Learning while you’re learning…

In my case, this semester I’m learning to reverse-engineer some habits that I picked up from my many years in the workforce.  As a manager, I’m inundated with tasks, very few of which I personally complete.  Both a joy and tribulation, I must delegate significant portions of my responsibility in order to perform my job.  I also have learned over the years to prioritize tasks effectively and in many cases that means that insignificant tasks fall by the wayside while I tackle the more significant or impactful projects.

As it relates to school this semester, I have learned that in some cases prioritizing is still useful.   However, those smaller tasks can only be delayed, not omitted.  This is very different for me.  In high school, I skated by on high test grades and brilliant projects, but didn’t complete most homework because I didn’t need it to learn and retain the material.  Going into college courses, I expected differently and set out in the beginning of the semester with the best of intentions.  Somewhere along the way this semester I began to omit by prioritization some of the homework due for my classes, with very different (and less lazy) reasons than my high school tactics.  I was overwhelmed with things going on at work, keeping our apartment clean, financial obligations, and three classes worth of assignments.  I defaulted to my failsafe from the corporate world – extinguish the largest flames first.

I read the Syllabi for my classes in the beginning of the semester.  My understanding of the weight of my various grades became distorted by my imperative to survive the semester intact.  I learned the following things about homework throughout the semester, sadly too late to have a significant effect on my grades:

• College math after 10 years out of the game is insanely hard.  Homework is the best way to study this subject, and can be salvation for your grade in a class where the tests are weighted heavily.
• Similarly for math, if I am struggling I need to get a tutor EARLY in the semester!
• In courses involving writing, I am no longer graded against my peers – I am graded against my progress over the semester.  This is a new format for me.  I not only have to “step up my game” on projects, but I need the insurance of smaller assignments.
• I’m still very good in language courses, and I picked up Spanish without difficulty thus far.  The homework may have been inconsequential to my performance over the length of the course, but materials I learned in the last two weeks of the semester didn’t involve the same amount of in-class practice.  For the purpose of retention for future classes and for final exams, I should have put more of an emphasis on the regular homework.

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth beating myself up over.  The most important thing is that I have learned from this experience and will make time for more homework in the future.  I committed to sacrificing whatever necessary in order to go to school.  This semester, that went from to-the-letter execution to a pleasant ideal as the weeks passed.  As my first successfully completed semester in college, it hasn’t ended quite the way I wanted it to, but I’ve learned invaluable lessons.

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