Tick Tock

Friday Gio, HTHCV alumni, came by to show his new college friend around his old school. He proudly shared past projects with his guest. Gio is experiencing his first year of college at USD, and already has his first midterms under his belt. He was candid of how challenging the first semester has been. Saturday while working at Starbucks I bumped into a few more alumni, who were all treating themselves to a night away from their academics after a week of midterms. All of them felt nostalgia for the “simple” days of project work time at HTHCV. Those alumni in their first semester of college shared how the learning was not the most challenging thing, yes there is a lot of memorization, but instead managing their time and being self-motivated to stay on task posed the greatest challenge. Those alumni in their second year of college mostly shared how they were now in the swing of balancing 3 to 5 courses worth of work along with part-time jobs, and participating in the college experience. All of these students made the connection to junior year and how they began to grow in managing their project work time, honors and extracurriculars. They laughed as they remembered many times when they worked until the last minute to be ready for exhibition. They recognized the difference between managing the college schedule and project work time is that they no longer had teachers that would give them extensions or allowed for refinement after the deadline - they knew that in their time management they had to include time to refine and create their best work before the deadline.

A few weeks ago I blogged about the importance of practicing communication with teachers. I shared strategies for you to strengthen your communication skills for when May comes around you’re able to communicate with your mentor in a professional manner. Thank you for the increase in emails to us (Max, Mr.I, Aurmon or myself) when you are absent or know you will be missing class. I hope you’ve gained the satisfaction of taking control of your educational experience. Another skill that will have a positive impact in your success as a college student is time management.

This past week both Max and I gave explicit reminders of the importance of time management for coming prepared to class and to take care of your well-being. Several of you realized that it’s time to revisit that weekly schedule you created as an honors requirement, or you need to go buy an agenda that works for you to manage your to-do list, or that synchronizing your smartphone to your school gmail is a great use of technology. A handful of you seeked support, now it’s up to your to practice the time management skill you’ve chosen. Be kind to yourself by knowing that you may need to try a few ways of managing your time before find the one works best for you. Don’t try to do it alone either, sometimes we need peers or family to keep us accountable for our time to be well spent. Overall I’m encouraging you to find what works best for YOU, this may be part of the personal learning you achieve junior year.

We can help you prioritize tasks to work most efficiently.