I want to make a difference in the world of education. I started my master’s program because I had reached a point in my career of needing to try something new. I enjoy my job; however, I truly believed that I have developed the program and courses as far as I could take them. I felt it was time for me to either move on or learn new ways to grow in the position I currently hold. It had been twenty-one years since I had been in any sort of formal education for myself. I was not confident in my ability to do well, even as I applied for the Masters program at UW. I approached several of my co-workers to write letters of reference for me and told them of my plan to go back for my Masters. I was happy to hear that they felt I could succeed, …show more content…
I had to admit that my writing needed a lot of work. Relearning APA wasn’t difficult because I knew what resources were available; however, I did have to rely on those resources a lot in the beginning. Formatting my papers, in the beginning, took as much time as researching the materials. Thanks to positive feedback and good grades my confidence grew with each course and I gradually started thinking less that my goal was just personal growth, but rather that I had a lot of information that I could share and I was forming new perspectives of my own program and what changes I could make. I was excited to start making changes and wasn’t afraid to present my ideas as I had been in the past. One of the main things I learned from the program was that I needed to communicate better with my peers and in doing so I needed to not only be able to express an opinion, but be able to explain with research and experience, why I felt the way I did about a topic. This simple realization that my opinion had value and strength, based on what I had learned, changes not only how I looked at my current positon, but it also seemed to change others view of what I do as