Slide 1: My Reflection project is about a very recent experience with a grade that I received. It was due to lack of motivation, selfishness and lack of time management. Therefore, I do feel I could have received, what I consider, a “good” grade if I had only put more effort into receiving it.
Slide 2: It’s 6:00 PM on a Thursday, I just left work and am rushing to class, like every weeknight. Thank God there wasn’t a Rays game tonight, that traffic is ungodly. I don’t feel ready for this exam, I feel useless and tired. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out and drank those pitchers of Sangria last night. That is very unlike me during a school semester. I have also just worked 9 hours straight. This is a typical schedule for me, minus the night out. Needless-to-say, I am exhausted and in a hurry. I realize that I have to stop at Starbucks to get a coffee or I will not be able to focus during this exam. This is definitely going to make me later than usual and I hate being late. However, I feel it’s worth it tonight.
Slide 3: I finally get to class and I am disappointed at my late arrival. I find one of the last remaining seats up front and sit down. I get out my materials- USF ID, pencil and pencil sharpener. I feel ready at this point. The professor meticulously passes me an exam. They are a lot thicker than I had imagined and this worries me. I see that the first page is multiple choice, what a relief. Multiple choice is usually quite easy. I look over the question several times. Wait, I’m not sure what the answer could be though! Which do I circle? Okay, I’ll go onto the next question and go back to that later. Wait, I’m unsure of this question as well! I knew I should have made time for Leah another night. I should have studied this material better last night.
Slide 4: Question 40. I’m so over this. My brain is fried and my Starbucks coffee is gone. Not much time left and I have 10 questions to complete. I’ll just skim through them and make some educated guesses. Why is Sangria and Leah still on my mind? The guilt is eating me alive at this point I suppose.
Slide 5: I wait in line to turn my exam into the professor. This is the first time I have had a professor grade my exam in front of me… talk about nerves. He pulls out his red ink pen and starts to mark up my paper. All the while I am wondering if he is marking the correct and incorrect answers. He writes 19.5 on the front of my exam and tells me, “that is out of 25 points …good job!” I rush out of the classroom and pull out my iPhone. I bring up my calculator application and punch in 19.5 / 25. To my disappointment I see 0.78. Wait, 78%? That is not a B, that’s a C+. I decide at this point that Sangria and going out on an exam night is not worth it.
Slide 6: It’s 6:00 PM. I browse around the classroom to see that most of the seats are filled. Time to pass out the exams and give instruction. I don’t think they’re expecting it to be mostly multiple choice after all the formulas we went over. Maybe it will be a relief for some. After I pass out the exams I hear the door creep open… one last student is walking through. Someone is always late for my class and for this one in particular, it’s usually this girl. She must drive from far away? She always looks to be in a hurry. She just sat down, so now I have to get up to give her the correct exam form. Sheesh. I wonder if she is even ready, she seems preoccupied.
Slide 7: Alright, I think that everybody is here now. I feel sorry for anyone who comes in any later because there is a time limit. Luckily, she was the last one. Now I will sit here for two hours and do nothing except twiddle my thumbs. Maybe I’ll catch up on something else in the mean time.
Slide 8: Okay, one hour down. I think I will grade the exams as they turn them in, that way I will have less to do later and they can see their grade now, I am sure they will appreciate that, at least some will. I’m pulling out my exam key to do the grading. The first student is walking up with his exam, let me pull out my red pen. I feel the red pen looks intimidating for some. My, my, he did very well. Let’s hope the rest of the class is done soon so that I can go home.
Slide 9: Wow, my line is piling up for grades. I’d better grade faster so we can all go home. Oh, it’s the late girl. Let’s see how she did. The red pen hasn’t left my hands since 8 students ago… but luckily I haven’t needed to make too many markings. I am impressed. -5.5 not bad at all! “That is out of 25, good job!”. She seemed awfully indifferent about that grade. Maybe she’s not sure that it’s a C+.
Slide 10: She may not think a C+ is good but for this class, a C+ on the first exam is decent in the College of Business. I think she will do well in the course. Okay, I only have a few more to go before I can go home and grab some dinner.
Slide 11: The two central management concepts that relate to my situation are planning and motivation. Planning, according to the text, is, “a process that focuses on the future goals of an organization and how it will achieve those goals.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 113)However, this definition can be descriptive of an individual as well. Planning is the process individuals value to achieve their individual future goals. If it were not for planning, most people would be living rather frivolously and spontaneously and, in that case, probably not doing very well in many aspects of their lives. It is clear to me that after reading over my presentation, if it were not for my lack of planning, and therefore managing, my time wisely I may have performed better on my exam. I had a schedule to follow and I chose to do something else, thereby failing to achieve my goal. Motivation is the other key concept that pertains to my situation. Motivation is briefly defined in the text as, “a set of forces that energize, direct and sustain behavior.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 241) There are two factors that effect motivation; internal “push” forces and external “pull” forces. External and internal forces had definitely effected my motivation for studying and getting a good night rest. It was simple for my friend to call me and ask to go out (external) and I knew that if I did not see her I probably would not have seen her for several more weeks (internal). It is easy to see why motivation had an effect on the grade I received. If I had been more motivated to get an A, and therefore studied the night before, I probably would have performed better.
Slide 12: A contingency plan is, basically, a “back up plan”. The book defines a contingency plan as, “a plan that identifies key factors that could affect the desired results and specifies the actions that will be taken if key events change.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 118) What the text means by this is that an original plan can always fail and this type of plan should be implemented into the planning process to layout possible negative externalities so that obtaining a goal is still possible. This concept of planning is relatable to my situation in certain ways. Even though going to dinner and having Sangria was indeed a choice that I knew would affect me the next day, under normal circumstances I would have stayed at home. I should have implemented a contingency plan for myself and identified what could happen if I went out and how I would handle certain social situations. Instead, I focused more on the possibility of not seeing my friend for another few weeks so I was going to enjoy myself. My contingency plan could have stated that if I go to dinner, I will not drink. Nobody could forcibly make me, so it would have been possible to do. In addition, I could have made myself go home early to study and stuck to that idea. Without these ideas in mind, a “plan B”, so to speak, did not exist and therefore, I was unprepared for the festivities that I indeed endured.
