Explain a situation where you have made an ethical decision. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made, and how you reflect on the decision now.
We had a situation in school where the answers for an exam was stolen and many people were getting access to this. The first thought was how unfair it would be if people got better result than me by using these answers. However, at the same time, it went against my value of fairness and honesty. As much as grade was important at the time, it was not worth taking the risk for something that wasn't honest and true. If I had looked at the answers, it wouldn't have helped me much in terms of learning the concept itself and may have affected me more in the future when I really needed to understand this. I believe I made the right decision at the time even though it didn't benefit me in that situation because I know I acted according to my own values and protected my love for learning.
Describe how your culture and the people around you have influenced your values and identity.
Values and identity act as a foundation of who we are and often can affect how we behave, make decisions and navigate our way in this world - really important things when thinking how you want to live your life! I'm originally from Japan but have moved around Australia and NZ and the mix of culture and language really shaped my values and identity around being open to new and different perspectives.
Growing up in two very different cultural background has influenced me greatly on how I think about values and identity. My family is Japanese but navigating schooling years in Australia and New Zealand constantly challenged me on how to balance my identity according to each culture. The mix of culture and language really shaped my values and identity around being open to new and different perspectives. However, it was difficult at times because it felt like I was constantly being torn between different values/norms.
Through this experience, there is one value that I came to hold at my core which is the idea of respect for all. This came about when I was being judgemental of the other culture in relative to the one that I was in. I realised this was not fair and really limited my view of the world. As I navigated these differences, holding respect for everyone I encountered in various context allowed me to be open and really listen to the individual's experience. It helped me build stronger and honest connection with others and it. Other things like family relationship and socioeconomic hardship throughout my life formed my identity around having strong sense of equity, social justice and curiosity for understanding these systemic issues.
Identify your strengths and how they will support you during your learning journey.
My strength is in strong curiosity, love of learning and sense of fairness. This will support me through my learning journey to be open and curious to learning new things. The sense of fairness will support me in developing the core/human skill aspect which is an equally important part of the learning. It will also impact how I work together in teams where I am committed to making a safe space for everyone involved.
Evaluate your limitations in terms of your learning and career development. How might these affect your learning journey?
My attention span can be quite limited when focusing on one topic as I get curious and want to know more and stray away from the topic. I jump from one task to another quite often and am not good at completing things. The learning journey so far has been ups and down of trying to focus on one task at a time using time box and learning competencies as a guidance. I believe this can be something that I can practice throughout this learning journey.
When working on a group assignment at university, we had some difficulty organising all members in the group to meet up and make progress with a nearing deadline. Since we get assessed as a group, there were some resentment from others towards those who were not present or active in the work. People can have different circumstances and situations that can make these things difficult.
As the first strategy, I tried making the task smaller so it can be distributed among everyone in the group equally. At the same time, I reached out to the non-present members directly to see if the workload was okay and if they needed help. This worked for a few members that were not present and allowed them to be more open regarding their struggle and made space for other members to understand this.
However, it is not always that this method is effective and people may just not reply. In these situation, we cannot force others to do things they're not willing to do. If it's not fair as an evaluation of the group, it may be important to communicate this to the member themselves and also the evaluator.