Competencies

General Competencies:

I know very well how to organize my work load. For example, I enjoy organizing which day I will do which assignment around a schedule in order for me to create enough free time and enjoy it more. I know how to prioritize things when I need to and avoid pushing work due to a well scheduled work. I had four important deadlines for assignments in the same time period. I knew how to prioritize the less important work do it first so that when as time for the deadline arrived I can focus better on more complicated work and do it for efficiently.

I work better under pressure. Without deadlines it is hard for me to push myself to work harder thus when I know i have to hand in something at a specific time I work the more efficiently the more the time approaches. Indeed, if I have a deadline for an assignment, the closer I get to that deadline the more motivation I will have to work and will also work better. While this could lead to procrastination I combine it well with my work organization in order to make correct use of this. This was made very clear to me when having to write my Bachelor's thesis, where creating deadlines for the multiple steps of writing showed to be crucial in me successfully finishing in time.

As for language skills, I am bilingual: fluent in French and English but also have a high level in Spanish and have learned a lot of Arabic during my education in the United Arab Emirates. I am always interested in hearing other languages and understanding how they function. I have scored high in exams for the 3 first languages and continue to make use of this skills by discussing in all languages with people around me while also consuming media in all languages.

Finally I am a team player. I really enjoy working in company of others and believe that work can be done more efficiently in groups. I enjoy working in groups. When doing group assignments I always feel more motivated to take charge and do the assignment better. I believe that this understanding of making use of everyone’s skill in a group comes from playing team sports (handball) which helps understanding team spirit. Each person has something he can bring to the group and we all have to work to everyone’s work styles.

Academic Competencies:

Professional behavior: As for professional behavior, I believe that I have reached this competency from being put in the shoes of researchers. Indeed during our Qualitive Research course, we were asked to conduct an interview and analyze it. This helped me understand the kind of behavior necessary to treat participants and to get a correct interview. I also understood some of this from participating in researches, by seeing what the other perspective is. In addition, the Communication Consultancy course allowed us get in contact with a client and present to him, which was a very interesting experience in testing professional behavior. Finally, I am currently doing my internship and this allowed me to see that my behavior was very much ready for the workplace.

Independent learning: Through the first year I already understood my own learning rhythm because I was clearly used to it from high school. However in order to really understand how I need to learn separately from the course as well, I needed to fail in Philosophy which made me realize the extra work that was necessary which allowed me to pass the resit. This also happened in the Research workshop: experiment where we had to come up with our own experiment. During that assignment I learned from trying a lot of things to create the survey but also during creation of the stimulus and finally reporting the results. Trying things independently without asking too much guidance allowed me to explore and learn on my own. This process was repeated when having to write my graduation project, where I tried my best to make as much use of independent thinking until help was really necessary.

Analytical thought: I have developed enough analytical thought by being in charge most of the time when SPSS has been involved in research. Indeed due to all the time spent on the platform I have made due with numbers and always understand how to categorize raw data in order to analyze it and know which tests to run most of the time. This can be seen in my qualitative research paper which required much data analysis. I think this can also be seen in my Graduation project because I decided to make use of Big Data that seemed like a challenge at first but that I surprisingly was able to flow through quite well.