Professional Development

Essay: Professional Development

Name: Lisa-Marie Lehner

Course: Professional Development

Team name: Team Wavy

Student number: 1740783

Date: 16/01/2019

Teacher: Ellen Duffy

Professional Development is a powerful, active and helpful course which guides and encourages students to use their full potential and allows them to expand their boundaries. For that reason, Professional Development is for me so much more than just a program I had to pass in order to get my necessary study credits. If helped me to develop my own professional skills, getting better in organizing my daily study routine and giving me an idea of how easy I can put things the right way once I am completely aware of my own thinking.

Professional Development is part of my study for already four months and by looking back at the beginning I am surprised how much it affected my personal feelings and thoughts towards my new life in the Netherlands.

Starting with September I honestly did not know what to expect from PD and so I set my expectations as low as possible. Now, in the end, I think that this was a good idea since I took all the information from this course in without having any judgments in my mind. Even though there were moments of confusion I am very happy to have this course in my study program. Well, after a couple of weeks I got the whole idea behind PD and also gained confidence towards the Creative Business study. Especially in the first month, I was overwhelmed with all those new programs, all the new students and the huge amount of languages in just only one building. For me, Professional Development was the course I could hold on, which gave me a feeling of safety, stability, and support. I felt that by following the instructions from PD, there could nothing bad happen to me.

We had to reflect on our study progress every Friday by writing a journal entry which I personally liked a lot. Especially because it helped me to get an overview of the course and it's easier to keep on track. Another point is, that  I gained more awareness about my own study behaviors, especially realized how to change them to my own benefit.

In week four we learned about metacognition and the importance about to be aware of our own thinking. Regarding Metacognition we found that it is not the same as self-regulated learning.

Metacognition describes the ability to be aware of your thoughts and choose helpful strategies. Self-regulation describes the act of staying calm and focused. Improving one is likely to improve the other. (n.d, 2018)

I started to plan ahead, to inform me about the deadlines and to set up a plan who guided me to my goals. My strengths are that once I am really interested in a topic I develop a strong motivation which forces me to use all my potential to reach my aim. That's one of my biggest strengths, I believe. On the other side, I also lose easily my focus once my motivation fades away. That is one of my weaknesses - I have a lack of self- discipline and definitely want to work on it.

Regarding how I want to solve this in the future, I believe that I will try to extend my focus and to gain more patience and power of endurance.

My success team benefitted from Metacognition as well, since we had a lot of different tasks to do and the whole process was all about strategy and organization. We clearly worked on our timetable and exchanged our work to make sure everybody is included and participates equally in the whole progress.  

Another fascinating concept was when we talked in week six about the growth and the fixed mindset. It was interesting to learn about those two different ways of thinking and I realized for myself how huge they actually affect us.