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How I Experienced Focus During the Semester

Focus, along with the other traits of success, is a very difficult trait for me to properly utilize. I have a rather intense case of ADHD, as well as a plethora of other things, that makes it near impossible for me to really focus the way I need to. I struggled with it this semester as I have every single semester I’ve ever gone through in my educational career. However, as we began to research methods of planning and focusing, I experienced a slight improvement in my ability to focus. While the word “slight” may not seem like a big deal, for me, any sort of improvement in this department is major, and I was so relieved to finally find a method of focus that actually seemed to help my brain keep track of things in any sort of way.

Starting on Week 2, we dove into the research for this trait. We discussed the differences and similarities between the Two Minute Rule and the Sunday Night Ritual-- I, personally, studied the most and found the most results out of the Sunday Night Ritual method. It was simple enough a concept; every Sunday night, at the beginning of your week, you allot yourself the time to sit. You sit and you write down the necessary responsibilities that need to be accomplished throughout the week. You plan out just how you’re going to manage your time with them; you may want to assign 30 minutes a day to a project due at the end of the week, or maybe an hour a day to complete a book you’ve yet to finish. Whatever it may be, you fill those time slots so you can manage your week load a little bit easier. These are your weekly goals. As noted by Kristin Wong in the article “A Sunday Evening Ritual That Makes Monday Less Awful”, it’s suggested that “[g]oals are overrated, but they still serve a purpose,” which I agree with fully. These weekly goals give you the focus and order needed to really complete your week without totally losing your mind. 

While this method was largely a struggle to try and work into my schedule, and I am still trying to really get it into works, it’s been an incredible help. Being able to list down everything that needs to be done really gives me a better perspective on the amount of time that I may need to set aside to finish my week with ease and time left over, and give myself however long I may need to really put the effort in that my assignments deserve. 

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How I Experienced Work During the Semester

Work, of course, was something I was very familiar with throughout the entire class semester. My work process experienced highs and lows, stalls and grand breakthroughs. I am not particularly great at my work just yet; I believe that’s something that will remain a struggle for a good long while until I get the proper mental assistance I need. I do still lag behind, and I fight to get the motivation needed to complete my work-- often waiting until that rush of anxiety and adrenaline I get when completing my work lightning-fast at the very last minute. However, with what we studied on work ethic and how to handle it, I was able to make improvements on my efforts that I genuinely had not expected to make beforehand. 

We began to cover the work trait in Week 5. The first thing we looked into was how that sometimes, despite your best efforts, hard work won’t always get you to where you want to go. We’re always told that hard work will get you anywhere, but this just isn’t true-- and this belief can completely ruin someone’s work ethic and self esteem. Some standards are simply set too high. As acknowledged by Rachel Simmons in the article “It’s Wrong to Tell Our Kids That Hard Work Will Always Pay off”, the “problem comes when these students fail. When they fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, they are crushed by self-blame.” She continues to point out that “[t]his makes it incredibly difficult for students to move on.” 

This, of course, is painfully true. The whole concept that “you are the only one stopping yourself” has lead me to many hard-stops in my life and ability to work. It’s an unhealthy mindset that I’m still in the process of unlearning, and, thanks to this semester, have made a decent amount of progress on. 

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How I Experienced Practice During the Semester

Practice has never really been my thing. In my head, it used to be all-or-nothing-- if I couldn’t get it down first try, what was even the point? Clearly I wasn’t good enough to get it, so why keep trying? This semester pushed me to (very reluctantly) look into methods of practice and actually take them into consideration. When I actually, finally made an attempt at this, my mind was completely blown; I just couldn’t believe there were actually methods of practice that I could actually partake in and enjoy. It totally changed my view on the rest of my work and how I would approach all of my future classes. 

