Deposits:

In terms of meeting with adults from partnerships such as Extended Essay supervising, Project Week supervising, or University Advising, it is really important to be able to understand what qualities are important to building and maintaining solid relationships. I believe that one of these key qualities is politeness. This includes punctuality, respect, and holding up your end of the bargain. If you decided that you want to invest in a relationship with a supervisor, this means that they also will also have to invest time into you.

Sample deposits would:

• Sending and responding to emails on time
• Preparing necessary materials
• Being polite
• Being cooperative
• Listening to opinions and suggestions with an open mind
• Working together to the best of your abilities
• Not letting your partner do all the work
• Asking for times that work for the other person
• Being on time to meetings
• Submitting materials by proper deadlines – not too late that supervisors can’t look at them

Withdrawals:

Preparation involves a lot of personal awareness about your own schedules and abilities. Therefore, if you think that it’s going to be too hard to meet at the predetermined meeting or to complete a task that you said you would complete, it’s better to inform the supervisor in advance. It helps both parties, as they are aware of your struggles and they are therefore much more akin to helping you, or at least support you.

Who are people in the future with whom you might have professional relationships with? How will you keep those relationships in the positive?

In the future, it’s highly likely that regardless of what career path I choose to take, I will encounter sorts of professional relationships with others. This includes working inside a company where there are many different levels of jobs, such as different types of managers or people who work within different departments or regions.

Regardless of how impersonal one knows each other, I think the same sort of deposits that I mentioned above are imperative to keeping lasting positive relationships. Being an agreeable person, one who is polite and cooperative, one who tries their best and holds up their end of the work.

 

 

LOGISTICIAN PERSONALITY (ISTJ, -A/-T)

We took the Myers Briggs Personality Test in PSE today. After answering all the questions, I was given the result of Logistician, also known as ISTJ.

ISTJ stands for Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging.

ISTJ indicates that this person is:

• Introverted – is energized by time spent alone
• Sensing – focuses on facts and details rather than ideas and concepts
• Thinking – makes decisions based on logic and reason
• Judging – prefers to be planned and organized over spontaneous and flexible

Below are some of the results from the website that I feel particularly resonate with me, and that I feel like are accurate to my character.

General Characteristics:

• Logistician personalities can competently tackle any project that comes with a manual. On the other hand, this makes them reluctant to give up responsibilities even when they are overburdened, or when there are better people for the job.
• The seriousness in their approach to work makes them surprisingly sensitive to criticism, leading to a levels of inflexibility.
• Consequently, people with the Logistician personality type often prefer to work alone, or at least have their authority clearly established by hierarchy, where they can set and achieve their goals without debate or worry over other’s reliability.
• While they are unlikely to become friends with substantially different types, they still recognize and appreciate others’ strengths and qualities.
• Value predictability more than imagination

Strengths:

• They respect authority and hierarchy, and have no problem following orders and instructions.
• Punctuality is unlikely to ever be an issue
• While clearly set steps and well-defined responsibilities are needed, they are exceptionally loyal, dedicated, meticulous and patient in completing their work.

Weaknesses:

• Stubborn – They tend to resist any new idea that isn’t supported by them. This factual decision-making process also makes it difficult for ISTJ’s to accept that they were wrong about something
• Always by the Book – They believe that things work best with clearly defined rules, but this makes them reluctant to bend those rules or try new things, even when the downside is minimal. Truly unstructured environments leave Logisticians all but paralyzed.
• They need to remember to take care of themselves – their stubborn dedication to stability and efficiency can compromise those goals in the long term as others lean ever-harder on them, creating an emotional strain that can go unexpressed.

The difference between fixed and growth mindset is in the attitude. Do you question? Do you try to improve because you want to, or because you have to? Do you challenge yourself? Do you think about how you can work to be better? Is this linked to our emotions?

I have a larger fixed mindset for Math than I do for my other subjects. Why? Because I no longer enjoy the class as I did when I was younger, and because I am not as good as it as I once was. While I still complete the assigned works and listen to the lessons, I don’t put as much effort and concentration as I should. Even if I don’t let the grades slip completely, I let the frustration when I don’t understand things come up quicker than it would for other subjects.

