new, exciting opportunities. Average performers are often enthusiastic about following the wind of opportunities whenever it takes them; they never guide their lives along the right course. This trial-and-error approach to life is what I want to avoid. I know reviewing my personal growth process is the best way of controlling the direction of my career progression. When reviewing my personal performance, I never use my friends as a reference point since my present circumstances are always unique to me. What if all my friends are all wrong? Yes, this can happen and this is why I always set both long-term and short-term goals. This way, the review process becomes very easy. Whenever short-term goals fail, I always ensure that this happened only because I was going to score a long-term goal. When reviewing, such an explanation can be quantified and therefore, somebody reading out my review aloud would not think that it is just a lousy excuse. Action plan Currently, I am trying to keep my action plan as simple as possible. I hate making complicated work plans that seem more difficult to outline than the actual tasks. First all, I want to get first class honors in this undergraduate degree that I am currently pursuing. Meanwhile, I want to build social capital with the mains stakeholders being my friends, my former workmates, my future workmates, all my relatives, mentors and other people who I come into contact with, and with whom I share goals and aspirations. In a cosmopolitan and foreign environment like this one, which I am trying to get used to people have different conceptions about goals and aspirations. I do not think my goals are most noble although I act like this is the case, because if I fail to plan my life, people here will do it for me, and they will not put my circumstances into consideration even if they are my closest friends. No one here or at home understands my strengths and weaknesses fully as I do. The most that anybody can do to help me along my career journey is to sympathize and guess what my needs are. This is the philosophical basis of my action plan. Conclusion In conclusion, I am having a good time undertaking a personal development planning course since it gives me a strong sense of self-worth. It makes me aware of personal status in relation to my environment. I believe PDP will ultimately make me a better scholar, fire rescue service manager and ultimate a global leader. Work Cited Tamkin, Penny. “Practical Applications for Personal Development Plans.” Management Development Review, 9.7 (1996): 32 – 36. Read More