Week Two- Goal Setting:
Goal setting is a very important skill to develop in your personal and professional life. Before this week, I thought I knew how to set goals, but this class allowed very specific processes to follow in order to make goals attainable.
S.M.A.R.T. goals are a very concise process to use in order to be productive and achieve your goals.
S stands for specific, meaning that goals should not be generalized, but rather a specific action that you want to accomplish. Who, What, Where, When, Why are important questions to ask when developing your goal, as you can be very accurate and know exactly what it is that you are working towards. I usually generalized my goal into a broad category, which later made me feel like the entire goal was not achieved, so this strategy helped me.
M stands for measurable, providing you with a way to truly understand when you finally accomplished your goal. Measuring progress and how much you have worked towards a goal gave me a confidence boost when working towards multi-faceted goals.
A stands for achievable, which is pretty straight forward, but figuring out how a goal will be accomplished is half the battle.
R stands for relevant, as it is important to choose a goal that matters to you. I’ve often found myself setting goals because its the societally expected thing to do, but not something that I want to do. If the goal is not something relevant to your life, you’ll be less likely to achieve it and even less fulfilled if you do achieve it. It is also important to make sure you have enough time to commit to the goal you set for yourself.
T stands for time-bound, which is something I personally struggled with. Goals must be time-restricted, so that they can be actively worked towards and not just something you think about once in awhile. This also prevents day-to-day crises that can occur when the time is not established, so this was a very important lesson to learn.
Week Three- Time Management:
This was probably the most important week of learning for me, as time management is something that can always be improved. No matter how organized a person is, there is always something that can be done to improve your schedule and work flow. The class introduced Trello, an online, organizational tool used to divide projects into different tasks to be completed each day/week/month. While I did not personally enjoy the format of Trello and enjoyed organizing my time via a physical planner, the Study Scheduler app did allow me to realize how I truly utilize my time.
By utilizing the readings provided, I was able to organize my desk in a way where everything was easy to find. I set up my desk the night before I went to bed, so there was no excuse for me to waste time in the morning getting things together. While I did not like the Study Scheduler app interrupting my study time, I did realize how much time I spend on my phone during my study blocks. This helped me figure out ways to minimize distraction, such as: muting group message notifications/social media notifications from my phone, turning messages off of my iPad, and placing my phone across the room from me. Working in 30 min increments with 5 minute breaks works great for me (Pomodoro technique) and I am very thankful that this class went in depth with time management.
Week Four- Digital Note Taking:
Being in a post-bacc medical program, I take a lot of notes; I honestly feel like sometimes that is all I do. There are so many lectures to get through, and this class helped me to understand all of the techniques available for taking notes digitally. Before this class, I really tried to still incorporate hand-written notes into my lectures, as I believed that was the only way I could fully understand the material. However, using OneNote has saved me so much time and I still find myself retaining the material as well as if I hand-wrote the notes. Utilizing GoogleDocs also was a plus, as multiple people can work on study guides to help compile information. I constantly use mnemonics and acronyms when taking notes, and I was happy to learn that this was a common practice amongst my peers. I appreciate that the class discussed different ways to take notes (outline, mindmap, etc.) as sometimes different techniques work better for different subjects.