With the end of first semester and the beginning of second semester, now is a good time to reflect on how the first semester went; and let me tell you, it has been quite the struggle for me. 

It wasn’t a struggle the whole year, but there have been periods of times where I felt like I was drowning and was completely overwhelmed. I had a bit of a hard time turning in work on time, staying organized, and staying motivated. 

All of this was no one’s fault but my own and I hope that by reading this self-reflection, if you’re able to relate to this,  you can take tips away to help better your school year before it pulls you under. 

To start off with the most obvious, and at times the thing that gets me in trouble the most, I have an issue with turning my work in on time. I have had this problem for a while now, almost since I started high school. 

I would do some of the work but I would never finish it. I’m not sure if it was the pressure of getting things turned in on time or what, but I couldn’t seem to turn it in, I would start the work but when it came down to finishing and turning in, I wasn’t able to meet the goal. Maybe it was the fear of failing and of not meeting the expectations set for me and what I have set for myself. 

I would procrastinate on such a heavy level that the work would pile up, pile up, and pile up and it made me feel as if I was drowning in a sea of my own creation. I got set into a pattern that felt unbreakable and it really took its toll on me after a while. 

Something else I have struggled with this past year is organization. I’m in AVID and one of the main staples of the AVID Pillars is organization; and I have been learning tactics to help with that since I started AVID in sixth grade. I was always required to have a binder since it was for AVID so I always had one but on any given day, I only ever had a folder and a notebook in my bag. I had a nice organization set up on my desktop through different folders since most of the things I would receive for classes would be things I had to download to the desktop; that helped for awhile, until I stopped putting things in the folders and let documents build up until I just decided to delete them all. 

Another thing I struggle with (if it wasn’t obvious through the previous paragraphs) is procrastination. I get overwhelmed and let things build up until it nearly kills me. I will get caught up in one class just to be crushed by the daunting workload of the other. 

By letting it build up, it becomes so suffocating that it makes me want to run away from it, and sadly sometimes I do. But there’s a common phrase that applies in a cruel way “you can’t outrun your problems” and that’s true. That work load is always going to be there if you don’t take care of it when it first arrives; you can either turn it in when it’s due or let everything build up during the semester and let it crush you and make you want to pull your hair out of your head. One way or another – it will break you. 

Finally, I am guilty of not having any motivation to do work which causes it to pile up and become such a burden later on. I believe my lack of motivation aids the procrastination but at times it feels unavoidable. I don’t mind doing work so long as it’s not busy work. 

If I am going to put effort into something I want it to have meaning — I need it to have value or some type of life impact. If it does not, I tend to write it off as not important, it becomes a distraction and believe me, I have plenty of other things I would rather be distracted by that I could get much more entertainment out of. 

These are horrible habits easy to get into and almost impossible to break. But that’s the thing about habits, you can break them, it’ll just take a lot of work to unlearn what you previously taught yourself. 

You will have to work at it every single day and that’s exactly what I plan to do. To help counteract my lack of motivation, I will write a to-do list every day with everything I want done for the day; the feeling of accomplishment and victory can be very addicting. Then, I will look at each new assignment on my list and connect it to my life in some way. It will seem like you’re making extra work for yourself, but sometimes you have to do more work to better yourself.

To help better my organization will actively use my new binder system AVID is allowing us to do this semester. I don’t have to use the physical binder anymore and I am able to have a hybrid binder — most of my class work is online therefore few classes still give out paper materials. Knowing where each of my assignments are and why they are important will help me actually do the assignments. Then, I wouldn’t have the crushing pressure or the drowning feeling of an overwhelming workload. 

I really urge the younger grades to learn from my mistakes. It is not to say “look at me, don’t do this!” I share this so people don’t have to go through the “this is killing and horrible and it would be easier to just drop out of school” thoughts. 

Trust me, they are there and at times they sound like a very good idea, but I swear they’re not. It’s going to be a struggle at times and it will make you want to give up, but if you stay on top of your work, turn in your assignments and make an effort in your classes, I promise you it will be worth it.