This last segment of the school year has been very demanding. I have found challenges in the most unexpected projects, and have been partaking in the unhealthy cycle of constantly being waited down with work. As the dust settles, I am able to clearly see what I can do to improve and upgrade my performance for the rest of the year. It has been a long trip to get to where I am today, and I’m prepared to bring my future work to the next level. 

We started the year off early with a summer reading assignment. Our class assigned the book The Age of Radiance, by Craig Nelson, a long but fulfilling read. Even at the beginning of the year, it was incredibly hard to motivate to read this novel. Now granted, this was heightened because it was the middle of summer, and also signified the start of school. I knew that I had to create a reason to motivate, otherwise I wouldn’t finish the book.

Now, if I had read Atomic Habits by James Clear first, I would have known exactly what to do to complete this task, a book assigned five months later. I decided that I would have to create a scenario where I was forced to complete the task of reading the book. I achieved this by introducing the book to my parents. Once I had done this, I knew there was no turning back, I would have to read the book.  Although this created another problem logistically.

We used Audible as our platform to listen to the book as a family.

There was no way that I was going to sit down with my parents and read the same book off of my iPad. The solution to this problem was simple, all I had to do was to download the book on Audible so we could listen to it together. It just so happened that we were traveling on a three-hour car drive down to my grandparent’s house that upcoming week. This gave us a total of six hours (there and back) of uninterrupted listening time with my family, about one-third of the entire book. This really helped me get into a pattern of listening to the book in my free time and ultimately, helped me to finish the book in the long run. 

Overcoming challenges like these have been a big part of these last few months. Although there are many positive examples of exceeding in certain subjects, it is certainly more emotionally difficult to go back through some of the harder times this year. Balancing my classes in and out of PLP and the amount of school work has definitely been an ongoing struggle, and has made my learning process more difficult.

This is especially relevant in PLP because the amount of homework can build up to a tipping point. A point where school feels like a circus balancing act in front of a crowd of all of your peers. One of my main goals this year is to not reach this point as I’ve done in the past. Now, this could mean anything from getting my work done earlier, to separating want from necessity. I found in most projects that my lowest points were filled with the most learning, which has both positive and negative aspects.  In some scenarios, this time helped to introduce a creative breakthrough, where as in others, it created a sleep-deprived mess. Achieving this balance, also talked about in Atomic Habits, by James Clear, is a true measure of success.

There have been a few different examples of achieving this balance in my work, one being the Beat Poetry Unit in Humanities. I found this unit very rewarding in the work to free time ratio that I previously mentioned. There were many different ways I achieved this balance, although one is definitely worth sharing. I started off this unit finding ways to think in advance and structure homework so it didn’t eventually pile up. When a new project was introduced, I would work on parts of the project separately to help lessen the load. I exemplified this in many different ways, for example writing 250 words every/every other day before the final blog post was due, or formatting the poems in a single document with the same font and margin.

These tactics helped to spread the workload over many different days and sometimes led to turning assignments in early. Unfortunately, these tactics aren’t perfect and in certain scenarios are not ideal. You have to know all of the criteria, and hope it doesn’t change before you start the assignment early, otherwise you will end up doing more lesser quality work than was originally asked. It definitely is a trial and error process, which in this case is incredibly rewarding when you get it right. 

This first part of the school year has been filled to the brim with interesting and pertinent learning. Although I have faced new challenges, I have found solutions that have helped me get to where I am today. In the fashion of a mPol post I would like to pose the thoughtful question: 

Throughout this year I have faced many challenges mostly surrounding balancing my workload. What other methods would you suggest that could help me at the moment, or in the future tackling this dilemma?