The singular practice method I’ve ever actually looked into and enjoyed was the Feynman Technique we learned in Week 9. An article titled “The Feynman Technique - The Best Learning Method You’ve Never Heard of Before” by the Computer Systems Institute describes it as a technique that “harnesses the power of teaching as an engine for better learning.” The process is simple; first, you collect the basic information needed for whatever it is that you’re studying. You’re going to get it all down in a way that would be easy to explain to and teach whomever you decide you want to teach the subject to. The simpler, the better. Once you’ve written it all out and described the basics to your partner, it’s good to encourage them to ask questions-- this will allow you to find out what you may need to cover in better detail, or what you may want to add into your description to make it easier to absorb. This process is repeated over and over until you’ve finally learned enough that you’re able to describe the subject in total ease; the whole goal is to know it so well that you’re able to teach someone that had been totally clueless to the subject before. 

This was a total game changer for me. I realized how much easier it is to process information from a lesson if I’m able to communicate with someone about it. I’m forced to dumb it down for not only them, but for myself-- which then deepens my understanding on it. As said in the article “The Feynman Technique” by Cam from A&S, you need to “break it down into its simplest form. Attempt to express this in a short, clear way,” and continues to say “[i]t’s easier said than done”-- which it absolutely is. 

While difficult to break things down like this, it did wonders for my studying abilities, and I plan to use it as often as I possibly can in the future. 

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How I Experienced Persistence During the Semester

Persistence does not come naturally for me, unfortunately. It is always hard to come by and I usually have to force myself to persist through courses. However, the deadlines for this class were surprisingly helpful when it came to dealing with this issue. Knowing that I only had a certain amount of time to turn these things in, as opposed to the previous course I had where I could turn things in at any time I felt, pushed me to persist and get my things done when possible.

Not only that, but I managed to persist with my work despite how hectic life was for me this semester. A long moving process made it hard to keep up. Thankfully though, with a lot of determination and understanding, I managed to force myself through the worst of it. 

My perspective on persistence was also almost completely changed when we reached the unit on it on Week 12. We covered two major things-- Imposter Syndrome and failure-- that really opened my eyes to a lot of my own struggles with persistence that I used to look over in the past. 

Imposter Syndrome, as described in the article “What Is Imposter Syndrome?” by Arlin Cuncis, is “an internal experience of believing that you are not as competent as others perceive you to be.” It makes you feel as if you’re lesser than what you’re “pretending” to be, and can lead to struggles with your ability to persist throughout life. This is actually a shockingly common syndrome, and in a study on Imposter Syndrome done by Pubmed Center, it was shown to affect from “9 to 82%“ of the studied group, though “largely depending on the screening tool and cutoff used to assess symptoms.” I, myself, happen to fall within the percentage of people affected by this syndrome. I struggle with it intensely and, through Week 12, gained a lot of insight on the things going on within my own head. It was always something I kept to myself out of fear of rejection. As noted by a psychologist in private practice, “Most people don't talk about it. Part of the experience is that they're afraid they're going to be found out.”

The following week, we looked on failure. Of course, it is commonly stated that failure is just a part of success. Nobody gets it easy when it comes to accomplishing what’s important to them. However, we never really touch on how awful it feels-- as stated by Tracy Brower in the article “How to learn from your failure,” failure is “in reality, ... painful and messy.” She then continues to say that “[a]t best, failure can feel like a waste of time. At worst, it can feel like a personal indictment.” It throws a total stick in the works of your plans. It can fuel your fire or it can destroy your self-esteem. Unfortunately, I’m usually stuck with the latter. The more we learned about this topic, the more I realized it was okay to fail. Like, actually okay. In the article “Managing Yourself: Can You Handle Failure?” by Ben Dattner and Robert Hogan, they go over a study carried out in the 1930s by psychologist Saul Rosenzweig. Here, they describe the broad categories in which different types of people types of people experience failure-- I happen to fall within the intropunitive section, which consists of people “often judging themselves too harshly and imagining failures where none exist.”

Thanks to the in-depth studies on these, I was able to realize where exactly I stand. This pushed me to find ways to aid myself in my struggles and push to better myself and my persistence. 

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The Life Lessons of My Mentor

Previously this semester, we held interviews with our mentors to discuss their journeys to success. Throughout this time, I learned that success has a very different meaning for each individual person, and I had some very deep discussions with my mentor regarding his life and the steps he took to achieve his personal success. 

My mentor, Ezekiel Grayson, did not have an easy upbringing. His road to success was a long and difficult one. Thanks to almost non-stop mistreatment in his life, there were multiple times where he just wanted to give up on his dreams of escape. Some days completely clouded over the light at the end of the tunnel. Years on end looked bleak and unforgiving.

