Self-Evaluation ~ Turning Personal Skills into Academic Skills

The Current skills and qualities exercise includes specific skills which have more relevance to some courses than in others. For example, ‘selling’ is more relevant to marketing than to history.

The following exercise is an opportunity to map out your current skills in terms of the general (or 'generic') skills required for most academic courses, and to rate how well you already perform them. This will give you a better idea of how well you may cope with academic study.

Academic skills (skills used  in everyday life which  relate  to academic skills)	Self-rating 5 = good; 1 = very weak	Examples: Where or when you developed this  skill
e.g. Managing deadlines	4	Get children to school on time Got UCAS form in despite illness
1   Managing deadlines
2   Being self-motivated and  able to persevere with difficult tasks
3   Having the confidence to ‘have a go’ and  to express  my own ideas
4   Finding out information from different sources (research)
5   Reading  complicated texts or forms to find the gist of what  they are saying
6   Being able to select what  is relevant  from what  is irrelevant
7   Comparing different  opinions and  deciding what  are the best grounds for deciding who is right
8   Being able to weigh  up the ‘pros’ and  ‘cons’, the good points versus the bad
9   Writing things  in my own words
10   Being able to argue  my point of view, giving good reasons

Self Evaluation ~ Current Skills and Qualities

People:

• Ability to get on with people from different background.
• Ability to see and understand other people's points of view.
• Dealing with the general public.
• Teamwork.
• Managing other people.
• Teaching or training others.
• Negotiation.
• Helping others to arrive at decisions. 
• Being sensitive to other's feelings.
• Caring for others.
• Ability to read other people's body languages.
• Dealing with others by phone.
• Ability to cope with 'difficult' people.
• Speaking clearly and to the point. 
• Being able to take direction from others.
• Courage to speak out against injustice. 

Activities:

• Creativity, design and layout
• Ability to see the ‘whole picture
• Classifying and organizing information
• Being good at argument and debate
• Making decisions
• Managing change and transition
• Setting priorities
• Working out agendas
• Organizing work to meet deadlines
• Stay calm in a crisis
• Facilitating meetings
• Reading complex texts
• Word-processing
• Computer literacy
• Working with numbers
• Selling
• Problem-solving
• Practical things
• Seeing how things work
• Writing reports or official letters

Personal Qualities:

• Ability to recognize my own needs and ask for help 
• Ability to learn from mistakes 
• Stress management 
• Willingness to take risks and experiments 
• Assertiveness 
• Determination and perseverance 
• Ability to set my own goals 
• Maintaining a high level of motivation 
• Ability to take responsibility for my own actions 
• Trust in my own abilities

Personal SWOT Analysis

One of the main ways an individual can succeed in life is to identify the talents to the fullest extent that can be revealed. Most of the society points out that identifying your own personal weaknesses would undermine the self confidence of an individual and this would lead to problems. But the true aspect is that if an individual is able to identify his/ her weaknesses, the he/ she would be able to manage these weaknesses and not let it develop more so it would be a hindrance to the development and to the work of that individual. This would cause less problems than expected. The SWOT Analysis is a useful technique that will aid in identifying the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats .

Source: Learning3.0(2012)

The most valuable aspect of the SWOT Analysis is that with little effort an individual is able to reveal the opportunities that was not identifies before and was unknown to the individual. By understanding and identifying weaknesses, managing and eliminating threats would be easier and this would aid in the development of the individuals path to success.  

Sample SWOT Analysis Templates:

Source: CBS Interactive(2012)

Source: Knowledgevatra(2012)

Source: CC blog(2012)

Defeat of Habit

Source: Sean Kelly(2012) 

Source: typographyshop(2012)

According to George Lois (1972) “Creativity can solve almost any problem.The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” This was one of the first quotations George Lois has mentioned, and this known to be the most celebrated statements.

Habits are extremely useful for an individual's life. Its identified that habits are 99& useful to an individuals life. Habits are guidelines that will aid an individual in performing a day today activity automatically and to take decisions more faster than over thinking if it is suitable or not to perform.But unfortunately habits also have a negative impact on individuals.Habits may blind an individual from achieving great ideas and even prevent from thinking out of the box. 

Defeat of Habit can be identified as a fact that blocks the creative ideas of an individual. Creativity is able to defeat the habit by originality and overcome all the weaknesses an individual possesses.  

Source: IdeaFestival(2010)

Skills for Personal Achievement

Skills can be described as achievements an individual develops throughout a particular period of time with practice and reflection. Some particular skills can be identified as follows:

• Time management
• Team work
• Leadership
• Self motivation

Source: softballexcellence(2012)

To develop personal achievements and qualities, an individual should develop the following skills:

• Awareness
• Commitment
• Determination
• Perseverance 
• Self-motivation
• Time management
• Positive thinking  

What Can You Learn From A Paper Airplane Activity?

Overview:


In the paper airplane activity an individual will get the opportunity of building a plane. The specialty is that the individual may or may not know how to construct a plane before and as such would design, construct and test with the natural skill and knowledge that the individual currently possesses.The plane would be tested on the distance and the ability to hit the target. 


Material:

• A4 Paper

Source: Graphic Design Employment(2012)

Time Required:

• 5 - 10 minutes

Organization:

• Individual work

Procedure:

1. Provide an A4 Sheet. No instructions are provided for construction of a paper airplane.
2. The plane should be given a name.
3. The paper given should be fully utilized and the paper should not be damaged.
4. Have the individuals fly their planes.
5. Distance obtained through the flight of planes should be marked.
6. Discuss the results and provide a better model of a airplane.

Evaluation:


When evaluating the following activity, it is noted that the individuals could not make a accurate design that would achieve the target and distance assigned. When it was challenged and explained to construct a better design of a plane, the individuals were easily able to achieve the target and distance. The errors were identified and the reason for the change in design was explained.

Source: NASA(2010)

Can Imperfection Create Perfection?

Can imperfection create perfection? Are you still searching for the answer in your mind? To be honest this is a topic that can be argued about from various aspects of life. Some may say that imperfection has the ability of creating perfection and some may say that perfection can only be created by perfection. Some individuals even  go to the extent of arguing this topic from a religious point of view. But why is this so complicated to be answered? 


What is perfection? In the most simplest language, Perfection can be known as completeness or flawlessness. As the word "Perfection" is researched, an individual may get to know that during the Renaissance that this topic of being perfect was being debated. One concept that was debated echoed with great meaning to the topic "Can Imperfection Create Perfection?". This concept had little to say but had the ability of carrying a heavy meaning. 

Source: mdotmindondisplay.blogspot(2012)

"The greatest perfection is imperfection." - Lucilio Vanini(1585–1619)

Lucilio Vanini who was known  to be a free thinker had a broad definition to this concept which he highly believed in. Lucilio explained that if everybody considered that every object in this world was perfect, then there wouldn't be any development in any aspect and there would be a lack of true perfection. True perfection depends on progress and if there is nothing in this world to progress or develop, then there wouldn't be any imperfectness to be found. According to Aristotle, every thing would be complete and there wouldn't be any thing left to add or subtract.  

Lucilio Vanini
Source: yatedo(2012)