started my education in the vocational high school “Acad S. P. Korolyov” in Dupnitsa, Bulgaria in 2001. Before I been approved for it I had to pass a few exams. It was the first time when I had to prove myself out of my comfort zone in the Primary school. This challenge did help me to understand that it is very important to know what you want in your life and follow it. In the vocational high school I studied economic courses like Micro and Macroeconomics, Mathematics, Accounting, Finance, Statistics and Marketing.
It gave me the base to know what the business include and specific terms like gross domestic product (GDP), interest rate and many other. I completed the high school in 2005 with Economic Diploma. These four years was very important in my life. I became more disciplined, because I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to prepare for class, it became easier for me to communicate with the others and a lot of friends that I met there are still my good friends.
In 2005 I started college and finished in 2008. It was the best time of my learning period. I studied similar courses like in the high school. I studied computer skills and Business communications as well. It was my favourite course. I did learn things like is it good or not to use a perfume when you have a business meeting; what kind of clothes you must wear; if you have to make a present for a business partner.
what is appropriate and what is not and what colour must be the present bag and many other simple but very very important things to make good impression and have a successful meeting. This period gave me the best opportunity to teach to plan my time very good and live alone. I started my first job parallel to learning. I had to attend the classes on time, to go on work on time, to spend time with friends and family, to spend time to study and write home works and course works. I thought that I can’t do it, but as Vadim Zealand says: “There is nothing impossible”. It wasn’t easy.
In 2008 I was graduated student with Bachelor Economic Diploma and very proud of myself. It was the time I grew up. I gained a lot of skills. In my education I did learn how to work with computer, to give my opinion and justify it. In my job I gained initiation, management and leadership skills. I was a supervisor in “Fantastico”, in Bulgaria had a staff of 10 people that I had to manage, to make schedules, orders, etc. I became more confident and understood that if you want to develop must read a lot. As the great George R R Martin says: “A reader lives thousands of lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one”.
In every job that I have worked, I had to communicate with people – colleagues, managers, customers. When I was a manger for online orders service in Balev Bio Market, Bulgaria I had to resolve problems like: what to do when the delivery is running late because it is holiday and the couriers are extremely busy; how to help to a customer to find which product is the best for him, etc. It gave me very good communication and psychological skills. I did learn that before I speak I have to listen. I realised that it is very important to prevent mistakes and any kind of loses.
Now I live in London and have 2 years old daughter. This is another challenge for me, because I have to speak different language, not my mother’s language, I have to follow the roles of the new country, I have to respect and accept different cultures and not in the last – to be a parent for the first time. My daughter is very kind and curious like every kid. That’s why I have to be ready to give her the answers that she needs, to explain everything and the most important – to give her good example and teach her to be a good person. This is not studying in school, college or university, but it gives me the skill to be patient, adapting to change and taking challenging situations, to find the right way to communicate with people.
At the moment I am a working mother, wife and student. I must plan every second of my time very good. I must be good at everything. This is the biggest challenge in my life. But the good thing is that I gained good time management skill.
When you are studying at University you must be responsible, punctual, good prepared and self motivated. You must manage everything very good and must reading books, newspapers, to be always “hand by hand ” with the news.These are the key academic skills that have to owe if you want to have success at the University.
Personal Learning Strengths and Weaknesses
Learning can best be defined as the procedure in which the educational behaviour of an academic laureate is modified and the strategies that the learner provides to give his or her achievements in these contexts, a permanent lifetime. The learning process can also be complimented as an endeavour through which one activity generates or the ways of response to any situation is changed. In this context, this essay emphatically discusses the role of the learning as well as academic development advice centre of the Bucks New University. The council works in close quarters with the individual students to help them change their behavioural learning aspects so that in the end they can develop their grades. In this essay, my personal development needs in the learning context, have been focused up on.
Based on the delineations of previous research work, the areas that required improvement have been identified here. In the next part, the actions for the future development based on the identified strengths and weaknesses have been provided. In order to help the students achieve their desired outcomes in academics, the advisory body helps the students to effectively develop note making strategies, suggest how to alleviate their research skills, how to make most relevant referencing and how to best reflect the teacher’s feedback in the assignments. The justifications for choosing the areas of development in the real-life context and how feedback collected from various people at various position in life have been also discussed.
This essay have focused up on the personal learning strengths and weaknesses. Based on the analysis conducted, this essay emphasizes on identifying, analysing and making suggestions regarding the required areas of development.
The discussion in this essay is contextually linked to the strategic importance of my current position as a student in the GBS University. As a student of
Discussion
The first criterion of development in my life have been learning the aspects of stringent self-development. The four years of high school had been very panoramic and much regulated for me. From my high school I gained the habit of rising early (approximately 5.30 am in morning) which has suggested to be very helpful in my university life. On the days of lecture studies, I am able to rehearse my course work, waking up early. Basic concepts of critical learnings like macro and micro economics, Finance, Statistics, marketing, Mathematics in early stages helps me in understanding the key concepts in the lecture sessions very clearly. In this context, Tardy and Smithson (2018),
have opined that the circumstantial planning of life becomes very important. Currently as well as in future I would be exposed to numerous external influences like roles and responsibilities for the first time in life and parallely with that I need to display a high volume of self-constraint.
