Learning outcome: 11.2

The students demonstrates the development of his professional attitude through reflection and makes the link with literature about knowledge workers.

Since a young age, I have always been driven and eager to learn. By participating in different events and extra programs I learned a lot last year and gained a lot of extra knowledge outside of Sport Studies. One of these examples was the additional program that I followed, hosted by the university of InHolland in Haarlem. In this program, I learned a lot about physical activity and all the factors that are important in that area. But during that week, I didn’t only gained knowledge, but also made a lot of new connections and I can say that I made a few new friends. I was really interesting to work with people from different universities all over Europe and to be in such an inspirational environment. First, I doubted if I wanted to participate in the program because I wasn’t sure if it was in my interest, but because I had the time I wanted to challenge myself and I can say that I am happy with that decision. I would recommend other students to participate in this program next year, because it learned me a lot and made connections for my future career.

Because the study goes really hard and we are already searching for our final internships, I asked some fellow classmates to reflect on my professional behaviour and asked them for feedback. I did this to gain some insights in how other students look at my behaviour and what they think is most important for me to improve in order to have a good professional attitude. Reading back on the answers some of my students gave me, I can say that some of them are quite true and that is was good to hear it from others than my parents or teachers. For almost every course we have to do a peer assessment, but that normally goes not into details about the behaviour of the student as a sports professional but is more about the course and how you worked within the course. This ‘questionnaire’ helped me to gain more insight about this part of my professional attitude.

One of the things that I am already working on is the emotional control, which Dan named as one of my qualities that needs to be improved. Actually I’m already quite far in that quality and normally I don’t have problems with emotional control at all, but during one of the courses I was in a group with Dan and there was one team member acting rude towards me and my fellow students. When I discussed this problem with the teacher that was leading the course, he was ignoring the points of me and Kikki which led to our disinterest in the course and with that in the project. I still feel kind of sorry for my team members for how I acted, but I think it was also necessary for the class to know that there are some boundaries in how much you can say to each other and what you can and can’t take from someone else.

Looking back on the feedback from my internship, I can say that during my internship I showed a good professional attitude. The feedback was positive and good, and they also said that if I want help in the future I can always ask them and that they see me working in the management area of sports. Before my internship, I wasn’t sure yet which kind of direction I wanted to take for the future, but the conversations I had on my internship and also the feedback received from my internship, my classmates and talks with different teachers showed me that the management side of sports fits me quit well. This comes also to light when I am working for on one of the field hockey teams that I am managing. It comes kind of naturally to me and I feel comfortable in this working area.

One of the reasons why I chose to go for the Honours Program, is so that I can gain more knowledge and can share my experiences with fellow students and bring more knowledge to my work at the hockey club. Making a portfolio for Honours, and choosing an extra program besides the Sport Studies program, gave me the opportunity to develop in areas where I don’t have the time for. But also the Erasmus+ program that I did in Italy, gave me the opportunity to give a presentation for different universities from Europe and to share my knowledge and experiences with them. This was really cool to do and learned me a lot of social aspects and how an European project works. After the trip, I gave a short presentation about my experiences to my classmates, so that they also could learn from me and gain some extra information about how this works as well.