Demento

Insanity in a nutshell is a person who repeats the same action over and over again expecting a different outcome or something like that.

Last term for my personal professional development one assignment, I had concluded that I should add on to my work bi-weekly, that I should create my own deadlines that were at least a week before the real deadlines and that I should talk less; out of those three, I have managed to talk less, so thankfully studying about and applying the Gibbs reflective cycle had not gone to waste.

Realistically, I have not developed much, in fact I feel as though I may have gone the opposite direction. I have addressed this issue in an earlier blog post and have discovered that this reverse-development could be attributed to the fact that I have gotten disinterested in the supposed repetitiveness of the course. Yet I feel that really is not a good excuse for ennui.

Perhaps next year I will try and view essay writing as a sort of race or life and death situation? Anything to help with the lack of motivation that I am experiencing now that seems to get worse each year.

This may be a cause for concern when I complete my education and seek employment, but hopefully if I keep record of my personal professional development, I will be able to deconstruct my mind and manage the insanity better, or at least come to a sort of compromise.

I must really point out though, however silly it might sound to say that I have achieved a goal by ‘talking less’, doing so had improved communication between the people I work with; it did not make everyone else more vocal as I had expected but it has lessened the stress. I can confidently say that by using the Gibbs reflective cycle I was able to find an issue that may have seemed like nothing at all and change it to improve similar situations.

The Vertically Raised Arm

Now people, I will honestly admit that I do not like working in groups very much; oftentimes it does not end well. I seem to have a history of being teamed up with people who either don’t do their work, don’t know what they are doing or frankly don’t even care, if I’m unlucky all of my team-mates would have a combination of the three, there will of course now and again be that one exception, but never without one of the former.

For my video production, I felt that I was unlucky enough to be paired with a couple of the same people I had work-related issues with last term, the fact that no one else had chosen them is a pretty clear judgement on how incompetent they were deemed to be. Considering, like I had pointed out earlier, I have a history of dealing with these kinds of team-members it is very surprising that I still have so much difficulty managing the group sometimes.

I have often attempted to be a delegator, but I feel as though I may lack the confidence to really go for it and delegate work properly. Being a firm leader was never my strong point but I would like to believe that my leading skills have improved this term, if not leading then dictatorship- to me there is a difference, usually distinguished in the tone of voice or how many prisoners I torture. Jokes aside, I do feel that my unadulterated frustration with grouping with team-members like these have made me perhaps a little bossier over the years and I am afraid barking orders might not be the best path to take, so I feel I should find another method of delegating, one that will not only assure that team-members get work done, but also make sure that they are not stressed out. Of course, according to my team-members I don’t really give that impression, so it might just all be in my mind.

Through the Looking Glass

When I was doing my BETEC in creative media, my weakest subject was how to utilise the technological side of production. Since I am very much a visual learner, I had convinced myself that perhaps recording my audio tech classes this year would help me greatly as I could always review it later to take more detailed notes, as a reminder, or to check back on the class in-case I had missed something possibly crucial.

Doing this had actually worked however there were times when I would be careless enough to forget to bring my recording device. Luckily my sheer enthusiasm for improving myself in audio tech had influenced another student to follow suit:

Yes people that is me and I do sing in the shower (but only to count the minutes I have to leave my shampoo and conditioner on before I rinse). Being in the recording studio next door I would have missed the technological ‘how-to’ in this class but this became one of the instances where recording the session proved extremely helpful and I was able to take notes on applying reverberation effects and controlling gain levels afterwards.

Unfortunately as mentioned before I do have a habit of forgetting to even bring my recording device, so I’m unsure whether or not I could keep up the habit of recording all my audio tech classes, I am not very good at taking written notes quickly from verbal sources, so perhaps as a sort of contingency I should try to improve my listening and writing speed skills so I could catch up with the tutor better. According to my IELTS scoring though, from the second time I took the test, my listening had gone up from 7.0 to 7.5 out of I think 9 or 8 which is nevertheless a good development, even if only slightly.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I had quite a difficult time debating which topic I should choose to do for my communication concepts two paper. In the end, I had chosen to write about the liberal narrative in broadcasting media, the reason behind my choice being that I had taken too much time pondering on which topic to choose and not enough time doing the work, so I picked a topic by randomisation and stood by it.

I had not done extensive research on the liberal narrative prior to starting the essay and I feel it had probably reflected prominently in the completed work. As a result of rushing the essay I had succumbed to one of the pragmatists’ weaknesses, I used the first solutions I could find, not exploring other sources for a confirmation on the same theory, but looking at many sources for different theories that I would use instantly in the essay if I deemed them useable.

It’s quite obvious that to combat this, I should probably have taken more of a reflector’s approach however forcing myself to adapt to the learning style of the reflector had proved very difficult and I know this because I have attempted to follow a reflector’s learning style for years, the style itself is very reminiscent of the kind of learning my teachers from kindergarten through to high school had tried to enforce onto me and failed; I gave it a try, on and off for about fifteen years, to continue attempting to change my learning style this way would be the basic oxford dictionary definition of insanity.

Looking back on how the year has been and how I’ve been dealing with problems, I’d conclude that I should try to experiment being more of an activist learner rather than trying hard to become more of a reflector. Activists are flexible, like change and they like to try out new things; these characteristics sound exactly like what I said I would need in my previous blog post doesn’t it?

The Tortoise and Hare

So here I am, sitting in my little cramped room, there are an assortment of books and the typical selection of student impromptu “sustenance” scattered from the floor to the ceiling (somehow stuff just manages to stick up there) I am staring at the words I’m typing right now and thinking of what to write next, frantically pulling my hair out and obviously using this vague, haphazard introduction to begin my first blog entry.

It’s a common college student habit to leave one’s work to the last minute (and I’m sure some of my readers, if there are any out there, know what I’m talking about), and naturally this habit is not beneficial, the deadline comes closer and closer, we students rush to get our work done, the workload naturally causes stress and the quality of our work suffers significantly. From the beginning of the college year I had exactly told myself not to do this again, yet my constant reminders only enforced the habit, possibly to a much worse degree than before; perhaps I had accidentally caused a reverse psychology effect on myself? Note to self: “slack-off” more (yes I’m definitely going to be published now).

I used to think that I am, or rather I would have liked to identify as, a theorist or a reflector however, looking back at my actions this term, I think I am or have become more of a pragmatist; this is further confirmed after I’ve taken a Honey and Mumford Learning style questionnaire. That’s not to say that some aspects of the former learning styles aren’t present within me but I think it’s natural to assume that everyone usually is a mixture of all four styles (one style more prominent or lacking than the other). Honey and Mumford had designed these categories to help learners like myself to identify our strengths and weaknesses but I personally feel as if I had failed to utilise the knowledge I’ve gained from discovering my own style.

What knowledge is that you ask? Since I am supposedly more of a pragmatist, my weaknesses lie in my, for the lack of a better word, ‘eagerness’; quite coincidentally my name does actually mean ‘eager lord’, bless my parents. Pragmatists are eager to trying out ideas, they like to work on ideas that attract them and perhaps this is why I have been feeling very much unmotivated lately? Most of the work this term, to me personally felt like a disguised repeat of the last term and perhaps I was simply hoping for something new, how selfish can I get right? If this is truly the common denominator, then perhaps to tackle this problem, I would have to simply try and look at an old problem in a different light? The next time I am faced with a similar task, I should not strive to work harder on it rather I should strive to explore a different way of doing things to keep things fresh.