A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah: Reflection Essay

In my reflection, I will focus on how I have developed personally and academically throughout my first semester here at university, Using the Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle. From my very first initial emotions and taking the step back into education to my very first assignment and participating in group work. This will include how effective me and my group members were on successfully completing our group presentation and how we collectively gathered information by researching for our chosen topic. We chose disability for our presentation and we learned far more than we realised. I would also like to reflect upon my first assignment appointed to me at the beginning of the first semester, I was given a book to read, A long way gone by Ishmael Beah and I would like to speak about how it had made an emotional impact on me throughout my reading. But first thing is first. Taking the plunge back into education was somewhat overbearing for me after being out of education for numerous years. I remember feeling nervous and a little apprehensive as I thought I wasn’t academic enough to study at university, then I remembered why social work and being in that profession has always been a passion of mine.

Self-Doubt has always been a weakness for me, so one day I thought ‘hey why not?’ I finally plucked up the courage and embarked on my journey through university. Though I have my weaknesses, I also have my strengths. Resilience is something I have recently discovered I have, working with a group is often very challenging for me, especially being new to university. However, learning to work with others and to do well is also significant for me as I plan to pursue a career in social work. One of the key things my group did well was working together effectively. Our meetings were extremely creative and every group member promptly completed their selected topics. Another thing we did well was gathering information. Although the internet is a source for researching, there are other strategies we took in line by asking for leaflets from organisations, newspapers, journals and the good old word of mouth and socialising with the community.

Communication was at first hand and we all communicated via a group chat, meetings and emails. We all had our separate tasks in finding research on our topics. Our research made our presentation informative and helped us to have a better understanding of disability but also to present it in a way that our given audience would understand. After being assigned the project, we instantly began brainstorming and issuing ideas after deciding what topic who wanted. (Brainstorming is used as a method for producing ideas. It is usually used in the beginning phases of a project, where the options for the project are not yet understood or definite.) Tuckman(1965) We prearranged meetings and delegated work amongst ourselves. As a result of our good teamwork we were talented enough to find plenty of information to support our presentation.

This practise prepared us to identify each group members individual strengths when working as a team. For example, the member with the most IT skills we delegated to produce the presentation. As a whole, my weaknesses involved essentially delivering the presentation. Throughout the presentation when I observed myself talking to rapidly, I tried to pace myself so it seemed more natural. There was more than one instance when thinking too much about the pace of my speech and this resulted in me forgetting what I was about to say. Even though I had prepared myself over and reading from my que cards I felt I was losing eye contact with the audience, my speech was announced jerky and there were a few gaps when I could not visually see my words. On a personal level I feel I did a satisfactory job of limiting myself to only including details that were crucial to our presentation.

I included a few important facts about disability and how it affects day to day lives of civilians. Although I feel as though my public speaking has become a lot relaxed, I still felt rather uncomfortable speaking in front of the class. As a result of this, I have a tendency to rush my words, therefore, I felt I had said what I needed to say in half the time I had prepared prior and there were times I forgot I was speaking. Rambling or saying things that are not linked to the topic will likely to confuse the audience or even lose them interest. However, by including only what was important, I feel I did a decent job of keeping the audience engaged.

Overall, my group and the collective of information we did was a success and we did a respectable job with our disability presentation and the inclusive teamwork pulled off. I plan on learning from this experience and speaking in front of people as much as possible to improve my public speaking. With repetitive practice, I am confident that I can become a more effective public speaker, work together effortlessly with others and generally have more confidence in myself. Carrying out this development has taught me how to produce an effective presentation. Preparation and communication are also important when presenting a presentation, learning this crucial fact and practising how to work well with others made this project enormously worthwhile for myself and my fellow group members. More importantly, I was educated that the way you abstract and present your information is truly more important than the information itself. This brings me to my next reflection, for the first assignment I was given Ishmael Beah’s biography, the book is based on real events and is spoken from a personal point of view. Ishmael wrote a memoir that expresses the level of trauma a young boy faced in his early years, who is torn from his childhood, and then involuntary forced into a terrifying world of drugs and slavery. What really astonished me was the fact that this is happening in today’s society or that it ever happened at all.