Reflective essay

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Individual

Essay

Nadine Bentolila-Teulet

2014-2015

1. Introduction

        “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” (Margaret J. Wheatley, 2014). This essay will show the evolution of my skills from the beginning of the year to the present days.

        Key skills audit are skills that should be gained through education, these skills are considered essential in life.  One of the aspects of my personality that I was seeking to improve was my ease in oral presentations. I was also concerned about participating in group discussions, I did not usually participate because I was too shy to give my opinion. I also have difficulties concerning essay writing, I have trouble organizing my ideas.

        Firstly, I will reflect on the improvements that I have made throughout the year concerning my gathering skills from various sources and my ability of developing my IT skills including data handling and presentation. Secondly, I will be reflecting on my skills concerning written and oral work and my ability to work as a group member. Finally, I will project myself with a career action planning.

2. Gathering information from a variety of sources

        Firstly, I am capable of gathering information from different sources. Indeed, thanks to the technological advances we have the possibility to find information very fast. However, we tend to forget that there are different places where we can find further information such as online databases and electronic journals. At the beginning of the year I did not take into account these others resources that were provided to us, but now I am trying to do the best I can to find other information from different sources.

        I have not given personal interviews for the moment but I have prepared myself to do so. Indeed, this is an important step to see if I am able to organize myself and my ideas. I believe that the key to giving a good personal interview is to be clear and organized.  

        I do not have any trouble to differentiate what is relevant and what is not. I usually check the site that I am using to see if the information is pertinent. I believe that this is a very important step in the research process.

        I still have slight problems concerning the Harvard referencing system. Nevertheless, I still believe that I need a little bit of practice to solve this problem. Another problem that I am facing when looking for information is that I still tend to forget to take all of the sources I use to be able to make the references. Because of this I often find myself wasting time to find them.

3.  Develop IT skills including data handling and presentation

        I am now going to discuss about my IT skills development. At the beginning of the year I already knew a lot of the basic information about the Pack Office Software. Thanks to this class I have learnt several shortcuts for different usage like opening a blank page, redoing or undoing the last operation, etc. Indeed, I knew the basic skills for all of the software but I deepened my knowledge. When we started having IT classes I was already confident with Word and Power point but not so much with Excel. In fact, I learned about the formulas in Excel which will be very valuable for the future. Thanks to this class, I was able to learn different skills that are useful for other classes. For instance, I have learnt how to give a good visual presentation. Finally, I believe that I know the important aspects of the Pack Office Software, I am able to use excel, powerpoint and word without any difficulties.

        I have also learnt how to present a CV in a professional and attractive way. My CV includes the most important aspects that would help an organization choose whether or not they would hire me. Indeed, the CV is a piece of paper that will decide the next step in your life. This is why it is important to take time and produce an interesting CV.

4. Communicate effectively in written and oral format

        Firstly, I will discuss about my written skills. Indeed, I arrived with an advantage which is the fact that I do not have trouble writing and speaking in English. However, I still have issues when writing because I cannot seem to organize my ideas the way I would like to. When I write an essay or a report, I feel like I do not structure my ideas well enough and this results in me not being satisfied with my written work. I believe that I have good ideas but I cannot put them on paper. This is why, I do not feel like I have evolved in this area. I have seen this through the work we have done in written English. However, I still feel comfortable when writing a report within a group. The economics and finance report, although challenging, has shown me that I am capable of having a responsible contribution.

        Secondly, I will discuss about my oral skills. Contradictory to my written skills, I do believe that I have grown concerning my oral skills. At the beginning of the year, I was unconfident when doing an oral presentation. With time I have built my confidence since I got to know my classmate to which extent it made me more comfortable. However, I still do not feel totally comfortable especially when it is an oral presentation that had to be prepared during class and could not be practiced beforehand. I believe that to be confident about my presentation I have to have time to learn it and practice it a couple times. Furthermore, we have had to do a Pecha Kucha which consists of presentation 20 slides which last 20 seconds each. Although I was comfortable in front of the class, I quickly lost my abilities because I could not say everything I wanted. Indeed, this exercise was challenging for me.

        To conclude, I believe that I have not improved in my written work however I feel like I have in my oral work concerning my stress when giving a presentation in front of the class. However I still have difficulties.

5. Reflect on learning development as a group member

        I have definitely had rough starts in groups since the beginning of the year. Indeed, often my group members were not as involved in the tasks as I was. This shows that the choice of team members is very important and that you must choose to work with people who seem involved in their work. However, as this was becoming quite stressful I decided to take matters into my own hands and act upon it. This is why, I have to do everything in my capacity to motivate the team and get as much done as possible. The Finance report, the oral presentation on dark tourism and the food and drink report were hard to handle.  The forming, storming, norming and performing is a model of group development according to Tuckman. The forming, storming and performing stages of this model were not a difficult aspect of the team work. However, the norming stage was the most challenging of the stages because some of the members of the group do not take the responsibility to work for the success of the team. According to the Belbin Test (see appendix …) I am a completer-finisher meaning that I like to look at the final result and make sure that the report is well written and that there are no mistakes. I do not like handing in a report that I have not read in total beforehand. This aspect of myself is probably because I have been deceived in my previous group tasks and this lead to me not trusting my teammates. In fact, I believe that I have to improve this aspect of myself because it can become very overwhelming in the hospitality industry.

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