Learning Narrative Reflection

Learning Narrative Reflection
Throughout the writing of my learning narrative, I realize a recurring theme in my paper. At each stage of my life I had always wanted to feel older and more grown up than I actually was. When I looked at the kids in the grades above me and the older athletic teams they seemed so much older and smarted than me. They always bragged and talked about how much harder the next grade or level was. Now that I am in college, I have realize that it is not how difficult the next level is. It is how much time and effort you want to put in to get the results you need; it is about motivation. Back when I was a child I would have looked at a nineteen year old in awe, thinking wow he must be so much smarter and wiser than me, yet now I feel that I know so little and have so much more to learn than I ever had before.
An appropriate theme for my reflection could be found a song called Younger (kygo remix), by Seinabo Sey. The lyrics focus on the fact that you cannot get any younger so you need to
live a purposeful life and rid yourself of useless things. How it relates to my learning narrative paper and to myself personally is a little different. I always wanted to be older and smarter, but now I do not. Now I feel rushed to make huge life decisions that I had not put much thought to before. When I was younger I so focused on that single report car with six or seven grades, making friends, and doing well in athletics that I did not think about what career I was going to pursue.
My learning narrative project outline was much different than what I actually ended up writing about.
The original idea was to focus mainly on how I learned morals and values, but soon after I started writing I found it was very repetitive. There was a lack of direction in the paper and likely not a very strong conclusion so I decided to put more of a chronological spin on it. What I ended up writing was a story of major shifts in my childhood and teenage life. The story was about changes in my life but it focused more on the lessons I learned from each experiences and how that affect my life further down the road. Instead of focusing mostly on educational experiences, I focused heavily on the importance of life and socialization skills bringing a more of a full picture perspective on how kids learn and develop into adults. The conclusion tied into how those lessons brought me to Michigan State, which was different from the original conclusion in my
outline. The more chronological take on my story led to a much stronger paper. What I think really brought the paper together though, was tying in how each lesson I learned ended up directly affected major decisions I have made at college in the past few months. That was my favorite aspect of my paper and I will continue to use that technique in future papers. I struggled greatest writing the outline of my paper. My original outline ended up being far from what my final draft was. In the future I think I need to spend a lot more time writing up an outline and not going with the first outline I write. I need to spend much more time brainstorming and use critical thinking to create more high quality points in my paper that tie into its theme.