My Life Plan

1.  My Dream: I’m searching.
      My Life Role: Student

      My Long-Term Goals in This Role: It is to graduate college by 2020 at most.
      My Short-Term Goals in This Role: It is to decide on a major in the next weeks or                    months. Another short-term goal is to find an effective way to manage my time.

2.  By designing my life plan, I realize that there is no time to fool around; Unless you have
a specific time set on your calendar. If I don’t work on managing my time, I will start               failing classes, and I will push back my expected graduation date.

1. My self-management skills have really proven to be inefficient. It was very difficult to manage 5 classes, freshman seminar, and mandatory tutoring, and working Friday-Sunday. I did not have any time for recreational activity. I did not really have a system that I followed which resulted in poor quality of homework, low test grades, etc. For most of the semester, I relied on my classmates to help me keep up with homework and studying. I did my homework the night before in a matter of an hour or less which means that I did not give it my best effort. As for tests, toward the beginning of the semester, I only did my homework but did not study. I thought that doing my homework would be enough, unfortunately, it was not. The first semester served as an eye opener to what I should do to prepare and stay organized for next semester.

2. For me personally, none of the five self-management tools in this chapter really work. I’ve tried something similar to the Project Folder, but it makes me more organized with all the work I have to do, but I don’t keep up with it. The Monthly Calendar would probably work best for me since I have done weekly schedules. I try to follow them to the best of my ability by setting realistic dates. My weekly schedule is usually written so I may want to try to use my phone this time and perhaps it can be more effective. What I think makes my written weekly schedule ineffective is that it is not always in front of me. I always stuff it in my bag and never see it until later on in a week. By using my phone, I can set a reminder at each time I need to work on a different task. I will use an app or just the calendar on my phone.

1.  An outer obstacle that stands between me and my success in college is not being able to manage my time which stresses me out. That makes it difficult to do homework and even more difficult to study for any upcoming test.
2.  Someone besides me who could help me overcome this outer obstacle is my older sister.
3. How this person could help me is by first showing me how to manage my time since she who knows how to manage hers. She can also show me how to prioritize.  I also tend to do what I think is more fun and easy rather than do what is important.
4. An inner obstacle that stands between me and my success in college  is  my tendency to not want to speak in class because of my shyness. I often time do not want to voice my opinion or knowledge on a certain topic due to me believing that I may be wrong even if I am right or that someone might challenge me.
5. Someone besides me who could help me overcome this inner obstacle are my friends.
6. How  this person could help me is encouraging me to talk in class since I do my homework and have my notes in class.
7. The most challenging course I am taking in college this semester is math. I have not been able to completely comprehend the subject.
8. This course is challenging for me because of all the formulas. I never know when to use each formula.
9. Someone besides me who could help me overcome this challenge is a Baruch tutor.
10. How this person could help is me is by teaching me how to ready a question and know which formula to use.

2. Often times people, specifically students do not know about all the resources around them. I feel like I never took full advantage of everything around me. The thing that will greatly impact my academic life is learning to manage my time. I need to focus more and not leave everything until last minute. Another choice I can make in order to create a stronger support system for myself is to not be ashamed to get help. If I need someone’s support I should not feel that I am annoying them. If they can help you chance are they will and if they can’t they will tell you and you can just ask someone else.