Recognising your personal strengths as a student is one vital element of self-efficacy. Albert Bandura, the psychologist who coined the term, defines self-efficacy as the ‘belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the course of action required to produce given attainments’ (1997:3). In other words, self-efficacy is about how strongly you believe you can be successful.

Take a moment now to reflect on your current level of self-efficacy in terms of how strongly you believe in your capabilities to be a successful university student.

Mark where you instinctively find yourself on this curve at the moment. Note that this is a general model theorised from a research study into students’ experience over a single academic year at a UK business school (Sedgley 2013). You will naturally follow a unique path through your university degree, but you may find it helpful to read in Chapter 2 of the textbook about each of the stages depicted in the model. These may help you recognise that when you do experience any ‘lows’, these are quite normal, and that the latter stages of the model describe strategies for moving beyond those challenges to more successful times.