8 Pausing on the journey
This week represents the half-way point in the course. Pause and congratulate yourself on coming this far! On any learning journey, your motivation and energy will fluctuate. Sometimes you can lose sight of why you began in the first place. Now is a good point, therefore, at which to stand back and consider what you have already learned and what you still want to explore.
The final activity this week is a longer reflective exercise designed to help you to collate your insights and decide on your focus for the next four weeks.
Activity 7 My half-way learning review
Let’s work with the idea that the course is a journey. Imagine that you have been climbing a steep hill. You were keen to see the view from the top and were ready for the challenge of the climb. You have been climbing steadily, sometimes with mist obscuring your view, and at other times with gaps, which allow you to glimpse new horizons.
About now, you may feel that the top is still a long way off. It is a good point to stop, catch your breath, look back at how far you have climbed and refocus your motivation for the last bit of the climb.
Over the past four weeks, you have been encouraged to keep a record of your journey in your notebook. You may have done this more fully in some weeks than others, and you will almost certainly have made discoveries along the way.
You will find it useful to scan back over your entries, so far, before answering some of the questions. If you have not been recording your thoughts so far, you will still find it useful to do so now.
Reflect on the questions below and write your answers in your notebook.
- What motivated you to begin this course?
- Has your motivation changed at all during the last four weeks?
- What have you concluded, so far, about the kind of work you want to do?
- What have you discovered about being able to access that kind of work for yourself?
- What decisions have you made about the action you need to take to pursue your aspirations?
- How confident do you feel about achieving the kind of career you want for yourself?
- What would make you feel more confident?
- What do you want to achieve, and learn, in the remaining four weeks of the course?
- Think back to the idea, from Week 1, of a career being like a train journey. Now take a moment or two, to visualise success in your career at some point in the future. Choose a time not too far away. Where would you be on your train journey? What would you be doing? Who else might be there? How would you feel?
Top tip – you might find it easier to draw than to write this. If so, do this by hand separately.
Comment
This activity acts as a useful summary of what you have discovered so far on this course, and some of the actions that you should be thinking of taking now. Over the next four weeks of the course, you may find it helpful to remind yourself now and then of this summary.
Now all that is left for you to complete this week is the first badge quiz.