Task 2a: Reflective Practice

Reflection - Learning from everyday activities which gives us experience.

I have always had a journal from as long as I can remember.  Although it has mainly been used to keep my life organised, I have included information from past experiences.  I have collected these experiences to remember them and looking back they are all positive ones.
I am looking forward to writing what I think and maybe a few negative events in order to learn from them. This has so far been a strange change in my writing as I am so used to writing all my positive experiences but I will hopefully learn from them and become more knowledgable.

Kolb has 4 different ways people begin to learn, they are:
Concrete Experience - by doing something
Reflective Observation - by watching people around them
Abstract Conceptualisation - by working it out there head first 
Active Experimentation - start learning when they start trying it out

I have to admit I did not know where to start when starting my blog.  It took me ages to even create an account let alone write anything.  I wanted to make my blog unique but had no idea how complicated it was.  I am not used to this kind of writing, I'd much rather write it all down on pen and paper.  I have found writing a blog useful as it is now becoming easier to navigate and I'm becoming quicker at writing so all in all it was worth all the time I spent. I therefore learn from Active Experimentation as I like to have ago myself and make mistakes but therefore learn from them. Each blog I do I must do around 4/5 drafts before I publish it on my blog.  It normally takes about a week as I find out more information I want to add and then swap and change the information I already have around.

Also inspired by Kolb's ideas Peter Honey and Alan Mumford created four stages that are adaptations of the four points in Kolb's cycle. (Honey and Mumford, 1992) 
These stages are:

• Having an experience
• Reviewing the experience
• Concluding from the experience
• Planning the next steps

Yesterday I was at a cruise audition and afterwards I had many thoughts of how the audition went.  I thought about how well I personally did and what I thought I needed to improve on. As an auditionee you never really know what the casting directors are looking for so for me I always give 100%, even if I didn't get the job I know that I did the best I possibly could and I would be pleased with myself.  
I always learn from every audition as no two auditions are the same.  I therefore believe that the more auditions you do the more confident you'll be.  After auditions I ask myself various questions like 'what could I have done better?' and 'If I could do the audition again would I change anything?' The answer would always be yes as I believe you can always be better.
I have used Honey and Mumford's ideas above to help me gain from my experience and I believe it has worked and I hope I learn from all my auditions I have in the future.