Productivity, Goal Settings and Habits=A Successful Student

So far this year has been very busy for me, trying to balance school and my highly competitive basketball. My goal is always to be as successful as possible in all of my classes and meet the expectations I have set out for myself. However at points I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I have and always struggle trying to balance it into my busy schedule. This year my mPOLs are going to be about tackling these issues and creating better work habits!! As well as answering the question “How are you going to progress as a learner before the end of the school year?”

Humanities 

First let’s take a step back and look at the learning I’ve done so far this year specifically the winter exhibition. This by far is the work I’m the most proud so far, not just because it made me step out of my comfort zone but because it was the most fascinating way to learn a unit. I got to expand my knowledge of the 1950s in America while at the same time I was learning production and planning skills that were brand new to me. A big part of this unit was unit was reading the crucible, but why the crucible a play in 1860s Salem and how do they connect to the 1950s ? Well the play actually has a lot of connection the 1950s specifically the communism scare in American during this time. The play was writing by Arthur Miller while the red scare was a huge part of society. The witch trials in the play were a representation for the McCarthy hearings. It was very interesting to see the connections of how historical events can relate to modern day.

This exhibition was the first project our class worked all together on and let me just say I think it worked out really well, everyone played upon their strengths while also getting the opportunity to step outside of their comfort zone. During the interactive performance I was the guide which was the character who took the group throughout the entire experience and had the most lines. At first I thought this might me a little bit of challenge as I’m not the best at reading a script off of paper in front of people however what I did find out was that I’m able to memorize scripts pretty fast. Throughout the entire experience I didn’t use my script once which is something I am very proud of! This was an amazing project that taught me so much about communist America as well as 1950s life in a fun and educational way. After putting the entire project into account there is definitely a skill that I would like to progress throughout the rest of the year that I thought I lacked during this project. This skill is leadership. Leadership is an amazing skill that is very necessary to develop as a learning, It also helps helps to build upon other skills such as team work and time management.  I will definitely try to take more of a leadership role in the next group project as this is something that I feel I need to work on.

Here are some photos from the exhibition:

PGP 

In years past of mPOLs I have set goals for myself that follow the same context of not procrastinate, or becoming better at time management. Nonetheless I have never truly followed up with these goals for an extended period of time. Luckily this year we have an entire course geared towards helping us succeed with our growth, productivity, and habits called PGP (Personal Growth Plan).

The course focuses on helping us succeed and set achievable academic and personal goals. By following a couple steps of time blocking and goal setting, PGP will lead to a successful outcome not only during this school year but for the rest of life. 

At first glance I wasn’t a big fan of the idea of this course as it seemed like it was going to take a lot of time just to organize my schedule. However now that I’ve started to get into the rhythm of it, it’s turning out to be very useful inside and outside of school. I’ve found that during these past couple weeks I’ve starting to be more productive with my time studying and doing homework. I’m not perfect at time management but throughout the year I will become better at using my calendar and Things to time block my schedule. 

My favourite part this course so far is the PGP journal. To be honest I didn’t start this journal until after winter break as I was procrastinating (time management is something that I can definitely improve on with the help of this course). Once I got started on the creation of the journal I really enjoyed it! I got to personalize it and had a lot of fun doing it, I even took inspiration from Pinterest on bullet journaling! 

Here are a couple of the pages from my PGP journal:

Also I got to outline my goals which is something I’ve done briefly in the past but not will this much detail. This was very helpful as I have big goals I want to achieve including within playing university basketball at a NCAA div 1 school. On top of helping me Outline the steps I’m going to take to achieve my goals, the journal also helped make it a concrete plan. There is something about writing down something on a piece of paper that’s so different from than typing. This goal setting and journaling is definitely something I will be continuing throughout the year for PGP but also just for fun!!

A big part of this journal was creating a dream board including photos, quotes and other inspirations. I decided to make a basketball focused dream board as it’s a huge part of my life and is definitely going to have an impact throughout the rest of my high school and university. On my dream board I included universities I want to attend, different quotes that inspire me and photos that will help guild me in the right direction towards my dream. 

this is my dream board:

Both the exhibition experiences and PGP journaling will help me progress as a learning throughout this rest of this year and in future years. I will use the knowledge and skills I have learned and apply them to future projects. Such as my goal setting when wanting to finish a project by a certain time or obtain a certain grade. Or my planning, productions and team work skills form the 1950s exhibition in all my assignments and group activities/projects. I will continue to progress as a leaner and be an open minded learned when it comes to skills such of time blocking which will be beneficial to me in the long run. By applying my time blocking to my schedule I will be able to be more effective and efficient with my time. My understanding and will to learn will progress me to achieve the academic standards I set forth for myself. I will continue to growth as a learner and am excited to see where my learning progress’s to throughout this year!

Now here is my question for you:

“After listening to my presentation and knowing that the time blocking is something that I’m struggling with, what do you think is the next step for me to become better at time blocking and scheduling?”

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