reflection

How reflection make me a better person
From a young age, I was taught to constantly reflect on the past. In primary school, we must write an essay about what we learned in this semester and what should we do to improve at the end of each semester. It definitely helps me to conclude. But in my fast-paced study life in middle school, I shuttled through various courses and clubs. Life did not allow me to breathe, so I lost the opportunity to analyze every little thing in daily life. Now in college, this writing course gave me the chance to reset my reflection. But I still need a medium to connect with my past semester. I use vlog to record my college life, it is kind of journal. I can see what happened before with those short videos.
In this essay, I will mainly focus on how to reflection and how journals help us.
For me, I have down 4 projects in this course, I can see a lot of mistakes I made before. I even not familiar with citation form and my sister found tons of grammar mistakes in my project 1 and 2. And in most time I only went to Chinese websites to find information, if I can write it again, I will try international websites and find more objective perspective. The most pity one is project 4, I practiced thousands time but I still miss some content, still can’t master the rhythm. However, this is my first presentation in my academic life, WRA gave me the chance to try those things, I learned how to make power point, how to citation, and the tips about presentation. The most important is I learned how to review myself: The first project asked us to narrate our education life. I spent a night to play my past like a movie, in order to select what I can use. Thought I am writing what I think, but I always get new opinion during conceive. Maybe, people progress in continuous exploration and reflection, and writing is an important way of reflection.
What is the definition of reflection? According to Self-reflection and academic performance: is there a relationship? Boud et al. (1985) as referring to “those intellectual and affective activities that individuals engage into explore their experience, which leads to new understanding and appreciations”. For my part, reflection is the movement that I review my past work and have some new ideas. A student’s reflection journal is a major event in the student’s thinking about various concepts learned, learning and life, in order to obtain. Review and reflect on their own learning opportunities (Thorpe 2004). The purpose of reflecting on journal writing is critically reviewing behaviors (such as strengths and weaknesses; learning styles and strategies) (Weinstein and Mayer 1986).
In order to have a better reflection, one should be in an environment that is free from distraction. It requires the person to be alone and it therefore provides a comfortable environment for thoughts. Some of the ideal places for reflection are, while in bed, while in the house alone, while having some sleep or while in a bathroom.
So, how can we reflection and what is it impact to us? List out all the questions you would like to explore. Jot down your answers to each question. Identify action steps you will take to start, stop or continue doing something. These can include how to be more grateful, more open, more supportive, more collaborative etc. or they can be very tactical things like sending fewer emails and having more one-on-one conversations. (Retrieved from Giselle Kovary). In project 1, I found a silence place, set alone, and think hardly what have exactly changed me as me? Billion things have happened in one person’s life, it is very hard to select 2 things. But, however, I selected karate and volleyball, they really mean a lot. I think conceiving essay is another kind of reflection.
One approach to improving self-reflection is through the use of reflection journals. There is a positive correlation between journal coverage and the cognitive ability of learners. McCrindle and Christensen explored the impact of reflective journal writing on the cognitive processes and academic performance of 40 college students. They randomly assigned students to the study diary (experimental) group or the scientific report (control group) group. They eventually found that students learning to keep a diary used more cognitive strategies in their learning tasks. Students who keep learning the diary also demonstrate the construction of more complex and relevant knowledge structures when learning from text. They also performed significantly better than others in the final exam of the course. (Retrieved from Magdeleine D. N. Lew and Henk G. Schmidt).
Self-reflection helps to build emotional awareness. By finding some little time to have thoughts about the past one is able to have emotional awareness. This enables one to be aware of the previous challenges and how to overcome them. Generally, it’s a good exercise for the mind as it creates mental-strength, lowers self-esteem and its enables one to become a better person by adapting to various individual changes. By reflecting on the core values, a person improves his own integrity by taking into account the values needed the most. After reflection, the kind of rhetorical question a person asks himself are very important. Some of the questions are, who am I? What can I do to improve myself? What am I proud of? Which are my future goals? How can I improve my weaknesses? This creates a better clarity of one’s self.
Researchers have found out that reflection can help one improve his area of specialization. For example, a web designer can reflect on the previous web designs he has made, some of the challenges he faced and some of the reactions from his clients. This can enable the web designer to know his strengths and weakness and to generally how the kind of web designs that are appealing to the people. Reflection can also help a blogger to be aware of the kind of statements and adverts that made majority of internet viewers to visit is site. By doing so, the blogger will be aware of the kind of adverts that are appealing to people.
My hard draft of four projects is my journal, I can see how it bad by just open the document. As I mentioned before, videos are my journals. I saw how I act like a nervous young speaker in my presentation. It is like a supervisor, remain me every second: Don’t waste time, look at those ugly works you did before, just continue to study! But for good part, it also encourages me: you really did a good job, give a relax and keep going! Why we reflection? Maybe this is the simplest answers.
To conclusion, keep writing journals or shooting videos can help you to reflection. Reflection allow you to always keep in mind the mistakes you made, always improve yourself, and don’t give up. In past four projects, I realized that my word volume still poor, my writing grammar is still insufficient, I am still inefficient in finding supporting data, and I will still be nervous in public speaking.
But I can also know that I am slowly improving and constantly trying new challenges. Since I can see what I am lacking, I believe my future will full of defeat and restart and finally success. In the future, I will remind myself not to make the same mistake again, I will keep studying new word, read more articles, and overcoming the fear of public speaking. Recast is what reflection means to me.