Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Reflection Post

Use your 1st Semester reflection sheet to write a blog post on how you did last semester and how you plan to improve your academic performance this semester.


Last semester of school was really good due to the fact that I continued with amazing grades that really satisfied my parents and myself. However, this is the semester in which I have to look back my academic and time management flaws and, based on those, start planning for this semester and the following two years.



I have to admit, last year, I procrastinated a lot, and even though I turned everything in and got good grades, I still consider it a major flaw of my studies. That is said because I would leave everything to the last minute which meant I had to hurry to finish it, which always resulted in a work that could have been ten times better if I just sat down and completed it with patience. But no, I wanted to watch YouTube videos all day and then rush all my homework so I could go to sleep. Procrastination is really bothering me so I will need to find ways to fight it back. 

Also, another factor that is in my way is the laziness that does not make me want to cross that extra mile. Sometimes I just do work with just enough effort to get a good grade, instead of striving for the best and getting the best possible grade. It can be only some points or even decimals of difference from one normal piece of work and one with my best efforts, but this difference will matter immensely in the futre of college application and IB. So whenever I feel lazy about homework I should remember some wise words and watch this video:

Now the biggest of my flaws is time management. I never actually tried to manage my schedule because I was really lazy to do start a list or something similar; this serves to show how lazy I am to even the most simple stuff. However, as I have been receiving a lot of work and doing some work outside the school, I will need to organize my time so I can have a balance between studying and resting or doing nothing. I know that I will have to sacrifice some of my free tiem but in the end it will be worth it. With this balance I will not need to stress on my work, I will not leave everything to the last minute and I will have to do anything fun afterwards. For this I have found 11 simple tasks that will help me on this specific issue.

One big event that helped me reflect about the coming years is the PSAT. The results of it were not what woke me up, but when I was doing the test I saw how unprepared I was for it, so I decided to talk to my school´s College Counselor to see what I did not know about the SAT and the IB course. I learned a lot about what the Collages require from a student and about the SATs, which I will look into it and practice for it. Now that I am in tenth grade, I should be doing my best and preparing myself so I can achieve my goals in the future.