Self Assessment

Growing up, I've gone tothrough several levels of education where assessments were necessary, and every teacher thought it was our aid, but the more i saw it as oppression and an unecessary task that was imposed. I would say to myself "i wish i just went to school, attended classess and never wrote any exam"


However, I've learnt in due time, this was something that really could dictate to me the capacity of my knowledge bank, and i would only be fooling myself with thoughts tbat everything was okay if i hadn't been assessed.

On second thought, what if i actually performed this assessment on myself? I've come to find out i actually can, and i, only, can be true to myself.

I identified my cardinals and carefully selected eight to base my year's goal on so i won't be shooting at stars with a catapult. I got my goals set, i worked towards them. I practiced on my musical instrument everyday, I had to watch just one movie if at all i had to ease stress, I reasearched things i needed to know to get some things i had in my goals done, i worked on so many things. It went on for days and was almost slipping into a week. If i have to do these successfully, i thought, i must have a time to critically ask myself what I've been up to, and if my engagements at all helped my goals. I had fallen victim of failed principle and method—goal setting. If this must not be a repeat, then i must assess myself.

Imagine a person who identified these cardinals: academics, leadership, discipline and time management, finance. The person then sets SMART goals in these regards—about four goals for each cardinal. Goal setting for this person has been made easier.

Now about the plotting which was talked about in a previous post and can read here, a mentor gave this illustration:

If this person's cardinals were used as a cartesian plane with academics in the North axis, leadership in the East, discipline and time management in the West, and finance in the South. This person can plot a graph on this plane as an assessment of this person's goals. This keeps a check on goals set. If all aspects had equal ratings, a perfect circle is gotten.

If academics had 4units, leadership had 2units, time management had 1unit, and finance had 2units, an imperfect shape is gotten when these points are joined on the cartesian plane.

A perfect circle will move smoothly compared to an imperfect.

This is my own form of assessment. After rating my self, and plotting my graphs, I'd know what I'm up to and what i should do to meet up.

Doing this weekly means plotting graphs on weekly basis and 52 graphs yearly in assessment of SMART goals set., and where there's need for topping up one's game, it's easily identified.