ACADEMIC REFLECTION AND PSYCHOLOGY INTEREST PAPER

Activity Description
Part 1

Reflect on your progress as a doctoral student in psychology. This is a self-assessment reflection, and may be based on your work and feedback on this course. You should write in first person and address the following items:

1 Assess your understanding of course concepts. Focus on the following areas:

1.1 Provide your vision and professional aspirations beyond the degree.
1.2 Explain the effectiveness of your personal time management.
1.3 Indicate your level of information literacy/library search skills.
1.4 Summarize your ability to make logical, persuasive arguments about course and discipline concepts and ideas. In other words, your ability to apply critical thinking skills.
1.5 Explain your ability to use effective communications.
1.6 Include three of your most valuable strengths as a doctoral student that will help you to succeed in your program. Discuss the evidence that you have to indicate that you possess these strengths.
1.7 Summarize the three most important areas you need to strengthen as a doctoral student. Discuss the evidence that you have to indicate that you need to strengthen these three areas and explain how you integrated these areas into the goals you set in Week 5.
1.8 Determine any challenges you will face while strengthening these areas. Consider your personal setting and circumstances and how you think they will evolve over the next 3-4 years.
1.9 Identify strategies you can use to overcome these challenges. You may want to consider your communities of practice, forming a support group, adjusting your circumstances as much as you are able, developing a schedule, and so on. Reviewing each activity will help you to identify the strategies that will be the most valuable to you.

Part 1 Length: 5 pages

Part 2

For the second part continue exploring your topics of interest for your dissertation. In this portion of your paper, you may utilize the resources that were in previous assignments for this course. You will also need to include five additional resources for the paper, all of which should be from peer-reviewed journals. These additional resources may include additional resources you found for other assignments in this course. In this paper, you should identify three to five areas of interest. For each topic, complete the following:

Explore what makes it an interesting topic for you.

• Indicate the personal connection (Remember, topics that are too personal may be difficult choices for a dissertation study as they can be emotionally challenging and it can be difficult to be dispassionate about some personally connected topics).
• Explain your professional experience (including past research) with the topic.
• Consider what might make a topic a worthy topic. This will be explored in greater depth in your next two courses. In those courses, you will begin narrowing the focus and as you continue to hone your topic ideas, you will become increasingly specific.
However, for this paper, consider why a topic is worthy of a doctoral dissertation.

1.1 Determine how each topic relates to your long-term goals (beyond the PhD).
1.2 Provide some specific aspects or variables of interest for each topic. (e.g., if you are interested in leadership, perhaps related aspects of interest might be motivation, training, personality, and diversity).
1.3 Indicate challenges and questions you have about the topic, including conducting research with the topic. Questions might relate to areas you want to explore in the existing literature or may be questions you have for your professor.

Part 2 Length: 4 pages.

Specific Instructions
Develop each aspect separately (ex. 1.1 and then paragraph bellow) as well as part 1 and part 2. Total of 9 pages not including cover page and references page. Please use uploaded references (see attachment) in which you are going to find the different research topics of interest, the previous assignments about my goals and more. Also, look for 6 other peer reviewed articles within the last 5 years of publication.