Reflection on Goals and Self-Renewal

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 I have never really thought about my decision to enroll in my Master 's program from the perspective of self-renewal , but after reading chapters two and ten from Gardner 's book , Multiple Intelligence , I was inspired to take a constructive look at my own life by reflecting on my true reasoning for wanting to enroll in the Administrative Leadership Masters ' Program at Oklahoma University . How have my past inabilities and excuses to break free of my own prison system prevented me from achieving self-renewal ? My intentions within

this essay are to show how Gardner 's theories and concepts of Self-Renewal and Commitment have invited me as an individual to truly reflect upon my own prison system by exploring my inner thoughts , goals and overall outlook on life itself

When I reflect upon my early childhood , I have always found that my most enjoyable time for learning new things was when I was in the Fifth and Sixth grades . I felt like a sponge during those years in school . On most occasions , you could find me in the public library , which was located right across the street from my elementary school , voraciously reading about whatever subject I was interested in at that time . I truly loved reading about far away places and history . Those years of my life , I would have to say , were my dreamy years . Dreaming of a time and place in the future when one day , I would have made enough money from my hard work of learning to buy my mother and grandmother a house or simply dreaming about what life would have been like during another time and in another place . Somewhere along the line of junior high school and high school , however , I began losing that enthusiasm or self-renewal for learning . Looking back on it now , I could think of several excuses for becoming stagnated in life , including the school system itself and the methods teachers used . Nevertheless , my desire to fulfill my inner promise that I had made to myself to provide my mother and grandmother with a house was always there . I knew deep down inside that I had the basic learning foundation , and all I had to do in life was to put the pieces of the puzzle together yet , for some reason or another I became intimidated and scared to venture outside of my box . I started to listen to other people , including certain family members whose opinions I valued deeply , who failed in their pursuit of self-renewal . Yes , the fear of failure did settle in , and like many I learned to simply settle

I became very comfortable within my own environment , only venturing out and exploring new ideas if the risk was moderately low . I guess you could say I was one of those individuals in life who resisted change I only had me to worry about , until the birth of my first child . Back then , that was my first wake up call that I...