Reflective Essay: Student Experience Using Gibbs Model

This reflective essay delves into a student's personal experience during a school cooking competition, employing the Gibbs reflective model for self-analysis. The essay meticulously describes the experience, the student's feelings, and a comprehensive evaluation of what went well and what could hav...Read More

REFLECTIVE ESSAY
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
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INTRODUCTION
Reflective essay is an self analysis of an individual where the writer usually share their
experiences of their life events. Along with sharing experience, writer describes how some of the
events lead to changes in their life and helps him or her in development from those experiences
(Adeani and et. al., 2019). In this essay, reflection will be given on my personal experience as a
student and how it leads to development in my personality through the application of Gibbs
reflective model.
MAIN BODY
Gibbs model is used for reflecting on learning from past experiences, thoughts and feelings
about that experience and critical evaluation of experience by stating both good and bad feelings.
Then analysis is done to explain what sense that experience has made to one's life and finally
concluding what has been learnt by an individual and what he will be going to do if the same
situation would take place in future (Wareing, 2017). The following six stages of Gibbs model
will reflect upon a student experience, development and future approaches:
Description of the experience: It was my secondary schooling going on, when different groups
are formed for hosting different curricular activities in the school. Now, it was my team's turn
where we planned to host cooking competition in a school. We have started planning and
organising write from seven weeks before. I was much worried about the outcome initially, but
subsequently when things are going well as per plan I gain much confidence gradually.
Feelings about experience: Now the day of competition has come, me and my team members
are quite nervous. We have done much preparation for the event and I was the member from my
team who is chosen for hosting the competition. My teachers and team members all greeting me
for best performance. When I was begin with welcome quote, my voice was quite wobbling but
then I gain confident as the event moves forward. Also, my team members, teachers and seniors
appraise me a lot which allowed me to perform well till the end of the event.
Evaluation of experience in terms of what goes well and what not: On evaluation, I can say
something I feel that went much better than what I expected, but also there are some weaknesses
that I realised could go well if it has been taken into planning. Certain things that go quite well
are, first of all my hosting where I successfully able to coordinate all the activities and along
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with that I fluently go well with rest of the hosting in the event. On the negative side, due to lack
of collaboration and coordination among team members, there was a problem that arises while
distributing ingredients to the participants. As many participants got something double while
many got deprived of some ingredients.
Analysis of the experience: On analysing upon the experience of organising and hosting cooking
competition at my school, I can say that my communication skills and desire for publicly
speaking helps me in conducting well throughout the event. Also, I used to rehearse in front of
the mirror at my place before a day or two for the conducting which actually proved to be very
beneficial in my final attempt, because I gain self-confident and in addition to this I was able
self-realised my mistakes and duly corrected it, so that such weaknesses and mistakes can be
avoided during the time when I was actually hosting. The reason for some negativities due to
lack of coordination and collaboration was occurred as we are not able to perform the task of
assigning authority and responsibility appropriately. This is because we have not make or chose
any experienced or senior as our mentor who can extraordinarily assign tasks and establish
coordination and collaboration among us. But as my anchoring was appraised on the ground of
coordination throughout the event it has somewhat cover up these weaknesses of my teammates.
Conclusion of what has been experienced so far and how it has helped in self-development: I
grew a lot of experience in my individual capacity. I recognise that my communication skills are
quite good but still some of the time due to under-confidence I lack missed out on my better
performance while communicating publicly. As an anchor, the initial speech should be free from
any wobbling where I was not able to ensure the same where I feel if I got such opportunity
again in future I must work upon it and rehearse my content under experienced individual. I
realised that as team member I have contributed well and honestly carried out responsibilities in
my individual capacity for the achievement of team goal (Wain, 2017). I have leant a lot of new
things by working in a team that help me in building new skills and improving the existing skills
such as how to coordinate and collaborate with others, how it becomes necessary while working
in a team to listen to other's ideas and opinions along with putting our own viewpoints in front of
others. Also, I have decided to work upon on my teamwork skills such as logical thinking,
problem solving and leadership skills.
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Action plan for improving future related experiences: For improving my areas of weaknesses
that I learnt from the whole experience of organising and anchoring in the cooking competition
in my school time, I have developed following actionable steps for improving similar experience
in future. Like for improving my logical thinking and problem solving skills, I have decided to
take up case study analysis regularly which is what I considered to be the best tool for improving
these skills. For my teamwork and leadership skills enhancement and improvement, I will
undertake more projects and tasks in a group or team along with reading articles and
autobiographies of successful leaders (Ardian, Hariyati and Afifah, 2019). At last I will take an
approach of tried and tested in future if I got similar opportunity by seeking advice and guidance
from experienced individual in the particular field, so that I could become more confident and
organised much before the event.
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REFERENCES
Adeani, I. S., and et. al., 2019. Using GIBBS reflective cycle in making reflections of literary
analysis. Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ), 6(2), pp.139-148.
Wain, A., 2017. Learning through reflection. British Journal of Midwifery, 25(10), pp.662-666.
Ardian, P., Hariyati, R. T. S. and Afifah, E., 2019. Correlation between implementation case
reflection discussion based on the Graham Gibbs Cycle and nurses’ critical thinking
skills. Enfermeria clinica, 29, pp.588-593.
Wareing, M., 2017. Me, my, more, must: a values-based model of reflection. Reflective
Practice, 18(2), pp.268-279.
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