Reflective Essay: My Professional Development Experience

It was at this exact moment when I experienced my watershed moment. It was at this exact moment when I realized how even the things that we hate doing the most, are absolutely necessary to us because they define who we are as a person. I realized the issue with my life was not that I wasn’t intelligent, or that I was untalented at gymnastics, or that I had poor multitasking skills or an inability to cope with stress. My issue was my inability to want to get the best out of the advantages that the sport brought me. I had lived my entire life without realizing that all the work that I was putting into the gym was to eventually gain something greater. These greater things consisted of a possibility to receive a scholarship, a higher education,

My eyes automatically drifted to the tall bright palm tree that moved along with the rhythm of the wind. It’s leafs danced as they presented their welcome. The sun shined down and hugged me with warmth, giving my skin a tingling, but satisfying sensation. I had come from Virginia to California, the famous, constantly spoken of state, that finally reached my sight. The state presented its beautiful attributes to capture my wonder and mesmerization. My appreciation for the state kindled a great desire: to implant the seeds of my future into its enriched land.

Handwriting was one of my first struggles, in the beginning of grade school. It was always something that was very hard for me and I remember that. I had trouble on how to to write the letters and when I did the letters they ended up being enormous and all messy. I could never get my handwriting neat like the teacher would have. So I practiced, a lot, and I believe that helped me. I remember coming home and I would practice writing words together and try my hardest to stay between the lines and make sure my letters were straight. Within time my handwriting did get better, but like I said it took time.

Writing is a vital part of everyday life for most people, especially for college students. With writing comes a process. My writing process is my personal experience of what works for you when writing. Writing is unique to each person; everyone doesn’t use the same writing process or have the same writing skills. There aren’t any specific order or steps for a writing papers, but rather what works best for you to get the job done. My writing process consists of pre-writing/ideas, first draft, second draft/revising, editing/proofreading, and finally my final draft.

From my work as a Resident Advisor this year, I have improved my time management and organizational skills. Taking fifteen credit hours, serving as a work-study student, coordinating internships through APPLES Service-Learning, and working as a Resident Advisor are a few of the things that I had on my plate throughout this semester. Keeping up with these responsibilities seems like a somewhat daunting task – what’s the perfect balance between these commitments? Throughout this last year, I found my stride, and keeping up with it all felt like less of a balancing act, and more like a well-oiled machine. As far as administrative responsibilities, I am very comfortable with the desk work that comes with working in Housing. I am used to the ins

My writing process has changed tremendously over the course of this class. I feel more accomplished, confident and I feel sometimes that my ideas and thoughts just come in to my mind out of nowhere and I start writing about anything now. I pay attention to my punctuation and grammar more as I have polished them more now, not only when I write but then others write as well. I am constantly looking for errors and I highly think this is helping me a lot in my career. The comments from my instructor, the online material, my research, the online writing center and comments from other students in the discussion boards have helped me so much to improve my writing skills.

Arne Duncan, an American education administrator once said, “When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.”

My understanding of literacy was off to a rocky start. I was never a fan of reading and writing. Growing up, I would prefer listening to music and watching movies. In fact, I struggled to speak properly. A classroom at Mill Creek Elementary was specifically designed for those who were having a hard time speaking. They call it: Speech. At least, that is what my parents called it. I did not like being pulled out of class just to go to this one thing I could care less about.

My writing process is what some might say is the least conventional and probably not the best, but I enjoy the way I write. I write the same way people brainstorm, the same way someone talks without revising in there head. I take the topic given and I think of a few ideas I could go with. Once I believe I have the idea I will go with, I open word on my lap top and begin writing. I first write the base of my paper getting the idea down and all of my thoughts. Then on to the introduction and the conclusion, after all of that I revise and review what I wrote to make all of it make sense. Taking my jumbled decoded idea to something everyone can understand.

My writing style has clearly developed over the past semester and I believe that the writings in his portfolio demonstrate that I have mastered the course materials presented in this English course. My writing style has changed in the fact that I have become more open minded in my conclusions in papers. I have ventured away from making all my conclusions based on textual evidence and have been more open minded and drawn conclusions based more on how I feel emotionally about the subject. This doesn’t mean that I only will draw conclusions from how I feel emotionally but it means that I can now do both effectively.

As we know there has always got to be story behind something, as for me this is my unique story about how I became who I am in literature, one chapter at a time. This story is unique just like a book, there are many chapters that add together to make up what I know about literature and what kind of writer I may or may not be. This can be said for anyone else, but the difference is that my story will have very different information about what I had encountered in my literacy life. My literacy life starts with the average joe shmoe story about my first book, then it ends with where I am today and what I know. My adventure in literature isn’t over, not by a long shot, but I’m eager to see where literature takes me good or bad.

Academic success to me is achieving good grades and understanding the material to get good grades. Academic success also means to have an good attendance. I already get mostly A’s and B’s, but I am not good at staying on top of things. To improve my academic success I will attend class more often, be more organized, pay attention in class, and not procrastinate.

This internal practical internship offered me an opportunity to focus on using the knowledge and skills acquired during the related courses on behavior training with children and cognitive behavior therapy with adolescents to practice my therapeutic work as a child and adolescent psychologist and a chance to see how psychological therapies (behavior training and cognitive behavior therapy) could be delivered in different settings.

One of the few things I 've learned when in college is that you put time into the things that you love. You can overload yourself to create a stellar resume but if you are doing 20 things, how much time are you really spending with each task? I learned that the hard way entering my sophomore year where I was crushed trying to balance my school work, home life, and extra curriculars. However, once I started putting time dedicated time in what I found important I became happier and found myself being able to put more into activities such as QTHON.

Being a teacher is a journey that has much to do with learning about yourself and being aware that what happens in your classroom reflects only on how are you with yourself. Teachers are not conscious that they project into students, and that affects how things go in the classroom.