Task 2a - reflective journal task

Task 2a - reflective journal task  

Since starting on the BAPP course I have been following and completing the tasks as best as I can, one of these tasks was to start a journal. This journal is my personal thoughts about the module. The journal does not have to be shown to anyone else but I may be asked to show extracts of it later on in an assessment and I am choosing to blog about it today. My personal journal is a way to record my thoughts and the events that happen in my life. So at the end of the day or at the end of a busy week I reflect back on what has happened previously and reflect on the situations and thoughts I had. 

Again appears the word reflection, which has been spoken about a lot on this course because it is helping me to understand things that happen in life and to give more meaning to what is happening. 

Before starting BAPP The main way I shared my thoughts would have been by text to other people or a status on Facebook but now I have my personal journal and my blogs I am tending to vary the way I share my thoughts more.

I do find it fairly easy to write down my thoughts in a word related method such as, writing a letter, text, blog but I also like to exercise and think to myself this is something I do frequently to reflect on life activities that engage in. Running is said to help you de stress and I believe this is true. 

When writing my journals I haven't set a certain time or day to do them because each day in my life is different some day I could have the whole day free others I am out all day and not home until 10pm at night so I write them where and when I can. Writing a journal is not something that is new to me because when I was at college we had to write one daily and talk about what lessons we did that day, what we learnt, what we can improve on and what we have improved on. We also reflected on the last time we wrote about this lessons and how we feel since then and if we have noticed anything has changed. So, reflective writing is something I have done before. 

When getting started you may feel mind blanked but if this is the case write about what you have eaten and why you had it or literally anything that you did. I quite enjoy writing my journal because its helps me reflect on my day and think about whether I can do something better the next time.  

Recently I have been doing a lot of exercise and also looking into personal training. I have been relating a lot of the things i have read about exercise and training to things that I am learning on the BAPP course. This is because a lot of it is reflective thinking and thinking about what you have done in the past and how you can change it such. People set goals such as weight loss, gaining more muscle mass and trying to complete exercise in certain times. Such as, people trying to get into the armed forces have to complete cardio in a certain time limit. They have to en reflect on how they have been previously living and make a change then after this change reflect on whether it has worked. 

I wrote about some terms of personal training and have put some extracts below at I wrote about because I feel that they link into reflective thinking and can be relevant to my learning. 

Classical conditioning is creating an unnatural occurrence  in our behaviour. It was discovered by Ivan Pavlov (1936). Pavlov would ring a bell and then give meat to dogs that salivated because of the food being presented. He repeated this for some time, until one day he rang the bell, but didn't show any meat. The dogs still salivated.  This discovery supports the theory that we show responses to stimuli that are not naturally occurring, such as in exercise, a daily morning jog before work or attending a weekly Tuesday and Thursday exercise class. To create a reliable stimuli for a ourselves we should try our best to prevent duplicating or clash exercise with other competing cues, for example, exercising when a favourite tv programme is being aired or anything else that could cause resentment and disruption to home life. 

Operant conditioning refers to how someone responds to what is presented to them in the environment they live in and is about cueing action to reinforcing good behaviour. When people make mistakes they may change their actions next time to achieve better results but when something has gone right the actions are more likely to be repeated the next time because  they worked well. To reinforce good behaviour rewards could be given such as a free session after a number of visits from the gym themselves to help the client find an incentive to exercise and therefore increase their chances of achieving success. Or rewards we could give ourselves could be a bad meal after so many pounds lost or so many gym sessions. 

We could also find our own rewards with a positive outcome from a negative situation for example, the removal of lower back pain after a core stability class this would give the client a positive response to exercise. 

After reading about Classical conditioning it makes me reflect on my work its BAPP. The time I set to do my work I should make sure does not clash with something else I want to do because I may not be able to concentrate because I am thinking about that activity or if the tv is on I may become sidetracked by watching it. 

Operant conditioning makes reflect and think that I should reward myself after completing tasks, not with anything major but something small. Like have some sweets every time I have finished a task to treat myself. Or even go to watch a musical each time I have attended a campus session because I will be in London anyway and have attended the session so am one step closer to the finishing point and gaining my degree. 

What do you think?