Describe your core personal values.

Explain a situation where you have had an ethical decision to make. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made, and the consequences of your action.

This situation took a place during the vaccine phase of the covid in New Zealand. My feelings about the vaccination have always been controversial, I have never been a strong anti-vaxer or pro-vaxer. But in the light of the upcoming pandemic, I made a decision to get the vaccine and the strongest reason was "we are in this together". I knew that normal life for everyone would come only if there would be enough people who'd got the vaccine and I wanted to support this society because I always felt supported by this society. Yes, the side effects of the vaccine could be bad, very bad (I actually still have pain in my muscle in my arm where I got the injection), but I was willing to take this risk the same as millions people all over the world.

Describe how your culture has influenced your values and identity.

I am from Russia and it's a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because there are many things I love about Russia - literature, sence of humour, selfirony, food, resilience. Living in New Zealand I am trying to keep all those thing as a part of my own culture.

It is a curse because many things I didn't like about my life in Russia and those things made me leave my homeland and loose a real connection with my family and friends who are still living there.

Describe your strengths and limitations.

Evaluate your strengths and limitations in terms of your learning and career development

My biggest limitation is the fact that English is not my native language. Usually I have no problems with explaining myself, but often I feel frustrated, because I can see my mistakes (and there are whole bunch of mistakes which I've never see, of couse). I feel like I could do so much more if I don't have this limitation.

Identify which of your strengths might help you in your learning journey and how they intersect with learning obstacles.

I have experience in studying and this experience is my strength. Besides this, I have a positive attitude and with positive attitude there are no obstacles, just interesting problems which I need to solve.

Share an example from your experience of where you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss the strategies you used at that time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now and why.

The best strategy which helps me a lot when I am working with other people is to remember a simple thing - people always have a reason for doing or saying something and the fact that I don't know their reason doesn't make their ideas stupid or worthless. And sometimes you don't even need to understand why people do things this way, you just need to trust them and their experience.