Preparing for University Success: A Reflection on Learning Experiences

This essay is a reflection on previous learning experiences in preparation for higher education at Bucks New University. It discusses the student's strengths and weaknesses, focusing on areas such as time management, communication skills, referencing, and paraphrasing. The essay highlights the importance of self-development, self-presentation, and adapting to new social and work-related cultures. It also emphasizes the need for continuous improvement through feedback and practical application of learned skills. The student identifies specific actions to enhance English language proficiency and paraphrasing abilities, along with strategies for effective time management and academic performance. The essay concludes with a discussion on implementing personal development strategies and gathering feedback from professors and peers.

Running head: PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

2PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
Introduction
Learning can best be defined as the procedure in which the educational
behaviour of an academic laureate is modified and the strategies that the learner
provides to give his or her achievements in these contexts, a permanent lifetime. The
learning process can also be complimented as an endeavour through which one
activity generates or the ways of response to any situation is changed. In this
context, this essay emphatically discusses the role of the learning as well as
academic development advice centre of the Bucks New University. The council
works in close quarters with the individual students to help them change their
behavioural learning aspects so that in the end they can develop their grades. In this
essay, my personal development needs in the learning context, have been focused
up on. Based on the delineations of previous research work, the areas that required
improvement have been identified here. In the next part, the actions for the future
development based on the identified strengths and weaknesses have been provided.
In order to help the students achieve their desired outcomes in academics, the
advisory body helps the students to effectively develop note making strategies,
suggest how to alleviate their research skills, how to make most relevant referencing
and how to best reflect the teacher’s feedback in the assignments. The justifications
for choosing the areas of development in the real-life context and how feedback
collected from various people at various position in life have been also discussed.
This essay have focused up on the personal learning strengths and
weaknesses. Based on the analysis conducted, this essay emphasizes on
identifying, analysing and making suggestions regarding the required areas of
development.
The discussion in this essay is contextually linked to the strategic importance of my
current position as a student in the GBS University. As a student of
Discussion
The first criterion of development in my life have been learning the aspects of
stringent self-development. The four years of high school had been very panoramic
and much regulated for me. From my high school I gained the habit of rising early
(approximately 5.30 am in morning) which has suggested to be very helpful in my
university life. On the days of lecture studies, I am able to rehearse my course work,

3PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
waking up early. Basic concepts of critical learnings like macro and micro
economics, Finance, Statistics, marketing, Mathematics in early stages helps me in
understanding the key concepts in the lecture sessions very clearly. In this context,
Tardy and Smithson (2018), have opined that the circumstantial planning of life
becomes very important. Currently as well as in future I would be exposed to
numerous external influences like roles and responsibilities for the first time in life
and parallely with that I need to display a high volume of self-constraint.
The second area of personal development is learning the attributes of self-
presentation and ways of life when I joined my job for the first time. I studied parallely
with my job. The business meetings that I undertook during that period helped me to
learn how I could make a good impression with my peers during group assignments
and during the presentations. In this context, the biggest area of development has
been managing and buffering my time between my classes and work hours. On one
hand I had to spend some time with family as well as friends. On the other I had to
manage time for regular homework’s and preparations of business meetings,
frequently. While working for BALEV BIO market, I experienced one of the most
significant challenges of life. Management of online orders posed an array of serious
issues. Firstly, I had to improvise and innovate strategies whenever deliveries were
late. Parallely I had to assist for customer support. In this context, development of
high communication as well as psychological skills were central to my disposition.
Working in an environment which demands me to prevent mistakes as far as
possible, requires high level of precision and accuracy. This challenging segment of
my life strongly compliments me no when I face issues and complications.
Presently, the main areas of improvement for me are accepting a new
demographic social and work-related culture of my university in London as well as
maintain my disposition as a student and as a mother. I know it is quite difficult to set
ideal standards every term of my semesters. At this stage of life key skills like being
patient, being susceptible to change, having strength in gut to take up challenging
assignments and finally knowing the right communication method are my most
crucial learning deliverables. My researching skills are generally high. However,
since I use many source for data extraction, the prospect of referencing becomes a
complicated affair for me. IN order to improve that, I always rely up on doing
revalidation of the arguments. After the completion of the documents, I reopen the

4PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
online files to make sure that the authors quoted have actually reflected the
arguments that have been stated under the reference of their name. I have also
realised proper referencing not only accomplished through highlighting the main idea
of the authors. The way the authors have come to the derived idea needs to be
studied and reflected in assignments as well. In fact, this is where, I require higher
referencing skill. I am always updated with the format of referencing every kind of
document, I collect data from. The list includes online journals, news articles, annual
reports of companies, websites, blogs, annual reports, conference proceedings and
so on.
Since I have joined the GBS, at a mature age and needed to carry on job and
study parallely, good communication skills have been there in my nerves. However,
the necessity to learn, rehearse and deliver as my learning outcomes, I have always
resorted to redeem books articles as well as online journals, so that I could
acquire knowledge that helps me accomplish the learning outcomes of my
university. However, this habit is time killing and in the initial days of my
tenure in university, I had to face acute time management issues. My learning
experiences, speed that in cases where time management is highly required,
maintaining a personal memo or an everyday time frame is very essential. I prefer
online memo making tool which allows me to make a list of the everyday
deliverables and set specific time frames for every action. Secondly, setting
time boundaries is very important. It, might happen that we fail to accomplish a
task within scheduled or desired time. A time boundary makes a psychological
impact and we prefer to take up the next important task, rather than clinging on to
the previous one. As, Yang and Brown (2016), opines, time boundaries save people
from the loopholes of task management. About 70% of people have the common
psychology to finish the task, which they could not accomplish within deadlines.
However, in this connection, McClelland et al. (2015), have opined that in such a
nervous state people mostly make more delay to finish the previous task as well as
they are far away from perfection in what they perform.
I have had good IT skills that I acquired from working along with learning.
Making online presentations and business management projects over Skype, helped
me a lot. However, lack of good skills of analysis have always troubled me. Now, the
necessary do-able for development skills have dawned upon me when I started to

5PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
live in London that is different from my home-place in social contexts, completely. I
believe it is also essential to gather feedback from peers in all contexts on personal
analyses. These feedbacks help to make more precise analyses in future
endeavours. The other two areas that requires action are my English language skills
and paraphrasing skills.
Two specific actions that I rely upon to develop in these two areas are
engagement in long end conversations with the common people in English. Living in
London, currently, I must be as conversant as the locals in the local language that is
English. This is serious making a strong positive impact upon my English language
and conversation skills. Poor English skills would limit my prospect as a student, as
English is the main medium of communication in my university. Another factor is the
lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this problem, I have taken extra
initiative to assemble and prepare the group assignments and this involved lots of
paraphrasing work. To make perfect assignment and flawless paraphrasing, I have
taken the help of my tutors.
The first criteria chosen, is development of time management skills. People in
real life situations have seldom time to improve the outcomes of the tasks where
they have missed the deadlines. Hence, time boundaries are very important as they
render the knowledge that it is essential to look up to new affairs in life and not linger
to what have been missed. Again, development of a personal memo helps to reduce
the number of occasion when people miss deadlines. This generally develops a
tendency to accomplish tasks in perfect timeframe. As an outcome, now when I have
to remember the learning outcomes, targets of achievable or the deadlines of my
assignments, this habit is helping me very much to not only perform tasks within
deadlines but also remember what research I must do in various contexts.
Other necessary steps for improvement that I have taken in the context of
development is indulging in chat forums and general people of London for
development of the speaking power. Development of speaking power would have
helped me to make fluent presentation of ideas at my workplace as well as in my
university presentations. So far as my deficit in good paraphrasing is concerned, I
always emphasize on reading books and journals and identifying good vocabulary
from there. I also put a high impetus on team work. While doing group assignments, I

6PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
carefully observe how the peers make data analysis ad representation of relevant
data in the assignments. This is where team work have helped me a lot. In academic
presentation where I must make representation of ideas, rich vocabulary would allow
me to make integrated college presentations.
At present I am a much concerned and aware individual than before. My
personal development strategies that I have applied so far have helped me a lot.
Firstly, my personal target involves making a good academic performance and
parallely give the best of companion to my daughter. However, good academic
performance is directly related to developing the skills for writing well-presented and
impactful reports.
In order to develop my essay writing skill, I always refrain from writing the main
essay body at first. I am aware that there are no parts and sub-parts defined in an
essay. However, in the body of the essay I always write down te min points I am
going to highlight in ever paragraph of the essay. In absence of lack of paraphrasing
and vocabulary skills, his approach helps me a lot. Again, researching is a very
critical component of writing an essay. Particularly in case of reflective essays, I
highlight the main arguments developed by the author in an article. Based on that, I
gather evidence through which I can either defend or oppose the arguments. I need
to achieve a high distinction to get a job in an MNC that can give me posting in my
home-place. To do this, I must develop my English-speaking power and
paraphrasing skills to the fullest.
Implementation of the various strategies for personal development have
allowed gathering of feedback from various entities. Firstly, feedback was provided
by my professors at GBS. They opined that I had good rehearsing skills. However,
they thought that I did not have a stringent self-discipline, because of which my
learning outcomes were delayed.
In case of assignments, I also received negative feedback from my peers who
opined that English vocabulary was low and because of which the presentations I
made, were often unable to make the customers satisfied. These feedbacks always
helps me to write a more critical report with better understanding of the deliverables
every other time. I outlook keep an outlook that I am presenting the report to the
managerial body of any real organisation. As such I use the most authentic sources

7PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
where company’s data are available. The individual tutor sessions also help me a lot
in this regard. The teachers readily help me to develop the outline of the report
based on which I am able to develop the body of the report.
I always emphasized on engaging in long end discussions with the people
who made most of the feedbacks regarding me. In this context, I always put stress in
the benefits I have gained from the Bucks Blackboard and the VLE. The sample
course materials have helped me a lot personally. As English is not my vernacular
language and I did not have high level of vocabulary in English, the sample materials
helped me to make the language of my assignments more professional and
academic. Besides, I have previously discussed already that I have indulged in to
online discussion forums in the Blackboard and VLE. Vocabulary. The blogs that are
posted there have also helped me to develop my For evidence, now when my
professors identify that I have flaws in paraphrasing, I promptly approach them and
discuss with them, how may I change the rendition of the paragraphs in my
assignment so that I can do paraphrasing properly. Lastly, I would also discuss the
role of the Remente application. This application is very helpful for daily goal setting
and I could plan my personal development with suggestions from the application.
Considering my learning experiences from the past as well as present, I can
complement myself as possessing the activist learning style. In every academic
atmosphere, I received little time to adjust myself and I always had to involve myself
fully with the operations. I have always been dominated by mew learning
experiences, which is actually the learning style of an activist learner.
Firstly, my personal target involves making a good academic performance
and parallely give the best of companion to my daughter. I need to achieve a high
distinction to get a job in an MNC that can give me posting in my home-place. To do
this, I must develop my English-speaking power and paraphrasing skills to the fullest.
IN this respect, my learning experience would be of most help to me.
6. Conclusion
During this reflection essay, emphasis have been provided on the various
challenges I have faced or will be facing in the near future during my tenure of my
scholarship at the GBS University and implemented various personal skill
development strategies. Learning outcomes that I have achieved like time

8PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
management and the demeanour of having self-composure and self-discipline
seemed difficult for me. In the current stage of life, essential requirements are
meeting the goals of my university academic standards and my personal life as well.
In various stages, development of various self-attributes through strategies
discussed in the course of this essay, helped in establishing myself as a balanced
individual also. Poor English skills have always limited my prospect as a student, as
English is the main medium of communication in my university. Another factor is the
lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this problem, I have taken extra
initiative to assemble and prepare the group assignments and this involved lots of
paraphrasing work. To make perfect assignment and flawless paraphrasing, I have
taken the help of my tutors. The lack of adaptability with English and my adaptability
with the diction and accent of my vernacular hindered my fluency in English
language. Besides, I was also engaged with my family and my 2 years old daughter
as because of which I was not able to concentrate on my academics. Currently, after
I have recognised my limitations and strengths, I am working towards making all
feasible improvements and I hope that I would be able to achieve a good academic
standard as well as good employment opportunity in future as well.

9PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
Reference List and Bibliography
Bolden, R., 2016. Leadership, management and organisational development.
In Gower handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 143-158).
Routledge.
McClelland, M.M., John Geldhof, G., Cameron, C.E. and Wanless, S.B., 2015.
Development and self‐regulation. Handbook of child psychology and developmental
science, pp.1-43.
Self, D.R., Self, T., Matuszek, T. and Schraeder, M., 2015. Improving organizational
alignment by enhancing strategic thinking. Development and Learning in
Organizations: An International Journal, 29(1), pp.11-14.
Sturgeon, K.M., Hackley, R., Fornash, A., Dean, L.T., Laudermilk, M., Brown, J.C.,
Sarwer, D.B., DeMichele, A.M., Troxel, A.B. and Schmitz, K.H., 2018. Strategic
recruitment of an ethnically diverse cohort of overweight survivors of breast cancer
with lymphedema. Cancer, 124(1), pp.95-104.
Tardy, C.H. and Smithson, J., 2018. Self-disclosure: Strategic revelation of
information in personal and professional relationships 1. In The handbook of
communication skills (pp. 217-258). Routledge.
Taylor, F. and Busse, V., 2016. When the learner becomes the context: Strategic
identity display in learning English as a foreign language in Europe. In The dynamic
interplay between context and the language learner (pp. 66-83). Palgrave Macmillan,
London.
Thienphut, D., Jiamprachanarakorn, S., Sirasirirusth, J. and Boonloisong, R., 2015.
Strategic human capital management for a new University: a case study of Suan
Dusit Rajabhat University. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19(1), pp.108-120.
Yang, C.C. and Brown, B.B., 2016. Online self-presentation on Facebook and self
development during the college transition. Journal of youth and adolescence, 45(2),
pp.402-416.
Templates Provided:
Template 1

10PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
Targets and Milestones
At present I am a much concerned and aware individual than before. My personal
development strategies that I have applied so far have helped me a lot. Firstly, my
personal target involves making a good academic performance and parallely give
the best of companion to my daughter. I need to achieve a high distinction to get a
job in an MNC that can give me posting in my home-place. To do this, I must
develop my English-speaking power and paraphrasing skills to the fullest.
Actions taken to achieve the goals
Since I have joined the GBS, at a mature age and needed to carry on job and
study parallely, good communication skills have been there in my nerves.
However, the necessity to deal with people of various sorts and various positions, I
have always resorted to redeem books articles as well as online journals, so
that I could acquire knowledge of situational management. However, this
habit is time killing and in the initial days of my tenure in university, I had to
face acute time management issues. My learning experiences, speed that in
cases where time management is highly required, maintaining a personal memo or
an everyday time frame is very essential. I prefer online memo making tool
which allows me to make a list of the everyday deliverables and set specific
time frames for every action. Secondly, setting time boundaries is very
important. It, might happen that we fail to accomplish a task within scheduled or
desired time. A time boundary makes a psychological impact and we prefer to take
up the n4ext important task, rather than clinging on to the previous one. As, Yang
and Brown (2016), opines, time boundaries save people from the loopholes of task
management. About 70% of people have the common psychology to finish the
task, which they could not accomplish within deadlines. However, in this
connection, McClelland et al. (2015), have opined that in such a nervous state
people mostly make more delay to finish the previous task as well as they are far
away from perfection in what they perform.
I have had good IT skills that I acquired from working along with learning.
Making online presentations and business management projects over Skype,
helped me a lot. However, lack of good skills of analysis have always troubled me.
Now, the necessary do-ables for development skills have dawned upon me when I
started to live in London that is different from my home-place in social contexts,
completely. I believe it is also essential to gather feedback from peers in all

11PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
contexts on personal analyses. These feedbacks help to make more precise
analyses in future endeavours. The other two areas that requires action are my
English language skills and paraphrasing skills.
Two specific actions that I rely upon to develop in these two areas are
engagement in long end conversations with the common people in English. Living
in London, currently, I must be as conversant as the locals in the local language
that is English. This is serious making a strong positive impact upon my English
language and conversation skills. Poor English skills would limit my prospect as a
student, as English is the main medium of communication in my university.
Another factor is the lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this
problem, I have taken extra initiative to assemble and prepare the group
assignments and this involved lots of paraphrasing work. To make perfect
assignment and flawless paraphrasing, I have taken the help of my tutors.
Evaluation of performance so far
I personally feel that I have reduced my flaws in basic sentence constructing. On
top of that, there have been the online paraphrasing tests where I have recently
started to score above 70%, indicating the development. Again, for precise
analysis, I prefer to research on the theories and models of my assignment topics.
Do they need to be changed
At present, I only feel my research skills have to be changed. I rely excessively on
online libraries. Other than that I do not see any need to change the strategies in
near future.
What feedback have I received from others?
Implementation of the various strategies for personal development have allowed
gathering of feedback from various entities. Firstly, feedback was provided by my
professors at GBS. They opined that I had good rehearsing skills. However, they
thought that I did not have a stringent self-discipline, because of which my learning
outcomes were delayed.
In case of assignments, I also received negative feedback from my peers
who opined that English vocabulary was low and because of which the
presentations I made, were often unable to make the customers satisfied.
How have I used the feedback?

12PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
I always emphasized on engaging in long end discussions with the people who
had made most of the feedbacks regarding me. For evidence, now when my
professors identify that I have flaws in paraphrasing, I promptly approach them and
discuss with them, how may I change the rendition of the paragraphs in my
assignment so that I can do paraphrasing properly.
Template 2:
What I did? Any changes or adaptations that I made to the strategy
I only changed my style of research. Other than that, my personal experience have
changed from the time I have taken up practicing public speaking. The live topics
presented at the college forum allows me creative space for creating my speech
and also makes me learn how to frame sentences in English that makes the
maximum impact to the person whom it is addressed.
What worked?
As an outcome of the implementation of these changes, I have started to learn
more promptly. Talking with people dos not need arranging or streamlining the
research or presentation of words in a particular direction. Rather engaging in
online as well as real time debates in the college forum gives me that opportunity.
What Changed?
My presentation skills have developed immensely along with my presentation and
linguistic layout of the sentences in my assignments and individual presentations.
What else could I have done or could I try on a future occasion?
In future, I would obviously attempt to develop professional status in English and I
would also work upon my topic management, because even now I get nervous to
face situations, be it in my university or in my office.
What did I learn about my own performance through this experience?
I have started to build confidence up on myself and this is impacting my attitude in
academic as well in my workplace. I am also gaining confidence regarding he fact
that I would be able to provide a good parentage.
The ways this knowledge is more applicable to my study, work or life
This knowledge is an asset for my life in fact. I am confident that I would be able to
sustain in alien atmosphere in future.

13PREPARING FOR SUCCESS AT UNIVERSITY
Template 3:
Example of where I took action to improve my performance
What needed to be done
I can highlight two issues against a single context. Previously my English speaking
was poor and as an impact my teacher guided that my sentence constructions
were wrong. I started to make rhythmic pronunciations that made me understand
the meaning and significance of the sentences and I could write more promptly.
What were the issues
The lack of adaptability with English and my adaptability with the diction and
accent of my vernacular hindered my fluency in English language. Besides, I was
also engaged with my family and my 2 years old daughter as because of which I
was not able to concentrate on my academics.
What made this a priority or a good area to address?
At this moment in higher studies my performance is crucial for deciding my future
career. This is why my performance is essential.
The preparation and planning I undertook
As a part of the preparatory framework, I worked on my time management and
wen I could not find separate time for studying I used to listen to the lecture notes
as audio. I have good listening and observatory skills because of which I was able
to rehearse the lessons.
My strategy for improving my performance
One important area of development is that I have started to engage in debates and
talk shows. However, residing in London, I am already conversant with locals in
English. This is serious making a strong positive impact upon my English language
and conversation skills. Poor English skills would limit my prospect as a student,
as English is the main medium of communication in my university. Another factor
is the lack of my paraphrasing skills. To get bereaved of this problem, I have taken
extra initiative to assemble and prepare the group assignments and this involved
lots of paraphrasing work. To make perfect assignment and flawless paraphrasing,
I have taken the help of my tutors.