The second area of personal development is learning the attributes of self-presentation and ways of life when I joined my job for the first time. I studied parallely with my job. The business meetings that I undertook during that period helped me to learn how I could make a good impression with my peers during group assignments and during the presentations. In this context, the biggest area of development has been managing and buffering my time between my classes and work hours. On one hand I had to spend some time with family as well as friends. On the other I had to manage time for regular homework’s and preparations of business meetings, frequently.
Areas of Development
While working for BALEV BIO market, I experienced one of the most significant challenges of life. Management of online orders posed an array of serious issues. Firstly, I had to improvise and innovate strategies whenever deliveries were late. Parallely I had to assist for customer support. In this context, development of high communication as well as psychological skills were central to my disposition. Working in an environment which demands me to prevent mistakes as far as possible, requires high level of precision and accuracy. This challenging segment of my life strongly compliments me no when I face issues and complications.
Presently, the main areas of improvement for me are accepting a new demographic social and work-related culture of my university in London as well as maintain my disposition as a student and as a mother. I know it is quite difficult to set ideal standards every term of my semesters. At this stage of life key skills like being patient, being susceptible to change, having strength in gut to take up challenging assignments and finally knowing the right communication method are my most crucial learning deliverables. My researching skills are generally high. However, since I use many source for data extraction, the prospect of referencing becomes a complicated affair for me. IN order to improve that, I always rely up on doing revalidation of the arguments.
After the completion of the documents, I reopen the online files to make sure that the authors quoted have actually reflected the arguments that have been stated under the reference of their name. I have also realised proper referencing not only accomplished through highlighting the main idea of the authors. The way the authors have come to the derived idea needs to be studied and reflected in assignments as well. In fact, this is where, I require higher referencing skill. I am always updated with the format of referencing every kind of document, I collect data from. The list includes online journals, news articles, annual reports of companies, websites, blogs, annual reports, conference proceedings and so on.
Since I have joined the GBS, at a mature age and needed to carry on job and study parallely, good communication skills have been there in my nerves. However, the necessity to learn, rehearse and deliver as my learning outcomes, I have always resorted to redeem books articles as well as online journals, so that I could acquire knowledge that helps me accomplish the learning outcomes of my university. However, this habit is time killing and in the initial days of my tenure in university, I had to face acute time management issues. My learning experiences, speed that in cases where time management is highly required, maintaining a personal memo or an everyday time frame is very essential.
I prefer online memo making tool which allows me to make a list of the everyday deliverables and set specific time frames for every action. Secondly, setting time boundaries is very important. It, might happen that we fail to accomplish a task within scheduled or desired time. A time boundary makes a psychological impact and we prefer to take up the next important task, rather than clinging on to the previous one. As, Yang and Brown (2016), opines, time boundaries save people from the loopholes of task management.
Importance of Self-Presentation
About 70% of people have the common psychology to finish the task, which they could not accomplish within deadlines. However, in this connection, McClelland et al. (2015), have opined that in such a nervous state people mostly make more delay to finish the previous task as well as they are far away from perfection in what they perform.
I have had good IT skills that I acquired from working along with learning. Making online presentations and business management projects over Skype, helped me a lot. However, lack of good skills of analysis have always troubled me. Now, the necessary do-able for development skills have dawned upon me when I started to live in London that is different from my home-place in social contexts, completely. I believe it is also essential to gather feedback from peers in all contexts on personal analyses. These feedbacks help to make more precise analyses in future endeavours. The other two areas that requires action are my English language skills and paraphrasing skills.
Two specific actions that I rely upon to develop in these two areas are engagement in long end conversations with the common people in English. Living in London, currently, I must be as conversant as the locals in the local language that is English. This is serious making a strong positive impact upon my English language and conversation skills. Poor English skills would limit my prospect as a student, as English is the main medium of communication in my university. Another factor is the lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this problem, I have taken extra initiative to assemble and prepare the group assignments and this involved lots of paraphrasing work. To make perfect assignment and flawless paraphrasing, I have taken the help of my tutors.
The first criteria chosen, is development of time management skills. People in real life situations have seldom time to improve the outcomes of the tasks where they have missed the deadlines. Hence, time boundaries are very important as they render the knowledge that it is essential to look up to new affairs in life and not linger to what have been missed. Again, development of a personal memo helps to reduce the number of occasion when people miss deadlines. This generally develops a tendency to accomplish tasks in perfect timeframe. As an outcome, now when I have to remember the learning outcomes, targets of achievable or the deadlines of my assignments, this habit is helping me very much to not only perform tasks within deadlines but also remember what research I must do in various contexts.
