At the beginning of the course, Professor McCoy relayed to us that the intention of the reflective essay being placed at the end of the semester would be to alleviate some of the stress that we all feel as our other courses began to pick up. As a first year student, I honestly had no idea how important and considerate that would be. Being able to know the structure of a course and the way it would play out over the course of a semester was something I had to get used to.
I found it a little intimidating at first: the entire semester laid out in front of me on a couple of pages. But as I began to receive a syllabus from each of my professors and organize my schedule, I realized how much more control I had over my success. It was certainly different than being walked through the process of the semester by my teachers like I was in high school, but it allowed me to determine much more easily how much time I would need to spend on each assignment, and write it out in my planner right at the start.
I won’t lie and say this was an easy adjustment for me, or that every time I wrote something in my planner, it was completed on the exact day I had it written down for. However, I feel like this first semester of college taught me a lot about time management.
Sitting in my first college class of the semester, Dr. McCoy told my classmates and I about the blog post assignment, explaining that it would be up to us to manage our pacing and make a schedule that worked for us in order to produce thoughtful work and make sure that we were able to maintain a posting schedule. In the beginning of the semester, I found this to be much easier. I enjoyed writing the blog posts: they were exciting and I found it validating that my obscure ideas and connections to the course could be a part of my final grade in the end.
However, as the semester picked up and the work in my other courses, blog posts began to become less of a priority and a pleasurable practice and exercise and more of a thing to check off my list. They took a backseat to seemingly more urgent and important assignments.
Upon reflection, I have realized that the procrastination of these blog posts comes from the lack of a concrete deadline. They began to feel less important to me as assignments with concrete deadlines became more prominent in my schedule. Something this has taught me is that I need to learn this lesson now and set deadlines for myself, and treat them as though they are concrete.