Preparing for Success at University: Knowledge and Creativity

This reflective essay focuses on communication skills and its application to academic context along with reflecting on individuals performance, behaviour and experience in education. It discusses the importance of effective conflict resolution and mediation skills and provides an action plan to work on these skills. The essay concludes that learning and development of skills are crucial and can be performed at any given point of time in order to enhance oneself.

Preparing for Success at
University: Knowledge
and Creativity
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
INTRODUCTION
Professionalism refers to the effective understanding relative the the individuals
adherence to a set standards. It involves high level of skills, appropriate judgement of
situations and polite behaviour. The following essay will involve the understanding of
communication skills and its application to academic context along with reflecting on
individuals performance, behaviour and experience in education. In addition to this it will
focus on communication skills of listening & questioning skills along with conflict
resolution and mediation skills.

MAIN BODY
It is crucial for me write an self-reflection and utilize and effective model such as
the Gibbs Cycle as it is an essential technique the provides assistance in continuous
assessment of overall self enhancement and improving upon personal skills in the long-
term aspect. The model consist of six stages which makes it highly effective in self
assessment (Dwyer and Davidson, 2020). The model will enable me to understand my
educational experience and give me a detailed overview of my performance and
behaviour relative to my education. Given below are the six stage of the model in
context to my education experience and communication skills:
1. Description: In my education I focuses on business management and was able
to gain high-level of valuable knowledge along with understanding of the effective
business management. This factor of the Gibbs Cycle includes the description of
thing relative to what I have done. I was able to learn various aspect in my
eduction that enabled me to improve upon my weakness and overcome my fear.
In addition to this I was able to make friend during my education and only feel
confident why presenting myself in front of an audience. I had good mentors that
enabled me to enhance my communication skills and provide me proper
guidance which enhance my educational experience.
2. Feelings: This section of the model consist of the educational experience I had
while studying business management During my initial weeks I was not well
prepared and felt out of touch with the course and people. But over time I was
able to use my effective communication skills to introduce myself and my opinion
son various topics in order to effective express myself. I was also able to use my
listening and questioning skills which provided me assistance during my
education to gain value knowledge relative to business management and ask my
mentors appropriate question that would broaden my perspective relative to my
subjects (Huston and et. al., 2018). In addition to this all these communication skills
also helped me in interacting with other which helped me in establishing
meaningful friendships which enhanced my education experience.

3. Evaluation: This section of the model involves the positive and negative aspects
of the experience I had during my education. The positive aspect of the
experiences was that I was able to effective use my communication skills which
provide me assistance in working in a team and to become a valuable assert for
my team members. The effective listening and questioning skills allowed me to
be bre4ative in question various topics and how they function along with the
ability to understand my team members opining and through through effective
listening. On the contrary the negative aspect of my experience was that I had
ineffective conflict resolution and mediation skills. This causes a lot of stress and
anxiety for my which hindered my overall performance during my education.
Moreover, at times it also caused demotivation which impacted my studying
negatively.
4. Analysis: This part of the section elaborates the theory in a broader manner. I
was able to gradually improve upon my weakness by slowly understanding the
importance of effective conflict resolution skills along with mediation skills as
these will not only enhance my current communication skill but also enable me to
improve my performance. I was able to take guidance from me mentors who
were able to provide me valuable information on how I can improve my lacking
areas and what their benefits will be for my personal and profession growth along
with development (Lee, 2019). The conflict resolution skills will allow me to reduce
the amount of stress I encounter along with being comfortable in complex
situation. Moreover, the mediation skill will allow me to think clearly and taker a
step back from the overall stress I face in my educational experience.
5. Conclusion: This section of the theory will focus on explaining my overall
educational experience and my learnings at the end of my session. The study
has enabled me to be comfortable in presenting my thoughts and opinions to
others. I am able to be confident in asking appropriate questions to my mentors
and friends which help me broaden my knowledge relative to various topics that
have helped me be creative (Nahmad-Williams and Oates, 2018). Moreover, I was

able to understand the importance of conflict resolution and mediation skills as
they are extremely vital for me to be able to enhance my performance regarding
my education and help me reduce the overall stress I encounter.
6. Action plan: This part of the model will assist me to develop an action plan
which will involve the skills I need to work upon in order to reduce my weakness.
Moreover, it will provide me with specific time frame in which I need to attain
these skills (Scragg, 2018). It is vital for me to work upon my conflict resolution and
mediation skills as they proved immense benefits in educational experience. In
order to do so I must utilize my effective listing skills and work upon my conflict
resolution skills in the time period of 1 month by building meaning relationship
and taking my own emotions into account for avoiding high level of stress. In
addition to this I will work on my mediation skills by focusing on being healthy
and being consistent with evaluating my though over the time period of 2 months.
This will ensure I am able to enhance my performance and improve my personal
development.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay it is concluded that, learning and development of skills are
curial and can be performed at any given point of time in order to enhance oneself.
These skills have a major impact on the future performance of an individual and enable
them to improve their overall performance relative to both personal and professional
development. Moreover, these skills provide long-term benefits that can enable an
individual to be effective in their work.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals:
Dwyer, K. K. and Davidson, M., 2020. E-journaling for all communication
classes. Communication Teacher, 34(3). pp.191-197.
Huston and et. al., 2018, January. The academic‐practice gap: Strategies for an enduring
problem. In Nursing forum (Vol. 53, No. 1. pp. 27-34).
Lee, A., 2019. Successful research supervision: Advising students doing research. Routledge.
Nahmad-Williams, L. and Oates, R., 2018. Reflective Practice. In Early Childhood Studies (pp.
467-500). Routledge.
Scragg, T., 2018. 8: Reflective Practice on Placement. Reflective Practice in Social Work, p.139.