Capstone Portfolio Journal - Module Nine Reflections:
"Don't cry because it's over smile because it happened."
- Dr. Seuss
- Dr. Seuss
July 12, 2021 - July 25, 2021
This by far was arguably the hardest in my Capstone journey thus far. Something about having to write out the Synthesis reflection felt like a far larger task because I had to finally put into words what this program has done for me for these past 3 years. While I have obviously been feeling the incremental learning experiences and realizations in small moments - attempting to somehow encapsulate that in a coherent 2000 word momento was difficult.
I knew this moment would come and struggled to come up with the best way to communicate my thoughts. At the end of the day I did this whole program for me so I have nothing to gain by trying to be anything but authentic. I think this realization of the value of authenticity is what I want to talk about in this reflection. I think of my Master’s program having achieved training two distinct goals: 1) providing me with relevant historical, theoretical, and practical information as it pertains to various aspects of leadership within a postsecondary education institution and 2) how being able to communicate exactly where I am as a learner on the spectrum of that information is equally as important as the data itself to ultimate leadership success. And it is this latter point where the authenticity vein is kind of like the lifeblood of whether my program was “worth it.”
There are many times in life where I find moments to choose the shortcut, or the easier way to get something done. Sometimes that translates to me reaping more benefits and getting more from life. Examples here might be when I find out a quicker way to get my school work essay assignments done by maximizing my dedicated study times through hyper focusing; I’ll go to a coffee shop, turn off my phone, and focus on my assignments. It is amazing how much I can get done with just 1 hour of pure, distraction-free work as opposed to having too many breaks of browsing the internet/my phone. Another example I can think of shortcuts being good is when at work I find a way to organize my many documents I reference into one cloud folder and keep my bookmarks consistent in naming conventions and organized. This allows me to spend less time wasting energy “looking” for something and more time just “doing the work.”
Then I compare how my tendencies to find shortcuts have not served me well. There were moments throughout my program where I would give half-baked answers on my essays/my peers on discussion posts, not read all the articles assigned (and definitely not the “optional” ones usually provided in some units), and similar examples in the realm of a purely online class. I could be hard on myself at this moment remembering and regretting those choices for some classes. Instead, I choose to accept that I did what I needed to do at that time to get through the class. I believe that I was being authentic with myself in all of my courses, even if I wasn’t able to give each course my 100%. At the end of the day, I think this is what it means to be part of the generation of non-traditional students; the ones that got their Master’s 100% online while working full time. I recognize that my unique journey since Summer 2018 to get to Summer 2021 was one full of struggle and maturation as I was being shaped by my aforementioned goal 2 in this blog entry.
After all: the culmination of information I learned during my formal schooling era (pre-school through my master’s program) would all just be facts with no value if I couldn’t apply it to the world around me.
So with this in mind, I wrote my synthesis essay where I strived to be honest and I was happy with how it ultimately came out.
This by far was arguably the hardest in my Capstone journey thus far. Something about having to write out the Synthesis reflection felt like a far larger task because I had to finally put into words what this program has done for me for these past 3 years. While I have obviously been feeling the incremental learning experiences and realizations in small moments - attempting to somehow encapsulate that in a coherent 2000 word momento was difficult.
I knew this moment would come and struggled to come up with the best way to communicate my thoughts. At the end of the day I did this whole program for me so I have nothing to gain by trying to be anything but authentic. I think this realization of the value of authenticity is what I want to talk about in this reflection. I think of my Master’s program having achieved training two distinct goals: 1) providing me with relevant historical, theoretical, and practical information as it pertains to various aspects of leadership within a postsecondary education institution and 2) how being able to communicate exactly where I am as a learner on the spectrum of that information is equally as important as the data itself to ultimate leadership success. And it is this latter point where the authenticity vein is kind of like the lifeblood of whether my program was “worth it.”
There are many times in life where I find moments to choose the shortcut, or the easier way to get something done. Sometimes that translates to me reaping more benefits and getting more from life. Examples here might be when I find out a quicker way to get my school work essay assignments done by maximizing my dedicated study times through hyper focusing; I’ll go to a coffee shop, turn off my phone, and focus on my assignments. It is amazing how much I can get done with just 1 hour of pure, distraction-free work as opposed to having too many breaks of browsing the internet/my phone. Another example I can think of shortcuts being good is when at work I find a way to organize my many documents I reference into one cloud folder and keep my bookmarks consistent in naming conventions and organized. This allows me to spend less time wasting energy “looking” for something and more time just “doing the work.”
Then I compare how my tendencies to find shortcuts have not served me well. There were moments throughout my program where I would give half-baked answers on my essays/my peers on discussion posts, not read all the articles assigned (and definitely not the “optional” ones usually provided in some units), and similar examples in the realm of a purely online class. I could be hard on myself at this moment remembering and regretting those choices for some classes. Instead, I choose to accept that I did what I needed to do at that time to get through the class. I believe that I was being authentic with myself in all of my courses, even if I wasn’t able to give each course my 100%. At the end of the day, I think this is what it means to be part of the generation of non-traditional students; the ones that got their Master’s 100% online while working full time. I recognize that my unique journey since Summer 2018 to get to Summer 2021 was one full of struggle and maturation as I was being shaped by my aforementioned goal 2 in this blog entry.
After all: the culmination of information I learned during my formal schooling era (pre-school through my master’s program) would all just be facts with no value if I couldn’t apply it to the world around me.
So with this in mind, I wrote my synthesis essay where I strived to be honest and I was happy with how it ultimately came out.
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©2021 by Tracy Liu
©2021 by Tracy Liu