So, as I sit in the darkness and gloom of early January, it is time to explain what all these blog posts have been about. For those that have followed me over the years as I jumped on and off social media, it would have been apparent that these were not my usual mindless emotive outpours of opinion. For those that have not, I would still like to think that the structure and consideredness (not even a word, but hey, when did that stop me?!) of their content have at least been quietly noted. The truth is that these posts have not been spewed from the turmoil of my confused autistic brain, as was the case in my many other previous internet incarnations. The purpose of these blog posts has been to publicly reflect upon my first semester as an MRes Psychology student, using structured self-reflective models to do so as part of a module designed to develop my practical research skills and techniques. The time has now come to end that period of self-reflection and reflect upon how I have found it.
This reflection upon past reflections just leads me down so many rabbit holes. I can't help but think about my perfectly flawed childhood hero, Alice, as she stepped through the looking glass after already experiencing the fateful events that followed her chasing that rabbit. Anybody who has ever been to an old-fashioned fairground will tell you that when you reflect upon a reflection in that hall of mirrors, what you get is that reflection going off to infinity, much like that fall down the rabbit hole experienced by Alice when curiosity got the better of her. Yet here we are, tumbling down that rabbit hole of reflecting upon self-reflection.
When set this task, it was explained to me that I must create a blog that reflected upon my learning and experiences throughout the first semester; for this,
we were required to use a self-reflective model when creating our posts. There are a few of those out there, but what I needed to consider was how well they could be broken down into a narrative that would be able to be structured in the ways required of the self-reflective model but also flow in such a way that it could be formed to a narrative resembling a short story... I had no intention of boring anyone any more than they needed to be by breaking it down into distinct sections with subheadings and a conclusion (although if you read them all back, that is kind of what I did). So after considering a few, I decided upon using Gibbs (1984)*, with Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Acton plan, being fashioned into a story-like format creating a beginning, middle and an end.
So, how did I find it? Well, the truth is I found it quite hard. I have never found it too difficult to publicly wear my heart on my sleeve and talk openly about my weaknesses, difficulties and flaws, nor am I one that shies away from a bit of good old healthy self-reflection. To do this in a structured manner, however, whilst also making it palatable for public consumption, was not an easy task. Rather than find it enjoyable, as I had assumed I would at the outset, I found myself struggling with the execution of the task, finding it relatively easy to come up with ideas to blog about but far harder to create and publish the things, finding that following the models' structure for self-reflection detracted somewhat from the natural flow of my storytelling. Further to this, on a personal level, making your own growth and self-reflection a public affair limits the brutal honesty that I may usually include during my self-reflective practices. I had to remain professional and keep it palatable for a wide and varied audience and found that some of my most important learning experiences could not actually be included in the reflective blogs as they may have made what were already rather difficult situations a great deal worse, had I been foolish enough to air such dirty laundry in public. So that being the case, I found that I toned down my experiences and shared not what I had learned most from but instead what would be most suited to a light-hearted read. Then we come to the issue of self-reflection itself, which is in its very name. A reflection is not an accurate representation of the thing it reflects. Anyone who has ever taken a "selfie" can tell you that. What is on the left appears reflected back as if it is on the right; any writing on your shirt appears written back to front, yet what is at the bottom stays at the bottom, and what's at the top remains firmly in place. So what you see in a reflection is an image that looks like you expect it might, but is actually not entirely as it should be. So can a self-reflection ever really give you an accurate picture of what you want to see, or do you instead need someone else to look at you head-on? ou cannot beat a bit of feedback). Then we have the fine line between self-reflection and rumination. I can only imagine that if you're prone to a bit of rumination, self-reflecting publicly might not be such a good thing, that is, unless you don't actually self-reflect on the things you feel you need to learn from, in which case I would argue as to what's the point?
So all in, structured self-reflective blogs do not win my overall approval, although blogging, itself, certainly does. Will I continue to blog? Well, do you know what? I actually might!? As for Alice, you would have thought she'd have learned her lesson after falling down that rabbit hole, and upon realising that she could step through that mirror, you'd have thought she would have just turned around and walked away. But then again, that's the thing about reflecting; it is important to know what it is that you should be reflecting upon. I mean, a rabbit hole doesn't much look like a mirror, no matter how you look at it... how was Alice to know that it was, in fact, her curiosity at fault? I guess that's the kind of experience that comes with age, not staring at yourself for hours in a mirror.
Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit.