Personal and Professional Development - Essay Example

Personal and Professional Development Table Of Contents Personal and Professional Development 1 Table Of Contents 1 1. Working in a book-shop: My experience 2 2. E-Learning Journal 3 Critical Thinking 3 Structuring and signposting you writing 4 Critical Reading and Note taking 5 Communicating effectively in groups and teams 5 Assessing your professional value 6 3. Abortion: Collision between perspectives 6 Reference 9 1. Working in a book-shop: My experience About one month ago I took up a job with a small sized book shop. This book shop used to buy old books from other people and sell the same in discounted prices. A number of people used to come at that place as they would prefer to buy books on discounted price and would not mind having old books for that. We were five people including me working out there. Among them was the owner of the shop, a sixty years old man. As this was a small book shop, everybody was meant for every other work and no body would mind having his hands on any work. I was mainly appointed for organizing the books on book shelves and selling the same to the customers; and as I have already said, apart for these works sometimes even I have to buy the used books from other people. It needs a lot of energy and patience to organize those books following through a proper pattern. Books, periodicals, journals, magazines, all the books need to be organized in different shelves. For some four or five days even I have gone through the accounts also; this happened as the owner wanted me to have hands on accounts also. Doing such diversified acts definitely is a great booster to my career. As most of our customers used to prefer have a low prices for the books, it was very much necessary to have the right price for them. While purchasing old books it needs a lot of negotiation skills with the sellers to reach at the prices; so that we can deliver the books to our customers at a very cheap price. Apart from negotiation skills, we need to have knowledge about different books to have an idea about their demands in market; and this was not an easy task to carry on as this needs to predict the demand for a particular book. The next comes the organizing parts. This part needs a lot of planning. A worker who works in this area needs to organize the books in such a way, that whenever needed, he can pick that up without much effort. It needs a mind's eye to recall the whereabouts about the books. Helping customers to choose on books is a critical responsibility of a person working in a book shop. Selling books needs knowledge about the pricing for the same. The owner of the book had given us an instruction that if situation arises, which are very rare, we can sell the books at lower than that pre specified price. Talking about a small example; once a small boy, seemed to be from a poor family, was requesting his mom to buy him an encyclopedia. The boy seemed to be very sharp and was interested in knowing new things; but as they have already bought few necessary books, his mom could not buy him that book. The old man of our shop heard their conversation and gifted the boy that book. The smile on the face of the boy made me understand the value of humanity. The old man has taught me how one could do business with compassion and passion. I feel I made some good efforts at negotiations; few times because of me books were purchased at a very reasonable price which makes us able to put a reasonable pricing for them. Although I feel there is always room for improvements. My organizing skills were not so impressive; as sometimes I felt lost in arrangements of the books and could not memorize where I have put what. Definitely these days of work has given me immense opportunities to be trained on those skills. 2. E-Learning Journal Critical Thinking Critical thinking is a careful and compassioned interpretation and assessment of observations, information and argumentation. Through critical thinking one can be clearer about their judgments and can accept or reject any thing with enough confidence. While evaluating any arguments it is always necessary to look for scholarly argumentations. Any critical thinking should include empathically think about the other person; looking at their argumentations and comments will make the critical thinking more thoughtful and conclusive. The evidence for different point of views can make a person to look at both sides of the coin; thus giving a more accurate way to reach at the conclusion. To make an in-depth decision it is always necessary to have a critical thinking about the same. Taking a small example of punishment for the student bullies in a school; teachers need to think critically about the reason behind such bully nature before holding him to an extensive punishment. Merely holding bullies to punishments would not remove violence from schools. Structuring and signposting you writing Communication is necessary in every aspect of lives; be it verbal or written. A relationship within ideas or arguments and a consistency in pattern is of utmost importance for a good communicator. The sequence needs to be in order. Some days before I was preparing a report on school debate; we had to write in for and against the topic. Now I can not directly jump to write in for the topic as this will make the reading complicated to understand. In staring I need to give an introduction to the topic, such that the readers will have a fair idea about the topic before entering into the debate part. Here I have followed a sequence of introduction, putting on different views, analysis of the same using evidences in each case and lastly my concluding personal views drawn upon the analysis. I have put my conclusion at last as the readers should not be influenced by my thoughts before going through all the evidences. The sequence and the structure both were maintained in this case. Critical Reading and Note taking Reading is of utmost importance for each and every student. Knowledge is the power for a student and reading cultivates knowledge. Sometimes we read for our own interest; sometimes to look for some specific terms. When we find something very much interesting and have time to go through it; we prefer to go through the whole book line by line. Let us think what will we do when do not have much time to go through the whole book; we will do skim reading. Skim reading is mainly going through the titles, subtitles, heading and sub headings; then going through the illustrations to have more idea about the topic. If one has certain idea about the topic he is going through, he can look for some key words in his reading. For going through a book in a lesser time, we will skim read the introduction, the final chapter of the book, first