I took the ACT this past Saturday, and I thought I did decent. However, I’m probably still going to take the August SAT. It’s bugging – another standardized test. But I’ve taken these tests for almost a year without any top scores, and my only option to achieve a competitive test score is… take it again.
After ACT, the time spent reading and memorizing vocabulary has dwindled to a maximum of one or two hours. Recently, I decided to spend more time on math, computer science, and swimming, especially since the school year often doesn’t allow three-hour stretches to do these extracurriculars.
Summer is a phenomenal time to learn and get work done. And unfortunately, summer isn’t as much time as most people expect it to be. I’ve learned this the hard way – when I didn’t have school, I felt I had ample time to accomplish important tasks or improve my abilities until I realized at the start of the academic year that I didn’t. Time slipped out of my hands, and before I knew it, I was nowhere close to where I planned to be. Therefore, I’ve started to learn time management strategies to expedite my workflow throughout the day; several of these include keeping track of important events on a planner, spending five to ten minutes in the morning planning out the day’s priorities, and jotting down any switched deadlines or obligations next to the daily schedule. I’m sure that these habits will not only improve my work ethic during the summer but also help me get schoolwork done quicker, ensuring assignments will be completed well ahead of time.
The main enemy to beat: procrastination. To be fair, I don’t follow my schedule to the minute or even to the half-hour. There may be lapses in my schedule when I had a pop-up issue, or simply did something else due to a lack of motivation to do the task planned. There’s no easy way to fix procrastination, but I’m willing to learn tactics that enhance my promptness. With these changes, I’m hopeful that I’ll adhere to the schedule better.
Straying from time management principles, Mom shared a great video with me of Jensen Huang, who talked about having high expectations:
In summary, Jensen claims that having high expectations, contrary to the general consensus, can hinder you. When people have high expectations, they tend to have low resilience. It’s true; it’s a lot easier to be frustrated by a failure, misstep or error if you expect the highest levels of achievement. Unfortunately, success relies on resilience.
Jensen’s ability to have low expectations for outcomes definitely helped him; since he is more resilient, he’s more likely to improve from hardships. If he had high expectations for himself, he would’ve been more likely to give up from the start – NVIDIA’s journey to success was one littered with “pain and suffering”, as he put it.
And at the end of the video, he states his famous quote:
I don’t know how to teach it to you except that I hope suffering happens to you
Jensen Huang
I take his word. Do you?