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. 

Thing 16: Collaboration Tools

Collaboration is indeed a huge part of advocacy - collaboration with other staff in your job, collaborating with decision-makers to gain their liking and creating a mutually beneficial relationship, collaborating with others in the field for ideas and support when things get tough.

For the most part i use only email, excel and social media to collaborate - email at work to share marketing ideas, service information and support, email with my ILN (international librarian network) partner to gain an insight to how others might approach it. But I definitely understand that broadening my outlook will help in future collaboration. In a way our institution's use of a staff drive is similar how to many use Google drive. Anything we share at work, excel sheets of student information, posters promoting library's services, general information, organising meetings, we share via this staff drive and/or email . 

Microsoft Word is something i collaborated on exam paper formatting with aswell, which could have been shared using google drive if we weren't set up on Outlook and hotmail. 

 I know many people use Google drive to share college work and/or readings however legally that may be. Google Drive is something I probably would use if i was collaborating outside our institution or outside working hours. I'm pretty sure I used in during my GDIP LIS on group work and we were encouraged to use wiki's and instant messaging tools. We will eventually be doing library induction for our students (we fell behind on the formalities with a premises move, same as i fell behind on the course) and i reckon google slides might be useful even though i usually use powerpoint.

Looking through Google Docs myself, i realised i had used my account to share an embarrassing video way back when and i had used to when the DOAJ share their guidelines with us volunteer editors. The document templates seem somewhat useful so i may use the cv one in future. It is also useful that you can edit a document while using google hangouts. Now that i think of it, i participated in a doodle poll that someone else had set up. This tool may be useful in finding time in everyone's busy schedules at work. As things change we definitely need to meet more frequently to touch base.

When approaching the task for this thing i thought my browser had again changed the language. Let me explain; my Google chrome seems to like to change the language frequently despite how much i change it back to English. It has currently settled on French, a language i can sort of understand from my basic grasp garnered in secondary school and i use my own netbook so infrequently i havent bothered to change it yet :P.

Upon reading further down (rather than investigating, i guess weekend laziness) i found out it's Latin. This could be interesting! I have an odd fascination with learning Latin; some connection to posh private schooling and magic, i guess. 

Interesting when i tried to translate the first few paragraphs (Google Translate) only some of it translated  and very poor english:

“It's time for members across the country…. darts of fear, or soccer pure ...Performance of life,  poverty or hate. But we ought to load...great is the fear, that the main group, takes life….there was a competition, consectetur, neither with the arrows, is effected in the gate of the sapien. Great for the vehicles the same….In the refinancing. It's the element of the earth is not elit ….s not the members, through a pulvinar...and the course of the Moors, and….Smartphones….poverty, my real estate. But in front of a free,....Until nibh eros, arrows, and that photography, that, at the price of the game. ...functional advantage Reserved. Employment in silence, by the Class twist our marriage,...or expensive, and the advantage of, wind, but pure. …..In fact, never invest in targeted hate….Also a soft bed this...bananas which, in the arrows from the author at. But with their arrows…..bananas, innovative poverty-free layer. This innovative no laughter…..the earth,...emperature whom there was not before.

the Moors, but the game...advantage of the ends of the jaws of temperature. Nutella ….that strong and the gate….important layer. In diameter than the disease….pain, but blandit players and sorted by. In order to ...fear, of needs, from the thermal one…. at the court of a great keyboard,..such as soccer the earth across the country."

Google Drive is a useful tool indeed, learned a lot from other collaborators.