and last pages for each chapter and if time permits better to go through the interesting chapters in details. Communicating effectively in groups and teams Being in college, students have to do a lot of group work together. That time we are in learning environment groups doing group assignments and projects together. Even we make groups in our work place; board of directors, management team, and problem solving groups are some examples of these kinds of work environment groups. Being in a group always provides diverse perspectives to tackle a problem. In a group different people have different expertise. On single individual may not have certain qualities in his characteristics but can get the same from others while working in a group. Motivation, synergy, all spark up while working in a team together. The cricket team has one goal to achieve; that is to win the match. When one player hits four or six, the other players give a round of applause and motivate him to play better. There can be some players who play the fast balls better than other players; in such a scenario the captain will make a division of labor by using those human resources more to face the fast balls. Assessing your professional value A company always would like to judge the candidates on their professional values before recruiting them for their organizations. One can do this by going through the results for psychometric tests, looking at the interview answers or simply going through the resumes of the candidates. Psychometric assessments tests a candidate o his or her intelligence as well as personality traits. People can have several traits of intelligence. They can have verbal and numerical reasoning, fluency in communication, perceptual speed and spatial ability. One can look for these traits to have an idea about the professional values of the respondent. Some companies want that the personalities of their employees should be in line with the organization culture. For this, they would like their candidates to go through personality tests. Apart from all these, one respondent can be judged on his performance in the interview. There is nothing wrong or right in these tests as it all depend on the employers, what attributes they are looking for. 3. Abortion: Collision between perspectives Few social issues are there which can bring out noticeable passion, hatred from both sides while involving in a debate for the same. As per a dictionary definition, abortion is a way to prevent a pregnancy by the exclusion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus. There have been a number of people to say in for and against of this topic. Some people think that abortion has a good side; while other raise noise to show them the flip side of this. Let us first have a look at the perspectives from both ends. People, who seemed to be in favor of abortion, feels that abortion can not be named as murder; as it is performed before a fetus take the formation of human child. They feel that it is better to do abortion than giving birth to a child in an undesirable situation, where the child might have to suffer from negligence. Many a times the child not only suffers emotionally but also physically and financially. In such a course often the child might become a criminal to the society. This can be controversial but it has been noticed that a number of drug addicts, criminals to the nation have faced negligence, abuse and domestic violence. Sometimes a young woman got trapped into unwanted pregnancy; even a responsible and educated girl can have slip up. The pressure to have sex in early ages can be immense for a young girl. Giving birth to a child, for which she is not yet ready to take up responsibilities, can be harmful for not only that child but even for her future. She might have thought to be a scientist, a player or a doctor; this one decision can rule out all her dreams with few moments. One should not penalize somebody for life. When one woman carries out her child for a long time and passes through the delivery experience, it is very much obvious to build up an emotional bonding with the child. After giving up the child to another person, the woman has to live with feeling of abandoning her child through out her life. Giving up a child can be the only option left with an immature young lady; but doing so can be as emotionally painful as it would in case of abortion. There is another set of people who prefers to name abortion as murder. They feel this is a ghastly sin which can take away human lives. To support this argument they have given an example that when a woman feels the baby kicking in her belly, she never tells that ‘a foetus kicked’; instead she would say ‘the baby kicked’. They even protest those people who seem abortion as way to birth control. They feel that there are a number of birth control measurements and abortion can not be one of them. As per them abortion is one of the ghastly ways to prevent a human being to come into existence; legal rights of that unborn child has been swiped away through abortion. They gave arguments that women, who have gone through abortions, can suffer from psychological disorder. Many women, who had abortions at their young age, suffer from guilt feelings for through out their lives. There are a number of couples who can not have a child and look forward to adopt children. Young women might not be ready to take up the responsibilities of their children but could give their children for adoption. There are many couples who can become wonderful parents of their children. Sometimes the abortion decision can appear as a wrong decision as most of these kinds of decisions are taken at immature and young stages (Messerli, 2009). I can feel that abortion can hurt the emotions of a young lady, would be mother; but what if she is not ready for the child, what if she is not able to provide the child a necessary environment to grow up. It is more of a crime to give birth to a child and not letting him or her to get access to the rights which they are meant for. The child will suffer for the life long. In such a course how can one expect the child to contribute in society; he or she will either get addicted to some illegal drugs or else will get involved in some criminal activities. Even the future of the mother, who gave birth to this child at young age, would go in dark stage. She would not be able to go to her normal life, shattered by her unwanted responsibilities. She would have to forego her dreams which she used to see for her life. So I believe, in certain cases, abortion is desirable to save a life. Reference Messerli, Joe. February 22, 2009. Should Abortion Be Banned. [Online]. Available at: http://www.balancedpolitics.org/abortion.htm [Accessed on January 9, 2010]. Read More