Pull It Together

Mentor Meeting #4, Friday 27th April 2007

It's almost a year now since I first registered as a Chartership candidate and found a mentor. Hard to believe. Even harder is the fact that I now have to produce the first draft of the portfolio. I'm quietly panicking. I know that the evidence is around here somewhere.

I'm going to start off with the basics, by drawing together the essential documents initially (the CV, list of training events, mentor meeting log) and adapting them so that they're ready for submission. I haven't changed my PPDP since submitting it in November, so that needs to be updated, and I need to give some thought to future training needs and include those too. I had submitted an example of some reflective writing that I'd already done, and my mentor had some good feedback on how I need to change this so that it's more suitable for submission - that is, make it shorter in length, less technical and more focused on me, me, me. This last part is what I find really difficult. Every English teacher I ever had discouraged me from beginning sentences with 'I' and even when writing for work, it seems more professional to write impersonally in the third person. Something I'll need to get over for the portfolio.

We also discussed setting a timetable using SMART objectives since I can be prone to procrastination. I am incredibly lucky to have a lot of support at work. My other qualified colleagues became chartered last year, and are very understanding. My line manager has set aside some time for me to leave the library and work on the laptop in a nice quiet room somewhere. Now that the deadlines are all too real, the importance of having somewhere quiet to concentrate is starting to play on my mind. You'd think that a library would be a nice quiet place to work - nope. My office has no door. It doesn't even have a wall that goes all the way to the ceiling, so the student noise is quite intrusive.

So. No more ruminating.