Task 2C 'a critical reflection'

'A Critical Reflection' I have uploaded task 2C as a Google document as it was quite long so hopefully it will be easier to read.

Journal Writing Experience

After getting the hang of writing my reflective journal I decided to experiment with different ways of writing.  I have tried many different ways so far: Making lists, drawing spider diagrams, evaluating the day, questioning myself...in fact after trying a few different styles it was difficult for me to pin point which style I was trying because in the end they all began to merge with one another to create a style personal to me.

The one style which I did not enjoy was drawing. Drawing just doesn’t come very naturally to me, I even have to label stick men so I wasn’t able to relax into what I was thinking about and instead just thought about whether the drawings were understandable or not.

I also enjoyed having a go at writing a short poem or verse about the events of the day although here I couldn’t express everything that I wanted to but I’m not going to give this up after reading some of Adesola’s poems which are very powerful. I’d like to be able to teach myself to think and write as she does. Here is a link to her poems:http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2010/11/poem-4.html
Although I wasn't writing all my thoughts while creating the poems they did stir up a lot of deeper thoughts about the day so I found the poem an aid in to then writing an evaluation of my thoughts and feelings.

I also found it helpful to make notes or an ongoing list throughout the day if I knew it was going to be a busy day. Sometimes what would be important on a normal day could get forgotten about on a busy day because there is so much going on it doesn’t seem to have had such an impact. But I found that even if I don’t write about something in detail it won’t be forgotten if I have made a few notes about it earlier.

Videos certainly help me to critically reflect as I have found out in the past few days watching myself on the show DVD’s in a rehearsal our dance captain organised and also whilst filming my show reel which I’m putting together at the moment. I discovered that when watching myself back I am only able to see the negative things and things which I can improve on. I am unable to easily say if something looked good or even ok.

Looking back over my reflective journal so far I can see that I write a lot of negative comments. I put myself down a lot and by writing them I believe it even more. I’ve started to write a lot more motivationally and when I am writing negatively I’m trying to pick out positive points and write about them too and where I can, improve on the negatives so hopefully I will start to believe these or at least put myself in a more positive mindset.

I’ve found that the journal has become my unspoken voice of thoughts that if I don’t write down I won’t hear and I’ve realised it is important to address even the most obvious as sometimes there are deeper feelings to these thoughts that can be holding me back.

 An example of this is my show reel.  I have been putting off making it for weeks but after finally booking the stage and arranging a time to have the lights on with the stage manager I HAD to do it. I found myself getting so frustrated and realised that the reason I had been putting off making the show reel was in fact because I knew even if I performed to the best of my ability that in my eyes my work would not be good enough to send to an employer because I can always see what is wrong with what I am doing and not what is right.

If I had written about thinking about making a show reel in my reflective diary then maybe I would have figured out why I was putting it off before it actually came to making it and possibly done something about it like tried to motivate myself into making it and talk about the positive things of myself as a dancer so that maybe I could have seen these when playing back the video, not just the bad things.

A reflective journal is going to help me enormously with my work. It has taken me a long time to realise this but the journal is helping me to learn more about myself and I can see where I’m holding myself back and begin to address this.

I’m looking forwards to carrying on my journal writing throughout the course now and seeing how much I will have learned looking back at the end.

Thoughts on The Last Campus Session

Although I was unable to attend the last campus session, after reading the blogs of people who did attend such as Phil, Aicha and Sarah and Also Adesola's blog I think I have a great idea of what went on. I really appreciate everybody's summaries as everyone had a different experience of the day. Everybody noticed different things that went on and wrote about what they thought to be the most important. Although the general idea and over view of the day was the same, details about what happened and what you did varied and it's great to have as much detail as possible.
It's funny because the campus session was all about noticing things that you wouldn't usually notice and in the blogs it's still clear that from different peoples experiences different things have been noticed!
Thank you once again for the summaries, much appreciated.

2a: finally breaking the ice

I think I can safely say that I have found the whole process of writing a Reflective journal a lot more difficult than I first assumed it would be. I thought that having written a diary through the most part of my life it would be quite easy but for some reason as I said previously I felt inhibited and not sure what to write about and if what I was writing about was the right thing to be writing about.

 I think the thought of the reflective journal being used for learning purposes made me question if what I was writing about was relevant or suitable.

First of all I really confused myself with the words “professional practice” I did that thing where I said them to myself so many times that they no longer made sense to me. I felt that I understood what the reader was saying but didn’t know how to put it on paper myself. I gave it a few goes but convinced myself that I was doing it wrong, confusing myself in the process.

So I asked a few people what they thought and did a bit of research myself.  I used “Google” to search “examples of journal writing experience” and found that these websites really helped:

http://www.clinpsy.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=955  - Information for aspiring clinical psychologists. (Strange as it sounds but it really helped.)

www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/reflective.pdf  - Reflective writing, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Both of these sites used many of the ideas from the reader but reading the ideas in different ways helped me to understand a little bit more. I was also reassured by Alicia Beck, Corinda and Adesola that I was starting to go in the right direction which made me a little more confident, and I'll be sure to comment on other peoples blogs if they are questioning themselves about anything as the feedback really helped me.

I think I have initially been holding myself back, almost afraid of what it is that I’m writing about. But for my last entry I just let myself write. I wrote about everything that came to me. I found that I had a few niggling work related issues that I hadn’t really discussed with myself properly but that writing them down meant I had to deal with them.

I found that I naturally wanted to ask myself questions and answer them. I realised why I felt a certain way about a particular incident and wrote myself a solution or a suggestion of something that I could do to rectify the situation.

When I had finished writing everything felt a lot clearer.  I realised that I could ask as many people possible about advice on writing a journal, but really the only way I would learn is to just get on and do it myself. I have been writing a reflective journal for a couple of weeks but I just wasn’t letting my personal self in to the writing side of things and I think I’m going to have to do that to benefit from it.

Finally I think I have broken the ice!

further thoughts about task 2a and b

I’ve been keeping a reflective journal for about 2 weeks now alongside my personal journal which I have kept on and off at different points in my life. From writing these 2 journals I’ve noticed that in my personal journal I tend to talk openly about how I feel, yet in my reflective journal I seem to only write about things that happened in the day, just an order of events. This is not really reflecting though, is it? Surely in order to reflect I need to talk about the emotions I was feeling at the time or write about what I thought went well or could be improved. I try but am feeling a bit inhibited at the moment and I don't understand why.

I think I need to establish what I need to be thinking about in order to do well In reflective practice. Does anybody else find it difficult to write a reflective journal?

Sometimes I think i’ll be just getting there and then I may lose my train of thought.  What do you find you are thinking about when you are writing in your reflective journal?

Maybe I have just not not found a style of reflective writing that suits me professional journal yet.

I would appreciate any advice anybody has, thanks, Emily

An introduction to task 2a

I have begun to set out a time for myself every evening to write a reflective journal for task 2a. I’ve started out by just letting myself write as I would usually write a journal. I have kept a diary at various times throughout school so I think that I must have developed my own personal way of writing throughout these years.  I have always kept them and occasionally will have a flick through of the old ones. I think it’s nice to sometimes look back and have a chuckle about what was going on then, read about all the gossip and the biggest dramas then that seem so petty looking back.  I also like to see how any problems that I had were resolved and what I did then to overcome any obstacles. I think the real reason why I have kept my journals though is because I like to look back and see how I have changed and developed as a person (as sad as that sounds). I think it’s funny to read back and remember that I thought in a particular way about something or had an opinion of something that is completely different to what I think today and I think (hope) that the Reflective Journal will also develop in this way.

I’m looking forwards to firstly writing the journal, then hopefully realising where my learning changes and develops and then finally looking back at the end of the course and seeing how my writing has developed and hopefully see that I have developed as a professional practitioner as well.

I’m going to attempt to write in different styles of journal writing so that I can hopefully incorporate them into my own.  Before I do this I’m going to research some different styles of journal writing by checking the examples in the reader and also doing my own research online to see what’s the most useful and helpful for me.

Hopefully you’ll be able to tell me what worked best for you too!

Hope to hear from somebody soon,

Best wishes, Emily

P.S Also thank you to Liam Conman for letting us know of a way to keep up with comments on other peoples Blogs, very helpful!

Task 1a final Professional Profile and CV and further thoughts

So here we are my final Professional Profile and CV. Thank you everyone for all your advice and comments. I think I am happy with these now although of course nothing is ever perfect. Of course if anybody does have any suggestions they are always welcome.
I also started to think about a CV I have that credits some of my accidental learning. I think this helps when it comes to reflective practice. I am able to see how it was that I learned something, by this I mean by watching or doing or seeing etc. I'm using "Kolb's learning cycle" which is spoken in the reader to aid me in doing this. I'm not going to post the CV because some of it's quite embarrassing, but I recommend trying it as I found it really helped me to start thinking about reflective practice.
Thanks to adesola for suggesting the "accidental CV" to me.

Posting Task 1C to the BAPPMDX You Tube channel

Hi there.
If any body knows how to do this please would you be able to let me know? I've been navigating around the site for ages but I just don't understand!
Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thank you 

Learning

Hey everyone, I hope the session went well today. I couldn't make it but managed to talk to Adesola via Skype. We were talking about how we learn after we already know something. For example I have learned a show and it's ready to go onstage but I haven't learned everything about it yet. Some things you don't learn until other things have happened and its only by accident that you learn them. For example I learned in my first week on board that for one of the costumes I have to loop my skirt onto my fingers before my glove because otherwise there's a chance it could be knocked out of my hand by my partner. I only learned this because by accident my partner knocked my skirt loop off my finger and it was because I had put my glove on before my skirt. I learned this through experience, but in what other ways have I learned things? Which step of Kolb's learning cycle is it where I tend to learn things most?
I'm going to think about this in a way as Adesola suggested, a "CV of things that I have learned" and then hopefully look at this CV and see a pattern of how I learned these things.
Just writing this has made it all a bit clearer to me.
Emily

Final Draft of CV

In my final draft I have decided to remove my date of birth. Knowing my age could possibly put people off employing me if I am auditioning for a job where I am supposed to look a certain age and my date of birth is not that age. Without it I can try and look a certain age instead.
I also added the Qr code as Aicha suggested. At the moment it links to my starting out on BAPP video but I intend to change it so it links to my showreel.
I have uploaded this CV as my final draft but of course any feedback is always welcome.
Final draft of CV
Emily

2nd draft of CV

After taking on board the comments I have added my special skills and also made my work credits stand out in bold. I'm also trying to find how to put the tag that Aicha suggested but I can't find it anywhere, can anyone else?
Any other feedback is greatly appreciated,
Thank you.
Emily Brenchley CV 2nd draft