Hardworking Habits

Hi!! I am currently listening to Believa by Raelee Nikole. Her Answers album is so cute! She came up on my spotify discover page and I am so glad that she did.

I'm sitting in bed with my cinnamon-nutmeg-honey face mask on and french toast candle lit. I'm feeling very at peace. After I finish this blog post, I'll be getting back to my homework. Only the first week of the semester and I already feel behind on the readings! (I'm actually not behind at all, but with so many pages assigned in each class it sure feels like it.)

I've always thought of myself as a hardworking student, good in school and dedicated to my studies. That's mostly because I enjoy school and learning so much. But after some thought, I've realized I've never really worked all that hard in school. In high school I didn't have a plan, so I didn't feel pressured to take difficult classes or the SAT, and since I was going to a community college I didn't need to worry about college applications. And I've always been smart enough to get through normal high school classes without studying. None of that is a problem by itself, but as a result I've found that I don't really know how to work very hard with school, despite my love for it.

My history teacher was telling us that being a good student is about making sacrifices. I don't think I've ever had to sacrifice anything for school, besides time during classes and money (ugh). He went on to explain that the best way to study is to set up certain blocks of your day dedicated to only schoolwork. I've never done that. I get schoolwork done whenever I find myself with free time. If someone asks me to hang out, I never say, "Sorry, I cant; I have to study" or "Maybe another night, I need to finish this essay." I go out, and then do schoolwork when I get back or the next day. Luckily, since I just moved here, my social life hasn't been so crazy that I go out every day; but it's still a bad habit. I wasn't even home the night before my Fall finals! I ended up getting around three or four hours of sleep that night. I passed all my finals anyway (I studied relentlessly for a couple weeks before them thankfully), but that day did show me that school has not been my priority. It's an odd realization, because it feels like school is all I'm doing.

So I'm going to make school my first priority this year. I got away with everything last semester, because I had less classes and they were more basic, but I can already tell I will be busy pretty much every day now. A lot of people tell me it's unrealistic and not what I should focus on, but I really want to keep my 4.0 for as long as possible. That's going to take a lot of work haha. But I want to do it - I mean, I want to either be a neuropsychologist or a history/sociology professor. Both will require PhDs (in order to have job security and a good salary), and that's going to take a lot of work too! I need to get used to hard work now, or else I won't get out of my bad habits.

So this year I will keep up and hopefully even get ahead with the readings. I will take notes on the book, the powerpoints, and the lectures, and I'll rewrite them. I'll go to class every day (unless something crazy happens) and pay attention to the lectures - four of my five classes are extremely interesting to me, so that one shouldn't be too hard. I'm going to set up a study schedule and actually stick with it. If somebody asks me to hang out during my designated study time, I'll ask them to either wait or ask me another day. I'm going to limit my distractions - I've already deleted a couple of my social media apps and have decreased my use of others.

I want to be an intelligent person, one who is educated and knowledgeable about her areas of specialty. I want to be confident in my writing and thinking. I want to achieve some of this by doing well in school, by working hard and developing good habits. And the only way to develop a good habit is to simply do it.

"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion." - Rumi