Introduction
For the final project of my elective: skills for life, we have to make a personal development project which combine interview, personal statement and goal setting to show our learning and improvement. For the interview part, we will take videos for the before and after interview and see our improvement during the time, which we all know a good interview skill is important for future. For the personal statement part, we also need to write two to see the improve after we gain feedback from others. Last part is the goal setting, which for me is the most tough part in whole project. According to the topic and the goal I set, it was so difficult to describe and show how I learnt from the goal, but the ending was not that bad, at least I tried my best already and I also reach some parts of my goal.
Interview
During the interview, we need to be careful on our body language, facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice to let the interviewer have a good impression, and this is what we need to practice for this part and improve or interview skills. For the very first time, I seem to be a bit nervous about having a interview with teacher, my volume is low, and I need some time to process in my brain and see what I really want to say. These are not really big problems, but I still want to improve it during the second interview, and the practice that I did with mirror work a lot. In the second interview I try to calm myself and act naturally, and I try to mention the information that I wrote in my personal statement, which the teacher said the information I talk about was great, and I also feel proud for my perform.
Process Journal
This is the process journal of my project, which include some notes that I took for my work and the record of my self improvement. In the journal you can also see my plan and strategies for the goal setting, and several feedback from different persons. First I was struggle about the style that I should use for my journal, but I decided to write everything I done but not making many decoration, and I also find a pleasure of writing stuffs during this time. You can see that I can't really get many feedback from others for my goal setting compare to the personal statement, because it seems like the suggestions they gave me are quite similar, so the part I use to put the feedback is very empty, which I will try harder to gain more suggestion next time.
Last two photos of this slide are my first personal statement, you can see the messy hand writing from different people, which are the feedback I got from teachers, friends and even my family. After organizing every comment they gave, I also add some own opinion on my draft, then this helps a lot on my second personal statement.
Last two photos of this slide are my first personal statement, you can see the messy hand writing from different people, which are the feedback I got from teachers, friends and even my family. After organizing every comment they gave, I also add some own opinion on my draft, then this helps a lot on my second personal statement.
Personal statement
These are the before and after personal statement that I wrote. In beginning I confused a lot with how should I start the paragraph, and it feel quite weird about writing my own strength and other information in the paper, maybe because I am not self confident enough to do that. But after gathering feedback from others, the whole personal statement looks much more better than the previous one, not just the grammar and the structure have improved, the contain also looks more professional than before. This is a great opportunity to promote my self to others, and I am glad to have the chance to practice for my future. However I think I improve quite a lot between these two personal statement, and I feel happy about it.
Reflection
First I would like to talk about my interviews, I do learn lots of things from this project. Not just about my body language, eye contact, and how should I talk, but more about being self-confidence and learn the way to promote myself. From the video you can see many improvement between two interviews I took with Ms. Katie, in the first time I was kind of shy and struggle about the words that I need to use. But in the second interview, after practice with my friends and writing personal statement, I have a clear idea about how to describe myself, and show my own strength in the interview. And I start to enjoy about showing up who I am, which was something I feel nervous in the beginning. However the interview with Ms. Katie is the part I enjoy the most in entire project, and it is also the part that I can clearly understand how much I improved. I believe this experience will help for my future, not just for entering a university, but also useful to apply a career.
For the goal setting part, I choose the goals that can improve on my social awareness and social management, and which are the problems that I had for a long time, then now I finally got an opportunity to face and try to fix it. My first goal is to improve on telling others interest, which I think is very important for the relationships, and it is something I really bad on. I normally make others feel bored during the conversation, because I always talk about something that I interested in. Second goal is to decrease of stop criticized others during group work, which I may not able to control my language when we face some problem in the project. These two are the goal that I really want to reach, not just because I want to improve my communication skill, but also want to get along with others peacefully and gain more friends.
I choose several strategies that I think may help to reach my goals, and I also got some feedback from others to improve my plan of reaching the goal. For the first goal I decided to start with paying attention on some famous news to expend the topics that I can talk about, so during the conversation I can talk about something else but not only the one I interested in. And during the conversation, I will try my best to avoid talking about something people don’t really want to know, like my daily, the comics I like, or other things that about me. For the second goal, I try to stop for a few seconds before I want to criticize and understand that everyone may make a mistake. Or change the finger to wear the ring and break down the attention that I put on criticizing others. This strategy works very well, but during the time near deadline, I still complained to my parents about the effectiveness about my partners, which is something I may note next time.
During this project, I think my biggest success was I really reach the first goal that I set, even I need to spend few seconds to decide what should I talk or not to talk, but I still got several new friends by using the strategy. The one I more like to talk about is the failure of the project. Because of the particularity of the goal I set, I could not able to count every single time when I talk to someone else, and another problem I faced was I may forget to use the strategy during conversation. This is what I would like to pay more attention on, because this is a very helpful goal for my entire life. So I would like to improve this part if I get another chance to continue the plan, and I will be more careful about it.
For the goal setting part, I choose the goals that can improve on my social awareness and social management, and which are the problems that I had for a long time, then now I finally got an opportunity to face and try to fix it. My first goal is to improve on telling others interest, which I think is very important for the relationships, and it is something I really bad on. I normally make others feel bored during the conversation, because I always talk about something that I interested in. Second goal is to decrease of stop criticized others during group work, which I may not able to control my language when we face some problem in the project. These two are the goal that I really want to reach, not just because I want to improve my communication skill, but also want to get along with others peacefully and gain more friends.
I choose several strategies that I think may help to reach my goals, and I also got some feedback from others to improve my plan of reaching the goal. For the first goal I decided to start with paying attention on some famous news to expend the topics that I can talk about, so during the conversation I can talk about something else but not only the one I interested in. And during the conversation, I will try my best to avoid talking about something people don’t really want to know, like my daily, the comics I like, or other things that about me. For the second goal, I try to stop for a few seconds before I want to criticize and understand that everyone may make a mistake. Or change the finger to wear the ring and break down the attention that I put on criticizing others. This strategy works very well, but during the time near deadline, I still complained to my parents about the effectiveness about my partners, which is something I may note next time.
During this project, I think my biggest success was I really reach the first goal that I set, even I need to spend few seconds to decide what should I talk or not to talk, but I still got several new friends by using the strategy. The one I more like to talk about is the failure of the project. Because of the particularity of the goal I set, I could not able to count every single time when I talk to someone else, and another problem I faced was I may forget to use the strategy during conversation. This is what I would like to pay more attention on, because this is a very helpful goal for my entire life. So I would like to improve this part if I get another chance to continue the plan, and I will be more careful about it.