This week in ISM, I had a lot of other activities bombarding my calendar. All-Region preparation, Academic Decathlon preparation for our first meet, making up quizzes and tests, and keeping up with ISM assignments and scheduling interviews. Luckily, I had a bit of foresight as I finished one of three assignments (all due Friday) on Monday, another on Thursday, and the last on Friday. I'm extremely thankful that I had planned ahead, and I will attempt to do so for the upcoming week, as we start our display boards and Academic Decathlon comes up. Even though I have a general idea of how I need to manage my time, I will still admit that there have been times where I get home at 9 PM (after tutoring and an orchestra concert) and just stare at my laundry list of homework, studying, practicing piano, and college applications. It could be disheartening to awe at the towering pile of burdens, but every time I was about to sign off in resignation, I thought back to the advice from one of my previous weekly posts- "...I would have been more efficient and spent less time simply stressing out. It's easy to give up when you look at the long list of tasks to complete, but if you focus on finishing one small task at a time, you'll be done before you know it." Not only did this reminder keep me hopeful, but also I was able to focus on finishing tasks and eliminating distractions.
Courage is key, too- part of getting through challenges is not fearing the future. How many times do we give up because we fear not being able to finish our work in time? Or we fear the workload and decide to compromise? I would like to keep this mindset for the rest of my career and through ISM. I don't plan on ever compromising the quality of my work on assessments or original work because of poor time management and fear. On a less abstract note, hopefully AcDec goes well this Saturday, and I am also excited to meet Dr. Gui in 2 weeks! I contacted her this week and she replied within minutes. I have heard great things from her colleagues at SMU, who recommended her to me because she's a successful woman in engineering. I'm also brainstorming for original work, and will see where that goes next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment