The Step of Self-Management and Self-Assessment - Case Study Example

INTRODUCTION The self-assessment plan that I worked on in last assignment, proved to be very helpful. I learned a lot of things about myself, my learning styles, my personality type, my behavior with others and easily did my own SWOT analysis. This has helped me to review my personality and improve myself to a much better level. Self-analysis: Through the self-analysis test I found out my personality traits as introvert, sensing, feeling and perceiving. According to this test I am always in a hurry and think about consequences after doing an act. This also shows high sensitivity and creativity. In IQ test the score of aptitude level was 114 which mean my IQ level is average. (about.com, 2010) In self-analysis I also figured out that my interpersonal and musical skills are low, and have strong linguistic and number skills. I have average naturalistic, kinesthetic and visual skills. (Birmingham grid for learning multiple intelligences.) Preferred learning styles: In learning style assessment I got a result of visual learner, which means that I learn better and fast through diagrams, charts and tables. It’s true as I learn and understand better with visual aids and always find it difficult to learn with only auditory skills. Aims & objectives: Acquire emotional intelligence. Change my job to one which is more clients centered and has teamwork. Polish myself to become a therapeutic psychologist and develop empathy. Complete my diploma with consistency of good grades. Be a rational thinker and control my biased emotions. Learn better time management. Get my degree in psychology and pursue it as my career. PROGRESS REVIEW Goal setting is the most vital step of self-management and self-assessment. In fact some researchers also believe that setting targets and making them public is the most critical element of self-development. (Woolfack, 2006) According to the self-development plan that I had developed in the earlier assignment, I had laid down some goals (objectives) for myself. These objectives were to be achieved by performing certain activities. With every activity, there was a timeline defined, resources and support needed, criteria for success and the obstacles I were to face and how I could overcome them. I will be discussing here each of the activity separately: Acquiring emotional intelligence: After going through the self-assessment process, I learned that I had an average emotional intelligence. This is very crucial for me in my career as I want to become a therapist and will need to be emotionally intelligent while dealing with my subjects. For this target, I had set out an activity to perform- find a more team oriented, client centered and interactive job! I figured out previously that I will need to have some good recommendations for myself and I need to work on my flexibility. I had planned to achieve the target by 1 year from now. In order to achieve the target, I had devised a plan. First of all I worked on building my contacts; I aimed to go to social gatherings of professionals in my field at least once a month. It could be any training workshop or a seminar. Two months have passed since I had set up the target, and I have visited 3 such gatherings since then. Although there were obstacles such as not getting enough time to go to such gatherings, and I had to lose some chances of such gatherings because of my current job, it still turned out that I could achieve more than I had set for myself. I have started now interacting better with people not only in such social gatherings, but also while working in my office and at school. Previously, I did not know how to initiate a conversation. But after going to such gatherings, I have realized that I am being more interactive and expressive with people. I monitor the change in myself by asking myself the following questions every day at night: i) How many times did I initiate a conversation with someone? ii) Did I talk to someone new today? iii) Did I express myself clearly while talking to people today? iv) Was I confident during every interaction? v) Was I empathic towards my peer? vi) Did I cooperate with my peers in their work? I have been answering these questions every night and I am seeing improvement in my emotional intelligence every day. Complete my diploma: In order to complete my diploma, I had laid down some activities that I need to perform. First of all I need to get good grades with consistency. The things I need to achieve my objective are to concentrate on my studies and work hard for it. Although the success will be defined by the certification that I will be able to get after 1 year, I need to start working on it from now. Researchers and psychologists believe that students who go through the process of self-assessment perform better than those who do not. (Andrade, Valtcheva, 2009) And it proved true in my experience. By carefully keeping a track of my performance, and monitoring my everyday work towards the attainment of goal, I have improved my grades. For this purpose I have made a chart of where I keep a record of each test results. And I closely monitor how I perform in them. The example of the chart which I follow to see my test improvement is as following: Results