Other necessary steps for improvement that I have taken in the context of development is indulging in chat forums and general people of London for development of the speaking power. Development of speaking power would have helped me to make fluent presentation of ideas at my workplace as well as in my university presentations. So far as my deficit in good paraphrasing is concerned, I always emphasize on reading books and journals and identifying good vocabulary from there. I also put a high impetus on team work. While doing group assignments, I carefully observe how the peers make data analysis ad representation of relevant data in the assignments. This is where team work have helped me a lot. In academic presentation where I must make representation of ideas, rich vocabulary would allow me to make integrated college presentations.
At present I am a much concerned and aware individual than before. My personal development strategies that I have applied so far have helped me a lot. Firstly, my personal target involves making a good academic performance and parallely give the best of companion to my daughter. However, good academic performance is directly related to developing the skills for writing well-presented and impactful reports.
In order to develop my essay writing skill, I always refrain from writing the main essay body at first. I am aware that there are no parts and sub-parts defined in an essay. However, in the body of the essay I always write down te min points I am going to highlight in ever paragraph of the essay.
In absence of lack of paraphrasing and vocabulary skills, his approach helps me a lot. Again, researching is a very critical component of writing an essay. Particularly in case of reflective essays, I highlight the main arguments developed by the author in an article. Based on that, I gather evidence through which I can either defend or oppose the arguments. I need to achieve a high distinction to get a job in an MNC that can give me posting in my home-place. To do this, I must develop my English-speaking power and paraphrasing skills to the fullest.
Implementation of the various strategies for personal development have allowed gathering of feedback from various entities. Firstly, feedback was provided by my professors at GBS. They opined that I had good rehearsing skills. However, they thought that I did not have a stringent self-discipline, because of which my learning outcomes were delayed.
In case of assignments, I also received negative feedback from my peers who opined that English vocabulary was low and because of which the presentations I made, were often unable to make the customers satisfied. These feedbacks always helps me to write a more critical report with better understanding of the deliverables every other time. I outlook keep an outlook that I am presenting the report to the managerial body of any real organisation. As such I use the most authentic sources where company’s data are available. The individual tutor sessions also help me a lot in this regard. The teachers readily help me to develop the outline of the report based on which I am able to develop the body of the report.
I always emphasized on engaging in long end discussions with the people who made most of the feedbacks regarding me. In this context, I always put stress in the benefits I have gained from the Bucks Blackboard and the VLE. The sample course materials have helped me a lot personally. As English is not my vernacular language and I did not have high level of vocabulary in English, the sample materials helped me to make the language of my assignments more professional and academic.
Besides, I have previously discussed already that I have indulged in to online discussion forums in the Blackboard and VLE. Vocabulary. The blogs that are posted there have also helped me to develop my For evidence, now when my professors identify that I have flaws in paraphrasing, I promptly approach them and discuss with them, how may I change the rendition of the paragraphs in my assignment so that I can do paraphrasing properly. Lastly, I would also discuss the role of the Remente application. This application is very helpful for daily goal setting and I could plan my personal development with suggestions from the application.
Considering my learning experiences from the past as well as present, I can complement myself as possessing the activist learning style. In every academic atmosphere, I received little time to adjust myself and I always had to involve myself fully with the operations. I have always been dominated by mew learning experiences, which is actually the learning style of an activist learner.
Firstly, my personal target involves making a good academic performance and parallely give the best of companion to my daughter. I need to achieve a high distinction to get a job in an MNC that can give me posting in my home-place. To do this, I must develop my English-speaking power and paraphrasing skills to the fullest. IN this respect, my learning experience would be of most help to me.
Conclusion
During this reflection essay, emphasis have been provided on the various challenges I have faced or will be facing in the near future during my tenure of my scholarship at the GBS University and implemented various personal skill development strategies. Learning outcomes that I have achieved like time management and the demeanour of having self-composure and self-discipline seemed difficult for me. In the current stage of life, essential requirements are meeting the goals of my university academic standards and my personal life as well.
In various stages, development of various self-attributes through strategies discussed in the course of this essay, helped in establishing myself as a balanced individual also. Poor English skills have always limited my prospect as a student, as English is the main medium of communication in my university. Another factor is the lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this problem, I have taken extra initiative to assemble and prepare the group assignments and this involved lots of paraphrasing work.
To make perfect assignment and flawless paraphrasing, I have taken the help of my tutors. The lack of adaptability with English and my adaptability with the diction and accent of my vernacular hindered my fluency in English language. Besides, I was also engaged with my family and my 2 years old daughter as because of which I was not able to concentrate on my academics. Currently, after I have recognised my limitations and strengths, I am working towards making all feasible improvements and I hope that I would be able to achieve a good academic standard as well as good employment opportunity in future as well.
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