Reflective journal

A few weeks ago I had a very interesting day at work and I thought it would be the perfect day to write about in my reflective journal. I must say that I was a little bit sceptical about how useful a private journal would be to me but after having put down my thoughts and feelings using the frameworks of Reid and Moon, I have actually learned some things about how I learn and the effectiveness of trying out new ways to learn.

Normally in my line of work I have the same day over and over again and it’s sometimes very difficult to see what you’re learning about your profession when on the surface, doing the same thing at the same time every day would seem like a futile learning experience. Now and again though, you face a problem or experience that you’ve never had to face before and it’s at these vital points in my career that I feel I have learned the most, and what happened a few weeks ago was one of these crucial learning experiences.

It was on a Saturday morning that I received a phone call from my dance captain explaining that we were very badly short of boys due to illness, injury and holiday. She went on to explain that as things stood, the opening number of the show, which normally would have 4 dance couples, would be down to only 1 couple! She continued to explain that it was only a 2-minute piece and wouldn’t take me very long to learn and could I come in half an hour early to learn the new choreography.

I have to be honest, at this point it felt like all of those classic anxiety dreams that performers have were coming true, I was about to be shoved on stage in front of a paying audience without having a clue what I was to do.

I should also explain that by nature I am an extremely cautious person, I wouldn’t normally even sing at a Karaoke without having fully researched possible song choices, being sure of their chorus and verse structure and having had a 2 hour singing lesson to perfect them! Of course this is an overstatement but never the less, I like to know EXACTLY what I’m doing before I do it.

So a few short hours later and I was on a West end stage, wearing a costume I’d never worn, dancing with a partner I’d never danced with, doing choreography I had learned in a caffeine fuelled haze of panic!

Luckily, every thing went well, but it was after this experience that I started to think about what I should learn from it. I think my professional experience came in very handy in this situation, I had been a swing before so I was used to learning a lot of information quickly and accurately and I think my performance experience helped me put my nerves to rest and just concentrate on not dropping my partner.

I then Looked at Kolb's learning cycle:

 

Normally, I would put myself firmly in the bracket of “Active experimentation”. This Is where I feel most comfortable entering the learning cycle, somewhere I can analyse and perfect what is going to happen so that when it happens I am ready for any eventuality. However, on this occasion, at such short notice I was forced to enter the learning cycle at the very top “Concrete experience”. I think the main thing I will take from this experience is the fact that in certain situations, where there is no time for planning, you just have no option but to grab the bull by the horns and go head first into the unknown. I think I have to learn to trust the experience and knowledge I have gained to take me through difficult situations without forgetting to learn from what has happened, this is perhaps the most valuable thing I have learned so far in doing this course and I’m glad I have the opportunity to put it into practice in real life experiences.