Summary: We all get an academic report (which we always overestimate) but what about our personal report card – health, goals, and relationships?
Remember the last time you felt good about writing an exam and walked out with your big smiley face? 😀
Fast forward to exam results. Bummer. You find out that you got much MUCH lower than expected! :'(
Well, that is something that just happened to me.
Then I had the choice of doing one of two things: blame something external (exam was too hard or everybody failed) or begin working on your weaknesses.
That was a reality check of how I was doing academically.
Reflections of Achieving a Low Academic Grade
This experience got me thinking about two key-takeaways;
- We have biased and vague self-evaluations
- We don’t like to know that we did poorly on something
Now, what about my personal progress? Who gives you that reality check – the ugly truth?
What if my personal progress report is much lower than what I think it is as well?
Sure, you can say you do or your parents are “proud” of you. But do the above two key takeaways apply here too?
Yes.
Let’s say you are writing a book. Perhaps you are tracking how many pages you have written. You have a vague sense of progress. However, you have no standard to compare yourself with.
Am I an A+ or B- or D-?
If you had a personal coach and he graded you, how would you do?
It is in one’s comfort zone to avoid grading oneself. Who wants the disappointment of knowing that their progress has been bad?
However, is the temporary disappointment of honest self-evaluation worse than experiencing a project failure?
I have set vague goals and still do at times. It is our tendency to write down something in our To-Do list or calendar but rarely do we grade ourselves on it. However, in addition to our GPA, we can begin to grade ourselves to be assured that our dreams and aspirations will materialize.
8 comments On Honest Self-Evaluation
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How interesting. I’ve just had the pleasure of finding this website and can’t wait to read everything on it. So often we do something (in particular something we’re not too fond of), however in order to self improve we should constantly be reflecting on how we could do it better; and the only way we can do that is if we reflect on how we graded ourselves in that specific task. I’d LOVE for you to write about shyness halting goals and self improvement and how to break free of over shy mind set when it comes to pursuing ones goals 🙂
Glad to hear that Rabia. Hope to see you around and I have noted down your suggestions 🙂
You do not suggest how one should go abt it..mm
Rwan, I will be writing another post to cover that! Please stay put 🙂
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