I am not the same person as I used to be!

In reviewing the student life at UWO

Reflective Note 1

I was passing in a hallway when a poster caught my eyes. The poster's title was saying:  I m not the same person as I used to…...  that moment, there was no chance to stop and read what the content of the poster was about, but the title was interesting enough to stay in my mind. Later, I decided to having it  as the title for my reflective notes of  reviewing the student life at UWO.

I’ve been going through a very challenging time since September that I started my graduate studies at UWO. It was not easy to get back to an academic life after so many years gap between.  It was a sort of struggling to adjust with the new student life. There were and still are many different issues that I can reflect on them. In doing so, I spotlight one which is an interpretation of the topic above, i.e. change. A noticeable transformation that has made me thinking and blogging.

  From the very beginning days, we were repeatedly asked for reflecting on what we learn on a daily basis. In the orientation programs and seminar classes, the speakers and profs talked about thinking; thinking about what what we have read, what we have seen, what people have said, what we ourselves are thinking and how our thinking has changed. That was why I became interested in writing reflective notes. I have now over 50 notes which I like them very much. To make some changes, they are all publishable on my blog.

What is reflective writing? Mezirow, an educational theorist in transformational learning and one of my favorite writers argues that reflective writing is a way of thinking to explore experiences, opinions, thoughts and feelings.  In reflective writing, we do not judge about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad. Reflective writing, indeed, is a connection between what we already know and what we are learning.  So, in this process, we become an active, aware and critical thinker. I think, it was the first and most result of writing reflective notes throughout the semester. It was a transformational learning for me and answered my question that why we were asked to do this activity during the semester.

Soon, I noticed that learning is changing, provided that we are actively engaged in the learning process. In other words, what we learn is not only a factual knowledge but perception(s) which is directly connected to the real life. For example, bracketing is one of the key concepts in qualitative research philosophies. It is a method in qualitative research to mitigate the negative effects of preconceptions/ personal judgments that may taint the research process. The capacity to engage in self-critical reflection is the capacity to bracket one’s beliefs, presuppositions in personal and social life. So, I learned about bracketing as a method in the research process while I also learned how to step back and view things through non-judgmental lenses.  
By taking chances, making mistakes, struggling to learn, I'm not the same person as I was in September and  now, it makes sense that why I chose that topic for my reflective notes.
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