Slide 13: Commitment of a goal is a fundamental objective of planning. The text describes commitment as criteria for goal setting, and therefore planning. The point of planning is to take steps to achieve a goal, but if there is lack of commitment, a goal cannot be attained. The concept of commitment, according to the text, is based on the fact that “those involved in achieving a goal in an organization must be deeply devoted to the goal and know that it is achievable.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 126) Based on this, each person involved in a situation must be committed and this can be a difficult task considering not everybody agrees on certain objectives. Even though the text speaks more of organizational goals, this concept can be correlated to my situation. By looking at the defining factors of commitment, and realizing that it is essential for an objective to be successful, it is obvious that I was lacking commitment to my studies. If I had been more committed at the time, I would have foregone my night out and probably would have ended up with a better grade on my exam.
Slide 14: I chose self-efficacy as my first component of motivation because, although the several theories noted in the text are related to my situation, this one stood out most to me as it relates a person’s confidence to perform a task to their success of that task. Self-efficacy is, according to the book, “the extent to which a person believes he or she can accomplish a given task in a specific situation.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 252) After reading through this section I started to feel as though, in my situation, I may have had too much confidence in myself to not study hard the night before my exam and still think I could maintain an A. Since I had previously studied and have done well in the subject thus far, I figured I could manage and still fulfill my time with my friend. This concept of self-efficacy has three dimensions according to the book, “how difficult the task to be accomplished is, the certainty of its accomplishment, and the extent to which similar tasks can be accomplished.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 252) Given these dimensions and comparing them to my bad grade situation, it is obvious that I thought this exam would be easy like my past exams have been and I had not put much effort into taking those. According to this component of motivation, I was less motivated to study for my exam the night before because in the past I had done similar tasks and performed well and therefore, I had too much confidence in my exam taking skills.
Slide 15: Social (belongingness) needs is a component of a theory developed to explain the order in which people will fulfill their needs in a situation. This theory is known as “Maslow’s need hierarchy theory” and it is illustrated in a pyramid form to show what needs people will fulfill and in which order they will attempt to fulfill them in. This hierarchy theory explains the needs that motivate people to do certain things and in what order they typically will perform them. According to the textbook, people will attempt to fulfill “psychological needs (food, water, shelter), security needs (safety), social needs (being accepted by others), esteems needs (respect), and finally they will attempt to fulfill self-actualization needs (achievement/accomplishment) in that order.” (Hitt, Black, and Porter, 3rd ed., p. 243)The point of this theory is to show that once one need has been fulfilled by an individual, the next set of needs will be attempted to be fulfilled in an order that will satisfy the individual. I chose social needs from this hierarchy as a concept to my situation because it identifies with the needs I was trying to fulfill before trying to fulfill my self-actualization needs. When I decided to go out with my friend I was fulfilling a need of social belongingness, I wanted to make my friend happy and by that I would make myself happy. However, when I chose to fulfill that need I evaded from fulfilling my self-actualization need, studying for my exam to achieve the best grade I could. My situation agrees with Maslow’s theory in that I indeed appealed to my need for belongingness before my need for self-actualization as this theory states.
Slide 16: After thoroughly analyzing and observing my experience through different perspectives, I have determined that I indeed have personality traits of a reactive, self-fulfilling, social and confident person. The behaviors I exhibited show that I may give myself too much credit, which leads to procrastination and, therefore, sometimes disappointment. In this situation, because I am a pretty confident person, I choose to go out with my friend instead of study for my first exam of the semester. I acted reactively by promising myself that I would not make that incorrect choice again. I am one who values friendships, socializing and having a good time in general not just in this situation. This is not to say I do not value my academics, rather, that I try to make time for everyone and everything, even though I may not manage the timing correctly just yet.
Slide 17: Taking this situation into the context I did with this reflection, I realized that I have a tendency to behave in certain ways but that those behaviors are just apart of who I am. Realizing that I have these traits makes me aware of the fact that when this type of situation presents itself in the future, I will need to analyze the consequences I could endure from making a selfish choice among a smart choice. Clearly, I felt the repercussions of a bad grade to make time for a friend, and, I know now that this was definitely the reasoning for not being on time and not being ready for my test. In the future, I will intend on making the right choice and making time for friends on the weekends or whenever it is a logical time to do so, so that studying can be a priority.
Slide 18: I definitely feel as though I have a better understanding of why I made the choices I did and how I can refrain from making similar choices in the future. The portion of this reflection project that I value the most was analyzing myself in a situation that can and will present itself in the future. I can see why I sometimes act the way I do in general by realizing that I am a “people pleaser” at times and like to be self-indulgent by being in a social setting having a good time. It is hard to make the right decisions sometimes, but after doing so, I think that the “rush” of accomplishment will be well worth it.
Slide 19: Once I realized that I made certain choices based on my inherent characteristics, and not just because one choice sounded better than the other, it was clear as to why this reflection was given to me in my Management course. It will be easier to make choices that will benefit me in the future if I have a clearer understanding of my own self and learning how to manage my time will be necessary as I further my development. Analyzing my situation from my own perspective, and therefore, looking back at what I should have done, helped me become a better manager. I already feel like a more productive person because over the course of this class, I have applied self-management in other aspects of my life as well as making much more time dedicated to studying. And, no, I have not made a C since!
