Now let me tell you what I have really improved in over the course of the semester, my communication skills, actually I have improved in this field incredibly for the past 1 year (ever since I started university). I have achieved this because I knew that I had to do it because I had realised that it was the most important skill that you can have and I knew I was lacking it greatly. I am also unable to concentrate at what people say if it does not interest me, therefore I had trouble mixing up with most of the people. I knew I had to learn to concentrate and improve my listening skills in order to be successful. I have improved on this skill this year and now more things are becoming more interesting, I am more successful at some of the things, I think people around me can realise the changes I am going through.
The other really important improvement that I have made is that I am less lazy, I am wasting less time, and using more time in more useful ways, I am achieving this because as I realise how much time I wasting, I’m automatically pushed to working harder, at first its hard and I’m trying to resist it, but there is a constant improvement, even if the rate is small.
The other task that we had done at the seminar was on cognitive style, this exercise showed us what kind of a learner we were and what best way we can learn was (learning strategy), In this exercise I’ve found that I am a moderate reflective, intuitive, visual, and strong global learner, I think these results were accurate in explaining correctly what I was like. I am someone who likes to think a lot, I can also say that I am a really open minded person, I am also a fast learner, but I tend to learn things which interest me more, and I also learn the things which I see very necessary, therefore I concentrate more and learn more. While I’m learning I am easily distracted and tend to try and learn more things at once, therefore at first it will seem like I am going nowhere and that I’m useless, but if I continue at the process of learning and practice, everything suddenly clicks, when this happens I usually do things much better compared to most others.
My time management skills are really poor, I regularly make plans and schedules and to-do lists, but when the time comes to do the task I find it really hard to start and to do those things, I think this happens because I was always so lazy and I didn’t had so much workload before, therefore I find it hard to change myself to the more workload, I find it really hard to do stuff especially if it seems it will take a long time to do, I am beginning to realise that I can do tasks if I break them into little pieces, for example instead of trying to do an assignment at one go, I can try to do it 30 minutes per day, this way it seems more manageable, but first I need to learn to work harder. I am working much harder now then I was before this semester, I feel that I have been enlightened and I have made up my mind on what I want to achieve in my life. This enlightenment happened about a year ago.
I am not spontaneous, and cannot work spontaneously, I always I always feel like I go one step forward and one step backward, its like a cycle, this is because I always push myself hard to achieve something, and when I start working hard, I can not keep that state because it is to hard for me to keep working hard so I go back to my lazy self after a period, but I never give up, I get stronger steadily but the cycle never ends.
I think I have gained some valuable experience for the Interpersonal skill’s module, the most useful ones being the group work & presentation activities, I am now more confident about working in a group and performing presentations, I have also improved my communication skills with people and when talking to a group.
What I value most in life is learning, I like to think of myself as knowing nothing, because I don’t know much, and there are so much stuff to learn and so many areas to improve on. My ultimate goal in life is to learn and implement everything that there is to learn, this is what I am aiming for in the future and this is why I am studying at university ( so that I can get more enlightened), Learning about studies is only a small part of what I want to learn, I want to learn about how the world work, why people act the way they do, what influences people, basically I want to study at the “university of life”, this is a task I never will stop doing no matter how old I get and I will always search for the ultimate truth, I have no specific plans at the moment as to what I will do when I graduate, I think I will do something which will help me further learn.
The kind of work that I want to get into once I finish studying has to be something creative, challenging and will have to teach me qualities which I find very important, also it should give me very valuable experience to make me a better person. I am currently working at Waitrose as a part timer, I am planning to change this job and work as a part-time waiter or bartender, I think these jobs will be very challenging and will further improve my communication skills.
I believe that first impression counts and it is really important when getting a job, but before you can get the chance to give a first impression to the employer you will first need to be able to see him. CV is very important in order to be given that chance; you will need to have a good written CV. In order to write the highest quality CV you will need to acquire another form of interpersonal skills, this is called writing skill, nowadays it is very important as businesses and people are becoming more and more are connected by electronic communication and there are now more long distance business relationships which means that the use of e-mails are inevitable. My written communication skills are not really good, this is probably because I have always ran away from doing high quality assignment and also because my English is not very good. I came to this country about 8 years ago.
I believe that in order to acquire any skills, first you will need to practice it, there is no way you can learn how to speak or write properly and correctly just by reading things, the process of trial & error is very important. The only skill that you can learn without practice is to think right and make correct decisions about what you want to do in life, this is influenced by your family and how you were brought up.
In seminar we had do a group work about the exercise ‘Island escape’, I think this exercise was very useful at enabling me to explore myself and realise my strengths and weaknesses, I have realised that I can be quiet assertive, when I was working in a group I saw that I was the one making most of the decisions and I was the one to chose the island which we would represent. This is not me normally because in my personal life I usually listen more to people and let them make most of the decisions, I am usually more passive then I am assertive, I worry a lot about what people feel and what they think about me, I think I was assertive at the group work because there was a very clear and straight forward aim for the group and there was a competition between us and other groups, therefore I prioritised the goal of the group over the other aspects of my behaviour, this also shoved me that I can get very competitive when the conditions are right and when I have no other choice. In all the group activities that we did in class time I was generally the clear leader of the group. The group activities also proved to me how innovative and creative I was. I was the one who was coming with most of the ideas.
One of the greatest improvements I had over the course of the module was on my confidence, now I am much more confident when I’m dealing with people and if I have a new idea I am much more confident at expressing them. The presentation and the group works I have done at seminars helped me a lot on this because it shoved me what I was really capable off and it gave me a chance to prove myself to myself, it also caused some slight improvement at the most of the my other interpersonal skills. I am now a better speaker, my body language is more confident now, I am a better listener and I am more able to concentrate on what other people have to say.
The assessed presentation that I’ve done was very important, I knew that I had to bring together every skills that I had learned through the course of the module, I had to use visual aid which tested my written communication skills, I had to take questions from the audience which tested my listening skills and most importantly I had to talk in from of many people for five minutes, this tested my confidence and oral communication. Therefore I felt that I had to prepare really thoroughly for this presentation and didn’t leave anything for the last minute this time. I wrote out the scenario that I created and tried to memorise it. During my presentation I was confident and spoke well, I don’t think I would have been able to do this and be as good as I were before this module.