of test Abnormal psychology Psychological statistics ( research) Developmental psychology Week 1 17/20 20/20 8/10 Week 2 19/20 19/20 19/20 Week 3 18/20 20/20 18/20 Week 4 10/10 20/20 19/20 For this target, I found out some very good strategies to apply in an article, Step by Step: Teaching Students to Self-Monitor by Lisa Raffertey. I now write down my everyday tasks related to my studies (like homework, books to read, problems to solve). Then I have made a graph on which I mark every day the percentage of achieved tasks with respect to total number of tasks. When I plot it down on a graph, I automatically get a motivation to perform even better and take this graph to a higher level. Uptill now, I haven’t achieved 100% level, but I have become able to complete roughly 70% of my tasks. Become a more rational thinker: Aspiring psychology as a career it’s very important for me to be a realistic and rational in thinking. As a psychologist I need to develop empathy and problem solving qualities. While dealing with a client it’s important to be a good listener without developing any biased feelings. And from my self-assessment I know my weak points that I sometimes become biased and lose my temper easily which leads me to irrational thinking. To become a good devoted psychologist I needed to develop patients and empathy. This not only helped me to become a better psychologist but is also helping me become a better person. First to develop empathy now I always do my self-check in every point where I think I am being cold hearted towards people. While dealing with clients and people I learned to see them in their position and imagine myself standing in their shoe. While doing this it gives me a better picture and emotional state of the person through which I can help the person better. There are many situations where observing as a third person gives a clear and more coherent thinking to understand, but sometimes the third person cannot feel the feeling of the person who is going through and what cause the following reaction. And for the combination of rational thinking and empathy is very important. And to develop a better understanding I am polishing myself to understand and look things from both perspectives. To make myself better in these things I do a daily self-check and analyze my everyday small decisions that whether what I did was without being biased and irrational or not. Acquire better time management skills: Achieving time management skills is a very crucial target for me as it helps me in my education as well as professional career. With studies and job going side by side, it is naturally difficult to manage time. For this purpose I had set this objective for me two months back. After researching through many articles on web, I found out some really good tips for managing my time and they have helped me a lot in order to achieve this target. The first thing I did was to buy a calendar in which there were spaces to write my tasks every day. Every Sunday night, I sit down and write down the tasks that I have to complete every day. After the completion of each task, I mark it with a plus. The tasks that I fail to complete, I mark them with a minus. This has helped me in analyzing the number of tasks that I can complete. To make it more effective, I write a schedule on hour to hour or minute to minute basis every morning. But I make sure that I give time to relax and to be prepared for unexpected circumstances. Time management turns out to be flexible when you give yourself time to relax. For example you can see the table below for Monday, November 14, 2010: Time Activities Mark 9:00 -1:00 Attend school + 1:30-3:00 Freshen up, Lunch and relax + 3:00-6:00 Job + 6:30 – 7:30 Freshen up and relax + 7:30-8:30 Read chap1 of book - 8:45-10:00 Do problems 3,4,5 of handbook + 10:15:11:00 Do household chores and self-assessment - With the help of this activity, I can analyze how much time I have wasted in a day. And when there are clear objectives in front of me, I can perform better. I can now realize the importance of time. And surprisingly I have improved a lot. Proceed to a degree in psychology As pursuing career in psychology I am already polishing my skills and leanings towards this field so that I become eligible and academically skillful. To precede my degree in psychology I made a following strategy plan: 1. Would apply in various colleges for further studies and for this I have list down all the well-known and reputed universities as a target. Have checked their requirements so that I can fulfill them under this time period if I lack some. 2. Have consulted a career counselor for advice and better future planning in in plan one he helped me to figure out all the universities around the city where I can apply and to check their websites weekly. 3. Save money for college fees. I have time period of six months in which I have to save money for my further studies and have to save the money in such way that I can keep the spare money so that while studding in college double burden of job and studies doesn’t get over me. Till now I have saved 600 dollar from my job and allowance I get from my parents. 