Despite the clouds overhead, Ezekiel knew he had to get himself out of there. He had people that loved and cared for him dearly, his romantic partner included, and they were a big part of why he found the power to push himself through the worst of it. After years and years of hard work, he finally broke free of his toxic environment, moving out to live with his partner and an additional roommate. 

Of course, there are still struggles. Ezekiel has a hard time with mental health and undoubtedly will for a very long time. Sometimes money is tight, and work schedules are stressful; there is no complete perfection in any situation. However, he’s finally succeeded in finally being able to live his own life, with his own choices. He keeps his head high and pushes through to make things as good as possible for himself and those he resides with now. 

“The first steps are always the hardest,” he said, “but you need to suck it up and go right on up them. You’ll be happy you did it later.”

From my talks with him, I learned just how important it is to get myself through the hard parts of my own journey to success. I’ve often taken hits and accepted it, not allowing myself the time to recover afterwards; I believed that if I couldn’t do everything flawlessly first go, then I just wasn’t strong enough or good enough to achieve what I wanted. However, he reminded me that I’m not as weak as my brain has led me to believe I am. 

His heartfelt encouragement alongside the lessons we learned about failure on the road to success have deeply affected the way I view my own future now. Both him and my time in class have reminded me that I need to allow myself to have those bad moments; they’re learning moments, preparing you more thoroughly for the problems you may face in the future. I try my best to keep these lessons in mind as I plan more in detail for my future journeys. 

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How I’ll Use My New-Found Knowledge for Future Endeavors

I’ve learned a variety of incredibly helpful things throughout this semester. Study techniques, scheduling methods, how to plan for success, and how to process failure-- not only are these important for my academic career, these are things I can use to improve my everyday life. 

I plan on using these techniques regularly during my upcoming classes and job opportunities. Most notably, the Feynman Technique and the Sunday Night Ritual. I found these methods to be the easiest for my brain to really latch onto and process, which is a difficult task due to the weird ways my brain works in. 

I expect these plans will be the most helpful when it comes to my on-going struggle with motivation and procrastination. There will be, without a doubt, struggles in my future careers regarding these two things. 

I have always procrastinated. I have always had a hard time keeping up my motivation. These two issues have tied together and created a nightmarish environment for me when it comes to trying and get any sort of work done. It would be foolish of me to believe that the previously mentioned techniques will magically erase these issues for me; I know there will be many times in which I put things to the last minute despite how I use the Sunday Night Ritual and the Feynman Technique. 

However, now that I know these methods will actually work to some extent for me, it’ll be so much easier to apply them to my academic and regular working life. Not only will I push myself to keep up these methods, but I plan on reaching out to the people within my support system more often as a means to hold myself responsible for my work. Peer pressure is never pleasant, but sometimes necessary when it comes to completing my work a minute before its deadline, and I can’t wait to see the positive impact all of these plans will have on my future workloads. 

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The Progress of My Writing Throughout the Semester

I’ve been writing for as long as I remember. Due to how long I’ve been working at paper and keyboard, my writing has gone through countless stages of progress; each and every year that passes brings change to the way I write my papers and stories. This semester was no different-- however, it did push me through more progress than what I’ve collectively made the past few years. 

When it comes to writing, my technique has always been to write whatever comes to mind first. I allow myself to ramble on and on, throwing in whatever detail I deem necessary, and never touching it again as soon as I finish. Second drafts have never been something I’ve bothered with. They aren’t something I can bother with, really; if I were to really make multiple drafts to get my paper as well-written as possible, I would never turn in an assignment. 

The process of forcing myself to really look back and edit bits and pieces of my assignments was a tough one. At first, I did too little or too much; I often found myself seething by the end of it, hating every word I’d written but not sure how to make additional improvements. I’d give up or rewrite it all until my head hurt. Now, at the end of the semester, I’ve found myself at a comfortable in-between. I know what to look at and edit, and what to leave alone. This progress has heightened my confidence in my writing ability and I’m happy to see the steps I’ve taken throughout the semester.