Semester one has passed and with the end of the first semester, new units are introduced in our course. Particularly I would like to address a new subject which was introduced to us this semester and give my thoughts about it.
The name of the subject is Critical Studies and Research Methods. Firstly, I would like to point out that I do get the reason for why this subject was introduced to us this semester which is to prepare us for our dissertation next year and I feel that certain tasks are important and points us in the right direction, however there are other tasks which I consider as insignificant and does little to no cause into improving our learning. One of these tasks is the one below:
I felt as if doing this task did not in any way give me any learning experience whatsoever and that I was not making use of any of my skills and I kept asking myself – What am I really achieving by gathering information about a peer’s persona?
By thinking about this task in this way, I did not put my full effort in it and I felt angry at myself with the end result for I knew I could have done better in the end. I was also frustrated with the assignment and the lecturer himself for giving us this task, but in the end, no good came out of these emotions. On the contrary I was quite sulky for the whole day and felt as if I was no good at the subject.
I am sure that if I made more effort and took the task more seriously, I would have done better research and came with a better end product and that in turn would have made me feel good about myself, even though my thoughts about the task are that the task itself is insignificant to the course I am in.
‘Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. Just do your best – in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame and self-punishment.’ (Ruiz, 1997)
For my future tasks, in any subject, I will always give my best. That way I would not have any guilt and blame myself or others, which would in turn, hopefully make me feel better and believe more in myself.
References
Ruiz, D.M. (1997). The Four Agreements. California: Amber-Allen Publishing, pp. 75, 77.
Melvin Magro 