4. I am working over my leaning capabilities. My abnormal psychology is bit weak so I issue and read more books over this area to clear my concepts. I am also making notes of all the disorders so that I can revise then whenever I have spare time. In a time period 6 months I am developing and polishing my all skills so that I can be sure of my abilities. I have to make my current concepts clear and prefect so that I can be open to all the new things that I would learn in college. For now, I am working on this objective slowly and have applied in various scholarships and colleges. IMPACT ON PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT The process of self-assessment proved to a great experience for me. It helped me to develop my learning and personality. With the help of setting objectives, I have become able to see what I have to achieve and analyze what I manage to achieve. It has helped me to realize the behavioral changes that I expect from myself. As Stephan Covey writes in his book, 7 Habit of highly effective people, ‘Begin with the end in mind’, this exercise has helped me to adopt this habit. I am seeing improvement in my education and workplace both and now I can manage myself more effectively. REALISTIC RECOMMENDATIONS ‘ CHANGES IN OBJECTIVES From the previously set objectives which were to bring change and competence in my skills are very widely set goals. To make it even better and easy to proceed in a successful way, I can divide it into parts. And set different level of plans in steps. It would become easy for me to follow and recheck myself whether i am following my aims and objectives properly or not. Plus it will help me to recheck the changes I have gone through and how much I have improved. For that I will have to give proper time to the objectives that I have set for myself. To make things better for me I can divide my objects into chunks and make a flow chart to follow. This can be as following. 1. First improve myself in dealing with people and set a goal to achieve and see how much I improve in self-given time. 2. Improve my learning skills 3. Meanwhile with all this as I have to save money, for this I will set it as a side running project. Because in a limited time I have to save enough money for college fees. Working in chunks will make it easy for me to follow and reinforce my objectives. REFLECTIVE JOURNAL After doing a self-assessment on my own personal development I have got a clear picture of myself and my abilities. I know how to carry myself with the current circumstances and how to cope with things. The steps I followed in personal development plan gave me a target to follow in an organized way, which before that was just a blurred out concept with disorganized plans. But now I have a chart to follow with proper aims. Each day I am going to ask some questions to myself. In the morning I will remind myself of my aim, how to follow it and remember that aim each day. And at night I am going to ask other questions to see if I have followed my plan or not. In the end I will analyze, what input I made today and what output I have got from it. Questions I am going to ask each morning: What things do I have to do today? What do I have to learn today? What is the purpose of my life? Questions I am going to ask myself every night: What I learned today? Did I follow my chart today ? Which things made me feel happy? What were the things which put me down? And how can i console or cope with them in future? What were the things which I did wrong today? CONCLUSION In the first assignment, I went through the process of self-reflection. I found out my personality type, my learning styles, my behavior towards others, my attitude towards work, and where I can excel. With the help of these self-analysis exercises, I could easily reflect on my strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement. Then I laid down the objectives that I had to achieve in order to improve myself and overcome my weaknesses. I made a timeline for each objective and planned strategies for each of the target. After working on each target for 2 months, I can now see a great improvement in myself as I have already mentioned. The self-assessment exercise proved to help in my personal and professional development both and I think every student should go through this exercise of analyzing oneself and therefore improving on a personal level. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anita Woolfolk. (2006). Behavioral views of learning. In: Educational Psychology. 9th ed. India: Dorling Kindersely. p255-257. Andrade, Heidi & Valtcheva, Anna. (2009). Promoting Learning and Achievement Through Self-Assessment.. Theory Into Practice. 48 (1) Rafferty, Lisa. (2010). Step-by-Step: Teaching Students to Self-Monitor.. Teaching Exceptional Children. 43 (2), p50-58. Kelci Lynn. 8 Time Management Skills for College Students. Available:http://collegelife.about.com/od/academiclife/a/timemanagement.htm. Last accessed 21st Nov 2010. Naomi Rockler-Gladen. (2008). Time Management Tips for Students.Available: http://www.suite101.com/content/time-management-for-students-a40508. Last accessed 21st Nov 2010. Marilyn, Higgins (2002). Personal Development Planning. Edinburgh: Herriat Watt University. p2-16. C Redwood, T. W. (2010). The missing link: self-assessment and continuing professional. Australian Dental Journal , 15-19. Read More