Reflective Journal

At the start of the International Business and Innovation Studies I was really confident about my English and still am but what've really noticed is the difference between formal and informal English. I think i can still improve my self in speaking, writing and reading formal English.

I've learned the most from the writing assignments. At the beginning i found it quite hard to get my thoughts on paper and getting comfortable with it, but by making the assignments from PSD1 (blog posts, reflective essay) and English i feel like i'm improving. I'm a lot more comfortable in writing in english and expressing myself.

The switch to thinking in English instead of Dutch took me a while. A lot of the times when i wrote things down they were literal translations from Dutch and i found it hard to even notice that I was wrong. This was because in my perspective it was right. To get help with this I asked native english speakers and let them check my essays and blog post to get the mistakes out of it. This gave me a good insight of what i was doing wrong and why and how to correct it.

There are some other things that I think I can improve on. At the beginning of this term I always turned op on time and never left school before finishing all the tasks that were needed, But after a couple of weeks i've noticed that I was postponing my tasks and coming late on school. This is definitely something I need and want to improve on. In my opinion i'm heading in the right direction by noticing this problem. I'm definitely seeing improved and maybe I've already solved this problem cause since the deadlines started if always been on school from 9 till 5 and sometimes even later. I'm really motivated to this better the next term cause i got my motivation back during this deadline week, it feels really nice to put hard work into something and to see a good result.

Planning never was and probably never will be any of my strengths, but still it's definitely something I need to improve on. During assessments especially IWOB I got in some kind of time trouble since I totally mis judged that amount of time was needed to complete the task. This got me stressful situations and that had a negative impact on the actual assignments. I think my assignments would turn out a lot better if i planned everything correctly. I'm satisfied with the content I delivered I just feel that it could've be a lot better if i planned it right so i had enough time for every task.

Another thing I need to improve is my input in my lesson. This doesn't mean i don't pay attention in the lectures itself it's more that I feel like a passive observer instead of a active participant. Sometimes I had questions but I didn't asked them because I was not sure if it were legit question relative to the lectures. Sometimes this made me feel like I didn't understand what was told and I felt Stupid. This is definitely something i'm improving in the second term cause I found that the questions that I wanted to ask were not stupid at all and actually relevant to the lectures.

I'll save the best for last..

Were I'm really struggling with from the beginning from this course is reflecting on myself, i found this really hard and sometimes i'm just stuck for several hours were others only take 1 hour or less. This sometimes makes me feel not capable to do this tasks since it's all about reflection. What demotivates me the most is that I find it difficult to come up with any solutions to solve this. I'm making some progress and it is getting easier but it's just a pain staring at a blanc paper and without knowing what to write down although these assessments are relatively easy. I'm really looking for help or advice how to improve this. Overall I'm pretty happy with the progress i'm making but i'm not satisfied with my reflective essays or even this reflective journal. I feel like i'm missing out on things. What i'm writing down is everything I can come up with and I'm just not sure if this is the right way.