I have a larger growth mindset for my other subjects, especially English and Psychology, because those subjects often grow with time. Writing essays and analyzing texts become much easier once you have done it over and over, and you develop a certain way of thinking that helps support you. You listen to the teachers comments on how to improve and you find yourself thinking deeper about the subject and about your own work.

For my sciences, Biology and Chemistry, I go with the understanding that even if the topic is not immediately clear, it will be. This is driven by the scientific and logic behind both subjects, strongly tied to facts and data. Even if you do not immediately understand, you can if you try. There is reasoning, unlike English, you do not need to come up with the answers yourself, merely know why the answer applies the way it does.

Growth mindset comes easier when I want it to. When I want to improve because I enjoy the idea of improving, because I’m driven by curiosity and passion.

Identity:

Who am I? I am American and Indonesian, a girl, identifiable as small, with dark features and long hair. A ballet dancer, a singer (but not alone), a reader, an academic, a person who looks to be the appearance of stable. And this is how others will see me, by my face, by my voice, by my actions and hobbies, by my academics and my brain, by my style of living and interactions with others. I might be described as nice, but not in the normal way, a person who looks out for their friends, good at presenting and good at getting good grades. They’ll describe me as a listener, but also someone who can be negative. Or maybe they won’t. 

Perhaps while this is me, this is not the full me. My friends will see more than others, but they still are not with me when I am alone with myself. You wouldn’t know my beliefs from my appearance, my habits at home, my internal thoughts and feelings, how I see people, or how I feel about myself. Maybe you wouldn’t guess that I ran a feminist club after only a year of being in it, that I’ve participated in choir trips in Europe, that I’ve lived in a lot of countries, that I am more than my appearance. 

Personality types

1. Adjustment
2. Competitiveness
3. Conscientiousness
4. Ambiguity/Acceptance
5. Curiosity
6. Risk Approach

I ranked these in the order I feel applies to me, which might be somewhat clear based upon identity, but might not always add up.

I’ve moved a few times, so I feel that adjustment and acceptance are important to living in different communities, and to deal with change. Resisting the change doesn’t really get you anywhere after awhile, even if it does at the beginning. I find that my curiosity in life and in school has varied over the years, and perhaps I was much more curious when I was younger. Or, I was more curious when I was younger, but I’m not sure why. This is next to the Risk Approach, because in the IB learner profile, I have always been weak at taking risks. Because I don’t like to, and because of fear. The fear of failure, or danger, or injury. Even if injury shows itself as discomfort, an injury is present.

Emotional Intelligence

If I were to pick the three emotional intelligence factors that I feel apply most to who I am, it would be the following three.

• You have a robust emotional vocabulary
• You embrace change
• You know your strengths and weaknesses

 

I do know my strengths and weaknesses very well, even if I choose to not share what they are at all time. I don’t like to hold my strengths above others, nor do I like to display my weaknesses when I am not with people that I trust. But I know how I will react or work in different situations based upon how I know myself, and I often will know why I feel a certain way, wether or not I share it. One of my strengths is that I know a wide range of emotional vocabulary, but this does not mean I alway use it. I do understand why I (and sometimes others) will feel or react a certain way, and I can often describe the emotions. I do embrace change when it comes, but I do not actively seek it. I understand that things will not remain as they once were, and that if something has already begun to change, you ought to let it do so.

 

Grit

The main thing I can think of for grit, was my completion of the Bronze and Silver Duke of Edinburgh Awards, and how much I both hated and loved the adventurous journeys. I don’t like taking risks, and these journeys were the epitome of risk. I was injured for them all. I injured my ankle when I was younger through gymnastics, and while there was improvement, the muscle area never fully healed. With carrying the weight of the backpacking equipments for 3 to 5 days (Between Bronze and Silver), it became much more strenuous for my ankle than normal exercise would. I couldn’t just leave my team, as I would forfeit the award for myself, but possibly them as well. Bronze was quite painful as I packed poorly, carrying alot of weight from food and extra clothing which I learned to cut out. Silver practice was hard though, because the day before we left, I injured the ankle in PE. It took a lot to get through the three days of walking, not only for me, but for my team as well. The last day was the worst of all, as my team had to physically support me to the end. They told me I couldn’t do it, but I did. A fact I liked to remind them of when we were alone in Scotland for the Silver final. But god, it was hard.

How do these connect and apply to my personal IB journey?

Everyone says the Diploma Programme is one of the most intensive academic programmes around the world, made harder by the sheer quantity of work and the inclusion of Creativity, Action, and Service. And it is. The International Baccalaureate is a hard programme, but if many people are able to graduate with their diplomas, it shouldn’t be impossible. We hold it up to its difficult status, but it’ll always be difficult if we let it. There is no reason to let the difficult aspects completely overshadow what the IB aims to achieve, and through the application of the knowledge we have gained in Personal and Social Education, the journey should be made different. Not necessarily easier, but different aspects can be completed in different ways, as each person has a journey that is tailored to them. Who you are is what you want, where you will go, and how you will achieve it. Perhaps I’ll find parts of my journey to be clearer than others find, but I will encounter difficulty where they thrive. Understanding yourself will only help you to find the clearer paths to get to the end.

Task: Post a photo of something from your summer break or an event you can remember on your portfolio. Write or record a post about it how your experiences might this link to the approaches in Psychology and conceptual understandings (Cognitive, Sociocultural, Biological.)

Over the summer, I moved from Amsterdam, the Netherlands here to Singapore, and I noticed a large amount of differences in many aspects of living. Some of these aspects were much smaller than others, but there still remained to be differences for me that I have to learn to adapt to or that I would continue to do the same as I previously had before.

The first difference was the weather: I found (and still do) the hot and humid climate of Singapore to be oppressive coming from Northern Europe, and that I was physically unable to do the same amounts of walking and outdoor activity that I could previously do without much effort. Biologically, I had climatized to the cooler and less humid weather of my previous location, making me unable to function at the same level as previously before. My body had learned to adapt to the cold, so I found that for me “summer” temperatures were approximately 20-25 degrees Celsius, and that anything above that would be “hot”, even if people here in Singapore find it to be “cold”. On the topic of walking, many locals or expats who had lived in Singapore for a period of time expressed surprise when my family would go to and from a location by walking longer distances of 1-2 kilometers. While walking such as this was very common in the Netherlands as a way of getting around narrow streets and was easier because of cooler weather, it seemed that socioculturally in Singapore, extended walking was not necessarily the preferred way of transport (if possible).

The second difference was the structure of living here: eating out and ease of access to food, driving, and pets.

When coming to Singapore, we were told that one of the largest parts of culture is food, and no one was wrong. Food here is abundant, diverse, easy to access, and cheap (depending on what and where). The attitude towards eating out seems ingrained: that never being at home is common. I wonder how one spends time with family or cooking, because in many places the culture is a home cooked meal with family, and that eating out is saved for certain occasions. Have I culturally been taught to look upon not eating at home as special? For my father, alcohol is much more expensive. It is both sociocultural and cognitive here: that alcohol isn’t the most ideal, so it is taxed in hopes that there will be a restriction on the consumption. Alcohol is much more disproved of compared to Europe, where the mentality for drinking is very open, and that it is associated with good times with family or friends.

We struggled at the beginning to adapt to driving on the left side of the road, and would constantly find ourselves having to mentally check as we crossed the road, and I would find myself subconsciously looking to the wrong side. I had cognitively written in to my brain to always look a certain direction for cars driving on the right side of the road, and was automatically following this as such. For driving, my father especially found that the style of driving was very different: socioculturally, Singaporean drivers had been taught to be very cautious, and my father found that many drivers are extremely cautious on the freeways, driving below the speed limit written. They had simply been taught differently: to prioritize safety and to always remember that they are in control of a vehicle.

When applying for our dog to come into the country, we faced many restrictions for the size and breed of our dog. And when we arrived, we found the attitude of many locals towards large dogs was fear. People would give our dog a wide berth, avoiding him even if he wasn’t interested in others. While my parents find it odd, I find it to be very ingrained into the culture of many regions in Asia, that certain dogs are very dangerous and should be avoided. Biologically, humans have fears wolves as being dangerous, and our fears are often designed to protect us. Perhaps the avoidance is just a biological response.

It’s the simple things, isn’t it?

Has it been easy to transition? Not necessarily. But am I able to understand why I struggle? Yes. I think that if I looked hard enough, I can justify everything that I think and feel about moving here, and that there is always a connection to the way it makes me act.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J33X7s3cEXu8Q7qswqOG0mLWxwUP4uBYmNwddIMuLT0/edit