Thing 17 - Reflective Practice

self awareness, description, critical analysis, synthesis and evaluation

Thrown in the deep-end in my most recent position, self-reflection is something that may be useful. When i started the job it seemed straightforward; everything new i had to do was in a manual my predecessor gave me. But as time moved forward, the job and it's needs evolved to include roles i had no frame or reference for, nor any real guide. Piecing together material was all i could do. Or was it?

Reflecting on the process told me that when under pressure to do a task i never did before without help made me feel stressed; beyond belief. Keeping it to myself , ie separating it from home life made me feel worse, and i needed to vent my frustrations. But i also learnt from evaluating my response, that too much of this venting caused me to get further down.

The new role in question is diploma coordinator. So theres a lot involved; registering students, dealing with their queries and liaising with the lecturer.

So i learnt for the experience that i need to a) spend time getting to know where relevant materials can be found. I need to put aside time to look, calmly through these and decipher what might be useful going forward and not get too bogged down in the vast collection of old material from previous role-holders.
b) asking for help, even from those who may not have done the specific job but may have similar experience within the instiution in enrollment and admissions work. Get their guidance but dont expect them to do the work for you. Learn by doing but write down what they suggest and what works and what doesnt.
c) I needed also to be less hard on myself for not responding to students immediately regarding this new role but its better to take a bit of time with it and give them an acceptable solution rather that updating them a few times on progress. 

These findings about the situation, analysis of what i did that worked and what that didnt and what else i can do is something i can do in my job in the future. That and realise i am not super-human and that i can sometimes say no to people. The key thing i have learned is i need to time-manage better in these situations and prioritise, setting time aside for each thing i need to do rather than trying to answer emails while doing these tasks and thus getting so bogged down in 'i have all this to do and only this time to do it' and therefore getting nothing done efficiently.