Intro Into Higher Education

How I intend to prepare for my examinations.

I have not sat a written exam in over 16 years and I have to say it is somewhat overwhelming at times. But I know that from being in college since September I have learned a lot when it comes to preparing for exams. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Unfortunately, I have learned this the hard way by not preparing for exams and failing! But in other exams I prepared, studied and took notes and got some great results.

My preparation for the upcoming exams will involve attempting past papers for Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Maths. I have printed off all past papers and have tried to complete the Electrical Engineering paper as best as I could. After my first attempt I looked back over the notes on Webcourses, drew out diagrams, labelled them and wrote notes regarding each question. I re-read my notes three to four times and had another attempt at the past paper and felt that I had far exceeded my expectations. This method works well for me and I will continue doing this for all the past exam papers and repeat it until I feel confident about the exam paper. 

CAO Personal Statement

The things I should consider when making important decisions. 2/12/18

I think when making decisions I have to think of the outcome and how that decision is going to affect me and the people that are important to me. A lot of the time my decisions have been centred around myself without consideration for anyone else. Very selfish decisions. I have to think is this decision a good decision or not, what are the consequences of my decision, where will it lead me? Will it lead me down the right path or the wrong path? That’s where gut feelings and instincts come into play because they are telling loud and clear which decision to make but I can be so caught up in my mind and in my ego that I either forget or don’t trust my gut feelings.

What’s the best way for me to deal with conflict in the future? 2/12/18

In the past I would have nearly always dealt with conflict with anger, dishonesty which sometimes caused the conflict in the first place. I think moving forward with my life and when it comes to dealing with conflict there are a number of factors that I have to consider. First of all I have to put myself in the other persons shoes and see where it is they are coming from. I need to think before I speak and enter that present moment with awareness, because if I am fully present and aware the likelihood is that I wont make the situation any worse. Being assertive is very important too. But being assertive in a calm, peaceful and understanding way is even more important because I can get my point across without being aggressive towards that other person. 

What I have learned about myself in group work. 18/11/18

What I have learned about myself from a career point of view is that I like to be in charge when working in groups. I like to give the orders and delegate the work load out between my colleagues. This is mainly because of my role working as a project manager and bearing in mind the deadlines that I had to work towards. I was able to motivate people to certain degree but if they did not do what I asked them I could get quite bossy which, at times caused conflict amongst us. I found that sometimes my colleagues did not like being told what to do, especially if that person was older than me. I found that I had approach different personalities in different ways in order to get the best out of them but if I was having a bad day that would also have an impact on how I approached people.

What I have learned from Gardner’s Theory of Intelligence.

What I need to change to become a better student.

There are a number of things I need to change to become a better student. I need to engage more in classes, ask questions and answer questions too as I have a tendency not to ask a question if I don’t understand something right away. Usually I will study what I don’t understand at a later date. Another part of student life that I need to work on is allocating time to study. I do study but not enough so I need to allow time every evening to study my subjects further and read the over notes I take during classes and also the notes up on web courses prior to attending classes. 

My Time Management

My time management has been very efficient when it comes to work. I was working as a project manager for a shopfitting company. While working in the office planning, preparation and execution where very important working within this role. Calculating the quantities of materials needed to manufacture shopfittings and also the quantities of shopfittings needed for the construction site were paramount for the job to run as smoothly as possible. Planning ahead for health and safety issues that may arise and working out a work schedule were essential.

When working on construction sites at any given time there could be anything from 10 to 30 people who I would have to liaise with and also delegate work to on a daily basis. Daily tasks for all employees of the company were written up the previous night for the next day along with the average time to complete the task which was judged by previous tasks. I would type these tasks out in a sequence from very urgent to less urgent. Also when taking these tasks into account, consideration regarding how many employees would be needed for each task would be considered based on previous timelines to complete tasks.