Blog Week #6

test

My score of 79 on the Coping and Stress Management Skills Test reveals I’m a natural problem-solver who tackles stress head-on. This strength will serve me well in controllable workplace situations, but I need to develop complementary emotion-focused strategies for unavoidable stressors. Organizations are increasingly investing in comprehensive wellness programs, recognizing that employee mental health directly impacts productivity and retention.

What My Test Results Say About Me

Problem-based coping is helpful when you need to change your situation, perhaps by removing a stressful thing from your life, and my score of 79 indicates this is exactly how I naturally approach stress. The assessment revealed that I consistently use problem-focused strategies to manage stress, which means I instinctively look for actionable solutions rather than simply managing my emotional response.

However, the test results also highlighted an important limitation: problem-focused strategies, although not particularly effective when dealing with situations that cannot be removed or controlled, can be quite useful when the stressor you are facing is changeable. This means that while my natural approach serves me well in many situations, I may struggle when facing truly unchangeable circumstances.

Personally though, if it’s something entirely out of my control, I tend not to dwell on it.

Steps for Professional Career Development

Understanding my problem-focused coping preference gives me a roadmap for professional growth. Here’s how I plan to leverage this strength while addressing potential blind spots:

Leveraging My Natural Problem-Solving Strength:

• Seek roles and projects where I can actively influence outcomes
• Volunteer for troubleshooting assignments and process improvement initiatives
• Develop my analytical and planning skills through formal training
• Build a reputation as someone who finds solutions rather than just identifying problems

A few years ago, I faced a classic dilemma: I’d just landed a significant promotion at a big company. The new role came with a hefty pay increase, over $10 more per hour than my previous position. It was exciting, fulfilling, and a testament to my hard work. But there was a catch. The new role required a significant increase in hours, at least 50 hours a week and the shifts were all over the place, including overnight shifts. This was a problem because I was still in school and needed a more stable schedule to balance work and education.

Despite the appealing compensation, I had to make a tough decision. My education was a top priority, and I knew that in the long run, completing my studies would open even more doors. I tried negotiating with the company to adjust my hours to the same as they were before the promotion, but they couldn’t accommodate my needs.

In the end, I decided to leave the job after just a few months. It was a difficult choice, but it reinforced an important lesson: sometimes, even when compensation is enticing, it’s crucial to not lose track of your goals/values, even if the money is good.

My Intro to Computer Science 2 course was exceptionally beneficial because it embodied key elements of successful training design. Following the ADDIE framework, the professor clearly analyzed our needs, designing the course with specific, measurable objectives. Each class session built an environment that communicated the relevance of the training and made the content meaningful by connecting programming concepts to real-world applications.

The professor and TAs were incredibly friendly and helped me and other students all the time without making us feel dumb. This created a supportive learning environment where we felt comfortable asking questions. The class was well structured and we (or at least I) could clearly see how much better we had gotten since our first assignment. This progression demonstrated effective “evaluation” of our learning and performance, similar to Kirkpatrick’s framework.

In contrast, my Business Ethics course failed to implement these training design principles. The professor provided lengthy lectures without explaining their relevance to our future careers. The course lacked opportunities to make “the content meaningful” or chances “to practice” the ethical frameworks we were studying. There was minimal feedback beyond midterm and final grades, and content was presented as overwhelming information dumps rather than manageable “chunks”.

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