In my self-regulated learning self-assessment, I scored 5.0 in interest, 4.0 in planning, 3.75 in elaborating, and 3.5 in help seeking. As the above results show my lowest-scoring area was help-seeking; on reflection, this isn’t exactly a shock to me. My style of getting things done–pretty much since I learned how to write papers on my own–has been to sit down, start working at it alone, and continuously slam my head against this brick wall of a problem until I break through it.
I don’t think I utilized my either of my colleges’ writing labs a single time throughout my entire undergraduate career, and I very rarely reached out to my professors for assistance or clarification. It’s something of a mix of stubbornness and ego that I still haven’t entirely shaken; you’d think that I’d ask the communications professor I live with–my mother–for help or proofreading on coursework in my communications program, but no such luck thus far.
For that reason, I’ve decided that my focus area for improving self-regulated learning will be help-seeking. Finding a relevant helpful resource isn’t exactly hard–see above about spending 16 hours a day in a building with a communications professor. My problem is really going to be recognizing when I need help and then actually asking for it, a concept that sounds a lot like pulling teeth for me.
I think that a good place to start that I’ll begin experimenting with is just asking her to proofread things that I create before I finish my final draft. I want to get used to taking critique of my creations before they’re done and incorporating them into the final product, rather than just finishing it with only my own input and reading the critique after submission.
Joseph L Meyers 