1.4 Your Starting Point
Your Starting Point
A private snapshot of where you are today. Nothing here is graded or shared. You will answer these exact questions again at the end of the course — the distance between the two versions is your growth.
A notes app, a document, the back of a notebook. It does not matter where — it matters that you can return to it. Answering these in your head does not work; you will not remember what you actually thought.
Four questions
Question 1 — The moment you stayed silent
Think of a recent situation where you stayed silent when you wanted to speak up. It can be from university, work, family, anywhere.
Write at least three sentences: what was the situation, what did you want to say, and what stopped you? Be specific about the stopping part. "I was shy" is not an answer. "I thought if I was wrong in front of those people I would look stupid for the rest of term" is an answer.
Question 2 — The skill you already know you need
What is one soft skill you know you need to develop before going abroad? Why that one?
At least two sentences. The why matters more than the what. If you already know the answer to this, you are ahead of most people.
Question 3 — How you would describe yourself
How would you describe your communication style to someone who has never met you?
At least three sentences. Try to describe it neutrally, without apologising for it or praising it. This is harder than it sounds and it is the point of the exercise.
Question 4 — The nervous one
Complete this sentence: "When I think about studying or working alongside people from ten different countries, the thing I feel most nervous about is…"
Answer honestly. Nobody reads this but you. The honest answer usually contains the thing this course most needs to fix for you.
Rate yourself: the baseline
Score each skill from 1 to 10 as you are today. Not as you hope to be, and not as you were on your best day. Copy this table down — you will fill in the second column at the end of the course.
| Skill | My rating now (1–10) | At course end |
|---|---|---|
| Speaking up in group settings | ||
| Disagreeing respectfully | ||
| Presenting myself in interviews | ||
| Networking with strangers | ||
| Handling criticism without shutting down | ||
| Taking credit for my own work | ||
| Managing stress under pressure |
Most people inflate this table slightly, and the inflated version is useless. A 4 you are honest about is worth more than a 7 you are protecting, because only the 4 tells you where to spend your effort. If every row is a 7 or 8, go back and be harder on yourself.
Look at your lowest two scores. Somewhere in Modules 2 to 4 there is a lesson built specifically for each of them. When you reach it, slow down — that is your lesson, and skimming it is the most expensive thing you can do in this course.