Week 6

    Ok so maybe my fifteen lesson goal from last week was asking a bit too much. I only got five lessons done. My plan to schedule in half an hour block every day worked well. I completed my half hour practice four out of the seven days. Despite that success, the lessons have gotten harder as I've moved forward, and so each one has been taking more time. So, moving forward, I will try to get seven lessons done each week. One for every day of the week is a much smaller, much more manageable goal.

    During our reading last week, we learned about Dweck's entity and incremental theory. I think some skills that I have the entity theory applied to are singing, swimming, and remembering directions. Remembering directions is the worst culprit because it's been a problem I've had for so long, it's hard to believe that I can get better at it. I've honestly really really tried to get better, but it just hasn't happened for me. Some skills that I apply the incremental theory to are art, weight lifting, school work, and guitar. All of these skills I practice all the time and I am always able to see and recognize my progress. 

    I think that my past occupational choices have been influenced directly by incremental theory. For the most part I've always believed that given enough time and resources, I could accomplish anything. I recognized that for some things I had a stronger starting point than others, and so I chose to play to my strengths. Some things that I was particularly bad at such as making new friends, I knew I was going to be needing to learn, and so I tried to practice in low stake scenarios where very few people would see me fail. There were moments when I was much younger, probably seven or eight, where I thought that I was going to always be one way forever. Like when I was learning to do multiplication, I was so bad at it, I thought I would have to repeat the third grade.

The relationship between my incremental self theory and my new occupation is pretty simple. I know that I will get better as I put in the time and effort. In order to develop increased performance, I don't think believing in my self more will be helpful at this point. With my activity, there's no mental block as described in the text keeping me from believing that I can succeed. What would help is a new shot of inspiration to put a fire under me to accomplish even more. I need more of a pull, something to work towards that I really believe in that will happen soon. My far off goal of becoming fluent by the time I'm an OT is so far down the road I can't even see it. Anyway, this week I'll be looking for that exact thing. Inspiration.




Comments

  1. Karin FredericksonOctober 12, 2021 at 3:02 PM

    Hi Allen! I like that you are readjusting your goals to fit your lifestyle better! I think breaking it down to once a day will help a lot with framing the task as something more manageable! I liked your applications of entity and incremental theory; I agree with you that there is nothing we cannot do with time and resources!
    As you were speaking about language in relation to Dweck I was kind of thinking about how learning English was an incremental process, but now even if I took a vow of silence, I would probably always know English. That has not been true of any other language I have tried to learn! I have not practiced ASL, Spanish, or Gaelic much over the past couple years and I now only remember the basics! Do you think that Spanish will ever become an entity you just have access to like English, or will you always have to practice and improve?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 100 Days of SpanishOctober 13, 2021 at 10:08 PM

      For sure! haha It's a humbling experience to make my goal so small compared to where it started. But as long as I keep moving forward, I'll keep making progress. Very cool about Gaelic by the way! I'm playing around with Welsh a bit! They're in the same language family I think. Were you learning Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic? I think in order for Spanish to become an entity for me I'd have to take it in at a huge level like we took in English. I'd have to go to a spanish speaking country to live for a while and really use it to communicate my day to day needs for at least a year. Otherwise, I think it would be easy to forget.

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