After recently receiving our grades for our Values module I have been able to look back and reflect on the lack of work I did for this module and realise that I need to be much more proactive and dedicated when it comes to extra work and reading at home. My grade being worse than expected has really opened my eyes to the amount of work and effort you need to put in on your own in order to be successful.

At school, especially in 6th year I usually got by quite well without having to do an excess of revision and extra work as I did most of my stuff in class or in free periods. Also having two easy subjects and one Advanced Higher in 6th year, which I really enjoyed and engaged with, I found it very simple to manage my work load in school and not have to do a lot of extra work at home. This got me in a bad habit when it came to starting university as I wasn’t motivated or prepared for the amount of work I was going to have to do. This really came over in my mark for my Values essay and definitely emphasised how much work I will need to do to improve.

By reflecting and looking back I have realised that I will need to put in a lot more work this semester if I want to keep up the high standard of work I produced in school and will need to really engage with extra reading and tutor directed tasks to stay focused and up to date. I think this grade has really shocked me and allowed me to see that university will not be as simple as I thought it would be.

I think reflection is a really big part of learning as it allows you to easily look back and evaluate how well or how badly something went and can let you make improvements. It’s a really good way to let you look at what you did really well and why it went well, and also what didn’t go so well and what you can do to make that better. In order to progress you need to be able to realise when you make mistakes or when something doesn’t go to plan, but you also need to have the tools to be able to improve these things or change the way you do something so as to move forward and develop.