First entry on Getting started on skills development and the Warwick Skills Portfolio

Workshop Tutor: Charlie Cunningham

Introduction

Overall I was very impressed with the information about the different types of skills the tutor touched upon. It was particularly helpful to break them into many different areas and sectors e.g. different learning styles (Activist, Pragmatist, and Reflector) and SMART goals. I enjoyed the way Charlie made us interacted with each other through group work and the ice-breaker introduction as it lighten the mood of the workshop and allowed us the opportunity to get to know others and their point of views as well as their thinking. The drawings of reflection brought this to the limelight where each of us will have different ways of thinking and expressing things. My favourite part of the workshop was the 8/9 steps reflection on an event, this gave structure to thoughts I always had about the event, thoughts which were never orderly.

Actions

1. In the remaining time of this academic year I would like to improve my networking and lobbying skills for future internships/ career opportunities. I have partially started this process by accident in term one when I stumbled on a Czech academia at a Czech Slovak Society event, discussing Politics with him. From this encounter I was introduced to more Politics academia within the University. I believe that such encounters are more useful than the Careers fair (though I still attend them) given that you meet people in fields which you are interested in. Hence I hope to be more active in national, historical and political societies where I can meet more like minded people. In the next week, I plan to attend a Politics careers event in which I aim to network with two people in the room using the social interactive skills that I learn from taking more risks. Success could be measured by whether I have managed to meet two new people and talk about their future plans.
   

2. I would like to take greater risk in participating more orally in two of my seminars where my current participation is 20% speaking and 80% listening. In order to achieve this, I must be more prepared with readings and take more relevant notes (through better timetabling) because most of the time the reason that I listen more is because I feel that my notes are of inferior quality to my colleagues. Another threshold to get over is the mentality itself, I shall now approach these seminars with a more flexible mentality in that I will not care too much what people think about my contribution and just say what I have to say and be able to justify it if asked. Tutor feedback can be the indicator of whether this goal is met. Over the next two weeks I plan to get at least a page and a half of notes for each seminars and make at least three points in each of them that I can sustain. Success could be measured by that.
   

3. Trying new things and broadening my interest horizon is another goal which I want to achieve for the remainder of this term. Each week I would like to read at least four academic articles (2 politics and 2 history) which are not related to my modules. This would give me a better outlook on the subjects' vast field and interconnectedness, furthermore it will make me more aware of events that happened or are happening throughout the world. For all I know, there might be intereting snippets of information which could be relevant to my modules. The main source for this goal is e International Relations and History Today magazine. Success could be measured by whether I could sustain conversations with politics students on matters not related to my module or whether I can make a relevant comparison and parallels between what I have read.
   

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: 07 Jan 2013 14:50 |  Tags: Actions P1 Portfolio Wspa |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem