Introduction
In this project, I have written down and reflected on my thoughts. In addition, I expressed them visually in photos to make my point even clearer. I used my thoughts that I collected, and learned how to use them towards self-improvement by imagining myself in 5 years from now. This has been a very exciting project, and I must say that I have learned a great deal from it.
Thinking in writing
Looking at my day of thoughts, I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about school, the future, food and how to manage my time in the best possible way. I am not very good at managing my time, so it actually surprised me how much time I spent thinking about it. When I woke up the morning on my “Day of Thoughts”, I had to rush down to the subway without eating breakfast in order to get to school on time, and I thought to myself that I should have gone to bed earlier that night before, but I find myself so easily caught up in small things and I forget what time it is.
Thoughts about school is popping up in my head all through the day, I usually think about homework I have to do and processing the things I have learned through the day. I tend to spend more time thinking about homework, then I spend on doing it, which is stupid. I think the reason for this is that, again I’m letting myself get distracted too easy. I keep telling myself “A little break would be nice” and suddenly I find myself watching Netflix or looking at Facebook or Instagram instead. I would rather do it effectively and be done with it, rather than spend hours of looking back and forth between my book and phone. Food is also something that is constantly on my mind, when I’m in class I tend to think about what I want for lunch and dinner today, I start to plan my meals for the whole day. I guess food is important to us humans by instinct, but to me I think it’s more important than most people and it is kind of annoying to think about it all the time.
I have noticed that I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about homework, although I always stall doing it until the last minute. This is something I want to be better on in the future, I think it would help me a lot to put my phone away until I’m through studying.
Thinking visually
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/15999988033/
I found myself thinking a lot about the future in my day of thoughts. I’m not sure of what I want to become, and what I want to do. So I took this picture of the sky, because the sky represents something open, endless and full of opportunity.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/16619098732/
This I a picture of a stack of books. I took this picture because I spent a great percentage of the time thinking about school and homework.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/16618616221/
This is a picture of my laptop and some books. It shows how I easily my computer lets me get distracted from the work I need to do. I should do my homework, but it is so hard to get away from the computer.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/16619735805/
I took this picture of my fridge, because I constantly think about food. From the time I wake up in the morning, I start planning what I am going to have lunch and dinner. I love food.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/16618617191/
This is a screen shot of my phone. And it shows my alarm ringing, and I have to choose between the “snooze” button, or actually wake up. I’m usually extremely tired in the mornings so I tend to push the snooze button. But I want stop snoozing in the mornings and actually get up and have some breakfast and a shower before school.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130756212@N06/16593775886/
In contrast to my other picture with the laptop and the books. This is a picture of an open book. It represents me actually doing my homework without letting myself get distracted. I would rather just do it, and be done with it, than always stalling and doing it last minute. I hate that I do that, and it is something that I want to improve about myself.
Thinking reflectively
The year is 2020, I have just received my college degree, landed a part time job and life is great. After college I was so sick of school, and I did not want to settle down and get a full time job, house and kids immediately after college, so I got a part time job to save up as much money as I could to travel the world. I have always wanted to see India, South Africa, Brazil and Hawaii. So I am planning to go there when I have saved up the money.
Back in college when I attended City Tech, my major was Communication Design. But I soon realized that I wanted to become something different. I wanted to be an architect. It was much harder to get accepted into an architect school, but the job is more exciting and the salary is way better. So if I could go back in time and give my present self an advice, I would probably tell myself to set school as my first priority in life. I look at education as a key that opens doors for you in the future. If you have the key, you have the opportunity to choose which doors you want to open. But if you do not have any or not enough education, many doors will stay closed forever.
In this essay, I will be making an argument to myself on how I will work in order to progress and achieve the goals that I have set for myself, which is my desire to upper my grades. I will be discussing how to better manage my time, prioritizing school in front of “distractions”, and making more specific plans for my future.
