Hi there, welcome to my 2022 mPol for this PLP year. Today, I’m going to be looking at my learning in PLP this year, and reflecting on my work so far. I don’t love the subjects that PLP teaches but it’s still important to reflect to see how you can do better in the future. I’m going to be sharing to you guys some spots where I think I do well and the wide range of areas I think I could improve in.
Near the start of the year, we made a personal learning plan to make goals for the year. Some of the goals in this blog post will be very similar to the ones in my learning plan. Some things we covered in the learning plan were our goals for the year, strengths, weaknesses, what mark we wanted, and how we we were going to get there were some of the boxes we filled out.
Some areas which i thrive in are communication with peers, problem solving, and generating ideas. I can consistently generate ideas, share them with a group or put them to work in my projects. I can also find ways to improvise when stuck or find solutions to problems that I come across. A project where I demonstrated this was in our first one where we were exploring the Canadian election and then making our own political party. In this project, my ideas were quite prominent in the final product as I was able to generate a lot of them and share them to my group effectively. 2 of my team members were very left while the other 2 were very right on the political spectrum, so I was also able to be a neutral member and come up with ideas that would be approved by everyone. 
And then there are the areas I can grow in. To start, staying focused is a big one. Avoiding distractions in the class, often times talking with friends or my brain just going elsewhere, I need to find a way to focus on the task ahead and listen to the information being given. I also need to be more effective with my time, and avoid procasinating. I think I can do that though by giving myself times that work should be done and being in a good working environment both at home and in class. For example, in the days coming up to our winter exhibition, there was a list of stuff we needed to do, but I kept telling myself “oh, this I can do in class” or “it would be easier just to do this at school”. 
So in the future, making myself do the task right in that moment would be a very reasonable goal.
I think that PLP work is tougher than normal because your assignments are all in project form rather than tests or essays. Now there are many perks to this, but there are cons as well. Firstly, to excel in a project takes significantly longer than a test because you usually need to put more work in to a project to get the mark you’re looking for. I also find that many of the questions that PLP gives us are very broad which is sometimes hard to answer, both directly an subtly. But I think PLP ultimately gives you the knowledge and skills to successfully navigate yourself through university and beyond.
That’s going to finish off this year’s mPol but there will be a tPOl at the end of this year that will arrive before we know it! Thanks for reading!