Start of a New Year and Some Thoughts on the Last...
This site... is practically dead, but I am not going to let it die so quickly. To start off this year right, and to ensure that I start writing something each day, I will begin the year with a bit of a recap on some of the stuff that happened last semester, particularly what I learned and what I now realize I need to do.
Firstly, this semester began with me wishing for better days, as my mental state was not the best. School never frightens me, but all of my social problems came to bite me, causing quite a big problem for my morale. I went through multiple stages of grief, from anger ( which seemed to help my productivity ) to despair ( which obviously did not ). What seemed to help, however, were the people that did not decide to make my life a living hell. Without them this semester would have been a heck of a lot worse off. That said, I think I am starting to get over it, with my own courage surprising me when I thought I was all out of luck.
Besides social anxieties, my academic year was relatively uneventful. I experienced, for the first time in awhile, someone trying to out-work me in a team environment, which I found really interesting and hope to see more of here ( just so I can figure out a clean response to that and think with my head rather than my heart ). For that class, I ended up pushing myself on a singular aspect of the project instead, letting that person control the reigns of the team, but perhaps next time I should try to be a bit more aggressive ( though we shall see ). Besides this team experiment, the year was quite a scheduling nightmare, as I juggled lots of classwork with lots of outside work, completely destroying any and all free-time I had. However, interestingly, I seemed to not mind the constant struggle, especially when my results showed at the end of the semester. For the next semester, my plan is to struggle even more academically, and see where my current boundaries are so I can shoot for the higher tier of students here.
Going on to overall motivation and energy, I believe this is what my current year will need to focus on. Between strengthening my mental fortitude to handle all of the stress I feel in social environments and gaining energy through actually working out every other day, my year is already chock-full of potential things to think about and potential new ideas to test. In terms of new tools to the ever-expanding study arsenal, I have some new stuff to look forward to getting better at, an example of which include:
Task Hero. This has been the first time I have used a task list seriously in my academic carreer, and I think that it has helped me stay on top of my assignments. However, I do need to get better at keeping it up to date and at ensuring I get the most of out of it, as I am struggling to set my goals down on paper and then realizing them in what I want to do. I think, for next semester, I will move some of TH onto other platforms so I can stay on top of things better, though that will depend on my ability to use other apps efficiently and on my ability to leave, as I am in a group on it on the site.
Motivation pre-notes. One of the ideas I had while taking notes was to start sessions with a little scribble on why I am doing what I am doing, to ensure I have a desire when I start studying that I can achieve. While this seemed to work, I think its better relegated to one of these journals a week, as it takes time away from each session and can lead to minutes of procrastination if I am not careful planning my day out.
Boogieboard Sync. I finally got one working for an entire semester! It turns out the problems I was having with the devices LCD and saving features were, curiously, due to the case I bought from BoogieBoard. Weirdly enough, the case had strong magnets that messed up the tech inside, causing problems with the saving feature and also causing security alerts when I passed through library turnstiles. With those complaints gone, my only problem with the BB is that the app is now really old and somewhat hard to use. With all of my notes relegated to the app ( as the evernote and dropbox features would not sync ), I believe that I'll have to communicate to the company about my problems and see what I can do from there.
Altogether, this year was pretty interesting, and I need to work on keeping my strength throughout the long semester, as the difficulty should only increase from here.
Firstly, this semester began with me wishing for better days, as my mental state was not the best. School never frightens me, but all of my social problems came to bite me, causing quite a big problem for my morale. I went through multiple stages of grief, from anger ( which seemed to help my productivity ) to despair ( which obviously did not ). What seemed to help, however, were the people that did not decide to make my life a living hell. Without them this semester would have been a heck of a lot worse off. That said, I think I am starting to get over it, with my own courage surprising me when I thought I was all out of luck.
Besides social anxieties, my academic year was relatively uneventful. I experienced, for the first time in awhile, someone trying to out-work me in a team environment, which I found really interesting and hope to see more of here ( just so I can figure out a clean response to that and think with my head rather than my heart ). For that class, I ended up pushing myself on a singular aspect of the project instead, letting that person control the reigns of the team, but perhaps next time I should try to be a bit more aggressive ( though we shall see ). Besides this team experiment, the year was quite a scheduling nightmare, as I juggled lots of classwork with lots of outside work, completely destroying any and all free-time I had. However, interestingly, I seemed to not mind the constant struggle, especially when my results showed at the end of the semester. For the next semester, my plan is to struggle even more academically, and see where my current boundaries are so I can shoot for the higher tier of students here.
Going on to overall motivation and energy, I believe this is what my current year will need to focus on. Between strengthening my mental fortitude to handle all of the stress I feel in social environments and gaining energy through actually working out every other day, my year is already chock-full of potential things to think about and potential new ideas to test. In terms of new tools to the ever-expanding study arsenal, I have some new stuff to look forward to getting better at, an example of which include:
Task Hero. This has been the first time I have used a task list seriously in my academic carreer, and I think that it has helped me stay on top of my assignments. However, I do need to get better at keeping it up to date and at ensuring I get the most of out of it, as I am struggling to set my goals down on paper and then realizing them in what I want to do. I think, for next semester, I will move some of TH onto other platforms so I can stay on top of things better, though that will depend on my ability to use other apps efficiently and on my ability to leave, as I am in a group on it on the site.
Motivation pre-notes. One of the ideas I had while taking notes was to start sessions with a little scribble on why I am doing what I am doing, to ensure I have a desire when I start studying that I can achieve. While this seemed to work, I think its better relegated to one of these journals a week, as it takes time away from each session and can lead to minutes of procrastination if I am not careful planning my day out.
Boogieboard Sync. I finally got one working for an entire semester! It turns out the problems I was having with the devices LCD and saving features were, curiously, due to the case I bought from BoogieBoard. Weirdly enough, the case had strong magnets that messed up the tech inside, causing problems with the saving feature and also causing security alerts when I passed through library turnstiles. With those complaints gone, my only problem with the BB is that the app is now really old and somewhat hard to use. With all of my notes relegated to the app ( as the evernote and dropbox features would not sync ), I believe that I'll have to communicate to the company about my problems and see what I can do from there.
Altogether, this year was pretty interesting, and I need to work on keeping my strength throughout the long semester, as the difficulty should only increase from here.
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