My reflection!(:
I forgot to bring my educational transcripts last book-in on the 14th of October and am thus tasked with writing this reflection to discover within myself what went wrong that led to this horrid, unforgivable mistake.
Of course, physiologically there are four main reasons why me, and people in general forget things. Namely, these factors are interference, physical damage, emotion and trace delay.
Interference theory is based on the assumption that our ability to learn is disrupted by what we have learnt before and what we will learn in the future. Its manifestation in this particular incident would be that we have been previously demanded of our educational transcripts not just once, but on three occasions: In BMT, during CLT and during service term in OCS. I guess subconsciously I concluded that since the system was so inefficient at keeping track of four alphabets and a number, even if I, by some incident forgot to bring my transcripts, it will have little or no impact on the grand scheme of things. As such, previous learning taught me that this action was non-crucial and as such didn’t implant itself deeply enough in my brain causing it to be forgotten when other events transpired.
Physical damage comes in two forms: Amnesia and brain damage. Both probably have no bearing on this incident.
Emotion can be categorized as repressionist: the subject has been shocked so deeply, traumatized about an event, experience, refuses (unconsciously) to acquire any facts, although the subject stored the facts, they are at an unconscious level and he/she will not be able to access these facts unless something can be done towards the case (trauma), which might enable the subject to recover. In this particular context, emotion caused me to forget in an indirect manner. Over the weekend, somebody stile my hand phone and MP4 player. These two items are very close to my heart and I am never without them for various reasons. My hand phone because it connected me to all my friends and family and my music player because, as anyone who know me knows, I’m inseparatable from it. It basically keeps me going. What made it worse was that the MP4 player was relatively new: Just two months old, and had cost me more that $600. This loss kept me so occupied mentally, emotionally and physically (I had to go about canceling the line and making a report) that I simply didn’t recall having to bring the transcript in. To compound matters, I was trying to coordinate the preparation of our V3R cards and the loss of my phone meant that all forms of communication with me were lost and I was worried that the cards would not be done. To my syndicate’s credit, they did an outstanding job printing and lamination the cards even though contact was broken.
Finally, trace delay is where, it is theorized, that learning leaves a ‘trace’ in the brain, that there is a sort of physical change after learning that was not there before, and forgetting is due to a spontaneous fading or weakening of the neural memory trace over time. Put simply, I simply forgot over the weekend. This, coupled with major events, stress and the fact that the memory was not very deeply embedded due to past experience cumulated in me forgetting to bring my transcripts when booking in.
Of course there is a counterargument. All of these could be avoided, and the transcript brought on time, had I simply written the task down on my notebook and checked it before booking in. Of course this would shift the crux to remembering to look through my notebook but idealogically, the problem would have been solved and nothing short of physical trauma or death could prevent me from bringing my transcript into camp.
In conclusion, I am glad that I have done this reflection as this has led me to achieve a deeper understanding of myself and am sure that I will not forget my transcripts when they are demanded of me again in specialized phase, after I am posted to a unit, or even next week.
I forgot to bring my educational transcripts last book-in on the 14th of October and am thus tasked with writing this reflection to discover within myself what went wrong that led to this horrid, unforgivable mistake.
Of course, physiologically there are four main reasons why me, and people in general forget things. Namely, these factors are interference, physical damage, emotion and trace delay.
Interference theory is based on the assumption that our ability to learn is disrupted by what we have learnt before and what we will learn in the future. Its manifestation in this particular incident would be that we have been previously demanded of our educational transcripts not just once, but on three occasions: In BMT, during CLT and during service term in OCS. I guess subconsciously I concluded that since the system was so inefficient at keeping track of four alphabets and a number, even if I, by some incident forgot to bring my transcripts, it will have little or no impact on the grand scheme of things. As such, previous learning taught me that this action was non-crucial and as such didn’t implant itself deeply enough in my brain causing it to be forgotten when other events transpired.
Physical damage comes in two forms: Amnesia and brain damage. Both probably have no bearing on this incident.
Emotion can be categorized as repressionist: the subject has been shocked so deeply, traumatized about an event, experience, refuses (unconsciously) to acquire any facts, although the subject stored the facts, they are at an unconscious level and he/she will not be able to access these facts unless something can be done towards the case (trauma), which might enable the subject to recover. In this particular context, emotion caused me to forget in an indirect manner. Over the weekend, somebody stile my hand phone and MP4 player. These two items are very close to my heart and I am never without them for various reasons. My hand phone because it connected me to all my friends and family and my music player because, as anyone who know me knows, I’m inseparatable from it. It basically keeps me going. What made it worse was that the MP4 player was relatively new: Just two months old, and had cost me more that $600. This loss kept me so occupied mentally, emotionally and physically (I had to go about canceling the line and making a report) that I simply didn’t recall having to bring the transcript in. To compound matters, I was trying to coordinate the preparation of our V3R cards and the loss of my phone meant that all forms of communication with me were lost and I was worried that the cards would not be done. To my syndicate’s credit, they did an outstanding job printing and lamination the cards even though contact was broken.
Finally, trace delay is where, it is theorized, that learning leaves a ‘trace’ in the brain, that there is a sort of physical change after learning that was not there before, and forgetting is due to a spontaneous fading or weakening of the neural memory trace over time. Put simply, I simply forgot over the weekend. This, coupled with major events, stress and the fact that the memory was not very deeply embedded due to past experience cumulated in me forgetting to bring my transcripts when booking in.
Of course there is a counterargument. All of these could be avoided, and the transcript brought on time, had I simply written the task down on my notebook and checked it before booking in. Of course this would shift the crux to remembering to look through my notebook but idealogically, the problem would have been solved and nothing short of physical trauma or death could prevent me from bringing my transcript into camp.
In conclusion, I am glad that I have done this reflection as this has led me to achieve a deeper understanding of myself and am sure that I will not forget my transcripts when they are demanded of me again in specialized phase, after I am posted to a unit, or even next week.
posted by lyarn at 10:56 am
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