Uncertainty
Introduction
Your ability to deal with uncertain times will influence your experience of university life. Uncertainty is normal, but it can produce anxiety when we feel a loss of control over our situation. For most of us our natural reaction is to want to self-regulate and return to a sense of control. This exercise will help you to find out more about the characteristics of how you deal with uncertainty and discover alternative strategies.
You are about to read through three typical university scenarios where
students feel a degree of uncertainty. In each case, when you see a
statement underlined, click on it and a set of buttons will appear. You need
to decide whether you think the response is an "emotion (E)" or "action (A)" based
response and whether it is positive (+) or negative (-). To change your answer, just
click on the sentence again.
Feedback
When a person deals with the anxiety and stress that uncertainty can typically create there are a range of ways to respond. If the situation creates unmanageable levels of stress, the person immediately feels the need to self-regulate themselves back to a sense of control. This can be through a series of practical or emotional actions that bring stress back to a manageable level or through mental manipulation of your view of the situation you are in.
It is by managing your emotional responses that you can often clear the way to take a more action based response to your situation. Conversely, sometimes taking immediate actions can help diffuse emotion and also allow progress to be made. It is likely that anyone feeling anxiety will engage in some negative coping behaviour before moving on. The key is to shift to more positive behaviours early enough not to make the situation feel worse or prevent it from ever being resolved.
Reflection
Describe an uncertain situation that you have experienced over the last
two years. Then, read through the typical emotional and action
oriented behaviours below and reflect on which were typical responses for you
in that situation. Click on up to four positive and four negative that you identify with.
Action Planning
Your Plan
This is "Your Plan". It includes the issues that you have identified through
this part of Gro and any action points that you have decided to take to
move you forward plus any notes and thoughts you have written down
along the way. Identifying precisely what your next steps will be after
completing this exercise on uncertainty will make it more likely that
you will make progress.
You have now finished this section. You can print, download (as pdf) or email yourself a copy of your plan. To move on to another section return to the Home page.
About Gro
It is widely acknowledged that to successfully embark on developing your employability or choose a career that there are some fundamental attributes that need to be in place. If you think some of the headings below represent potential areas of development for you then continue reading about the components of Gro and consider how you can make the most of them:
- Dealing with transition and change. Moving into a career beyond university is partly about the ability to manage the process of moving between different phases of your life. This aspect of Gro is designed to help you: develop your awareness of the change process; learn from past experiences of change and to apply it to future change.
- Self-confidence. To get started on the range of activities that future recruiters seek, such as sports, committees, societies, part time work, work experience, placements and more, requires a degree of self-confidence. This section is designed to help you: reflect on your level of self-confidence and, should you need to, review suggestions and make plans as to how you may go about improving your own self-confidence.
- Dealing with uncertainty. Making decisions about the future is all about your willingness to start dealing with a degree of uncertainty. Uncertainty can be disconcerting and there is a range of ways of responding, some of which are more productive than others. This tool helps you to: understand what the different responses are, consider your own typical responses and plan your approach to a future "uncertain" situation.
- Living in the present. Many people find career decision making challenging for a whole range of reasons. This can lead to people dwelling on past regrets and worrying about the future rather than focusing on what they can do right now that is productive and will help them make progress. This tool is designed to: point out the pitfalls of living in the past and future, to help you spot your own patterns of thinking, and to consider how you can convert this into activities that are more productive.
- Your control philosophy. To start work on researching career options and considering your future direction requires a desire to take control. This section of Gro helps you to: understand whether you have an internal or external control philosophy, what the advantages and disadvantages of this are, advises those who want to make a shift in their control philosophy how to do this, and provides an opportunity to plan action.
Although the reasons for developing Gro are about helping students become more employable and more successful at making career choices, using Gro has the potential to benefit many areas of your university experience.
Consider which of these areas of development you feel you would benefit from reflecting on. This may involve looking at just one or two sections. Once you have completed a section you will have the option of printing, downloading or emailing your results, feedback and plans. Gro does not save data for you, so unless you save your work and then return to the same computer, you will not be able to access it again. This means it is important to complete an exercise in one go and to ensure you either print, email or download the feedback so you can use it again.
Remember, if you are reflecting on your own development and establishing any development plans it is a good idea to save this in iLearn which is a secure central place which you can access throughout your degree.
If your reflection results in a small number of aims and tangible activities you can take forward then Gro will have done its job in helping you on your way.
Sources of inspiration
The whole concept of Gro was borne out of reading through various definitions and models of employability, including "The key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability" by D'Acre Poole and Sewell, 2004 and "The Heuristic Model of Employability" by Fugate et al 2004.
- Confidence: the self-belief questionnaire was adapted to a University context from the well regarded "General Self Efficacy scale" produced by Jerusalem and Schwarzer 1995.
- Control: the locus of control questionnaire was adapted to a University context from the 'Internal Control Index' questionnaire developed by Duttweiler 1984.
- Uncertainty: much of the work here builds on the concept of 'self-regulation theory' produced by Fenton O'Creevy et al 2003 and Folkman's work on stress and coping processes (1984).
- Transition: draws on the "Theories of Transition" by Hopson produced in "Life-span development: frameworks, accounts and strategies" in Sugarman 2001. Case studies are provided by O'Regan's work in 2009 on "Learning to be a graduate: employability and identity in the first years after university."
- Past, present future: draws on the work of "The Art of Happiness" by Cutler and "The Power of Now" by Ekhart Tolle.
Credits
The Gro project was led and written by Tania Lyden with contributions from Bill Gothard and Sandhya Patel. IT programming was undertaken by Ruben Arakelyan and Chris Flanagan all from the Careers Advisory Service at the University of Reading. The project was funded by CCMS.
User guide
Gro consists of five sections. You can complete them in any order. Some sections are quicker to do than others. You don't have to do them all at the same time.
Soring results
When you have completed a section and clicked submit your results will be stored on the computer that you use to complete the test for up to a whole year (unless you delete your browsing history) and will be accessible to you on that computer provided you the same the web browser. Do be aware that if you stop part way through a section, however, your results won't be saved.
Changing results
Once you have clicked 'submit' you can't go back and alter your responses unless you delete all the results for a whole section. When you return to Gro after completing one or more sections you will see a gold bar near the top of the screen. The gold bar shows that you have results stored from a previous session. If you want to remove these results, ie to re-do a section, click on 'forget me'.
Using results
All your information and results are treated confidentially by Gro and are not shared with anyone else.
At the end of each section you will get an action plan. You can email this to yourself or download it. We'd recommend that you store a copy in your iLearn space for your Personal Development Planning.
Personal support
Some of the issues that Gro encourages you to reflect on may potentially create some personal concerns or anxiety for you. If you find you are in this position and would like extra support regarding any of the issues covered here then do seek help. You can:
- Speak to a Careers Adviser if you want to discuss an issue related to your career planning or employability.
- Meet with your Personal Tutor if you want to discuss concerns related to your academic studies or require general personal support.
- Contact Counselling Services if you want confidential, emotional advice on either a one-to-one basis or through a course run by the service.
- Go to Student Services for study advice and more.
- Talk to The Students' Union for a range of support.
Contact us
There are a number of reasons why you may wish to contact us regarding your use of Gro:
- You may want to give us positive or critical feedback on how useful you found Gro.
- You may wish to point out any links that are not working.
- You may want assistance with an aspect of the tool.
- You may have suggestions about how the tool could be improved.
If so, then please contact us at example@example.com, stating that your enquiry is about Gro and providing a full description.