I soon realized that if I want to succeed in school, I had to be able to manage my time more efficiently. The way you should do this, is to be more conscious of how much time you usually spend on daily tasks, like getting ready in the morning, eating breakfast, and doing homework. I know that I had the tendency to underestimate how much time it actually took for me to do something. But by getting more aware of how much time you actually spend on these tasks, I know it would be much easier for you to make a plan of how you want your day to be. I think you should make a schedule would be very helpful for you because I know that I was not very good at managing my time. I often ended up late, because of poor planning. I also had the tendency to stay up way later at night that I should because I had homework I needed to before I could go to sleep. This caused me to get less sleep than I needed to function a hundred percent. After reading the sleep chapter in John Medina’s Brain Rules, I learned just how important sleep was for me. Lack of sleep can actually affect your memory, attention, mood, and logical reasoning, which is of course really bad because I wanted my memory to be working at full capacity in order to do well in school. Showing you just how important sleep is for the brain to function properly, a particular study revealed that as little as a 26 minute nap increased NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent. Reading this chapter made me realize that you need to make a schedule in order to get time to do your homework and still have time to do the things you want to do. This will also hopefully give you enough time for a good nights’ sleep, which you know is very important.
I remember always getting distracted by social media, Netflix, videogames, and so forth when I was supposed to do my homework. I wanted to be able to do my homework without being mentally distant and looking back and forth between my books and my phone. When you do your homework you should devote your full attention to what you are doing. I know that you think homework can be boring sometimes, but it is better to just get it over with so you can spend more time on the things you would like to do. I remember that I enjoyed and still enjoy watching TV, Netflix, looking at social media, playing videogames, and hanging out with friends. But I wanted to have my homework finished first so I did not have to worry about that when I was having fun. Because I used to worry a lot about the things I had to do and it was causing a lot of unnecessary stress. So I would advise you to do your homework immediately when you get home from school. I know that you have already told yourself this a dozen times, yet you have not made a change. I think you would gain a lot by making some a plan to help you in the right direction.
The first thing you should do is to get rid of all the distractions surrounding you. You probably have your phone in your pocket, or somewhere near you at all times and I know how much you get drawn towards your computer. What you should do is to literally put your phone away and turn off your computer, and even more important, keep them away until you are done with whatever you have to do. Then when you get bored with school work, you will have nothing better and more fun to do, so you will quickly return to your work. This sound very easy, but I know from experience that it can actually be the opposite. So whenever you are having trouble with following these steps, you should ask yourself if checking Facebook is really more important than your education and future. The answer is of course no. Spending all of your time watching Netflix and playing videogames is not very productive and will not get you very far in life. When you look at the goals you have set for yourself in the future, the steps to get there does not involve Netflix and videogames. So whenever you do not feel like doing your homework or pay attention in school you should remember that in order to get where you want to be in life, you have to prioritize school in front of friends and distractions. I am not saying that you should not have fun, I am simply saying that you should wait until you are done with everything you have to do first.
Five years ago, I did not have my future clearly written down on paper like some people do. My future was something blurry and exciting and I did not know how it would turn out. But I knew some parts for sure, like the fact that I wanted to travel when I had received my college diploma and that I wanted a nice house and family, but more than that I did not know. As I said in the introduction my major when I first attended City Tech was Communication Design. But I got really uncertain if it was the right major for me. I found it exciting, but it is very hard to get a full time job in that field, and the salary can vary a lot. I remember that I wanted something a little more certain. So I thought of becoming an architect, but I did not know which school I wanted to attend, or what city I wanted to live in. As soon as I knew the answer to one question, more questions would appear. So what I think you should do is to do more research on schools and majors. Research is the first step to making a more specific plan for your future. I think this would be very helpful for you, because I know how stressed out you are about your future. If you want to become an architect I would recommend that you give it a shot, and that you devote your full attention into research and school to make this happened. If you make a plan for your future, it will improve your motivation towards school and that will upper your grades, which will allow you to get to where you want to be.
I really want to upper my grades in school because I believe that good grades and education is key to getting somewhere in life. Managing my time more efficiently, getting rid of all the distractions surrounding me every day, and making a more specific plan for my future are all good advices that I will do my best to follow every day. I think that if I listen to these relatively simple advices I will eventually reach the goals that I have set for myself, and move towards a better future.
