Identifying What Self Care Steps You Are Skipping

One of the biggest lessons I learned in Module 7 was the idea of focusing on self-care to create or maintain motivation. I have started to use many of the time management tools that we learned about in this course along with the studying/academic tools as well but none of that matters when you are simply exhausted every day. I work full time and I am a full time student so I knew that it was not out of the ordinary for me to be tired but I did not realize just how much I had been neglecting to pay attention to my bodies resting needs. Once I started paying attention to this i noticed that each day (granted there are always exceptions) got a little easier to get out of bed and start being productive. I have always been a highly motivated individual but I did not realize that I was preventing myself from reaching my full potential. This lesson helped me slow down and look at how I tackle tasks rather than always going 100 mph. I have now learned how to effectively manage my time, use better resources and implement better self care strategies to set myself up for success.

Using Purdue Owl for Research Papers

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html

Prior to Module 6 I was unaware that Purdue OWL actually offers an online resource for helping to construct a research paper. I wish I would have known about this at the start of my undergraduate career but I guess it is better late than never! I plan on using this resource while I am getting my masters in clinical psychology to ensure that I construct well developed research papers in the future. I feel my research papers in the past have sometimes not been well developed or had that right information that was just delivered in the wrong way. With this resource I will be able to make sure I have a proper amount of resources and structure ideas before I even begin the paper. In the past I have gathered a few sources and just started writing that way I produce some sort of first draft. If I am able to make my first drafts better in the future then it will save me time on editing my papers. Time that can go to further developing the ideas or research of said paper or time I can spend on my other classes. Maybe if I am lucky it will earn me some extra sleep.

Struggling with Active Listening Skills

4.3 Are You Really Listening?

This link provided to me in a set of lecture notes (Module 5) was very helpful to me. For as long as I can remember i catch myself between either being very focused in class or completely zoning out and missing a lot of information. Some of the topics in this link like “listening with your whole body” is a skill I had not heard of or considered prior to reading this material. One thing that I have started doing is turning my phone off for shorter classes or turning it to “do not disturb” and only checking it when necessary. The hard part about not having my phone on me though is the fact that I have four sisters, I work a sales job where people call me everyday and I am a team leader for my Army unit so i constantly receive information from all sorts of people. I have started searching for an app that can auto reply (something like what people do with email while on vacation) while im studying or in class and let the person know that way they do not try to contact me again. I am awful about letting technology distract me and definitely want to try some of these active listening skills and turn off/ put away my biggest distractions during class and study time.

Highlighting important info while reading

I usually can read through an assignment or assigned reading very quickly and understand the main idea very well. But when asked to recall specific information about the reading I sometimes struggle. One topic from the lesson that I have found helps me in my classes is highlighting important or very specific information while I am reading and then turning that information into flashcards for me to review later. I have found that doing this helps reinforce what I learned without having to reread the entire chapter or assignment. This method is especially useful for when I am writing a paper and need to recall specific information to include in my paper. The highlighting also makes it super easy to cite my resource after I am finished. On occasion i have used the highlighted information to create a mind map for the construction of a paper or for study materials for a potential writing portion of an exam. I have however been one that is bad about over highlighting if I am studying a topic that I am not confident in. I have found if I make myself read over it slower a second time and double check my highlighting choices I am able to make the content much more manageable.

Social Media and Blogs are a Waste of Time

Time is important when you are a college student and working adult. Social Media and blogs about everyone elses life events and thoughts are not always as important as we make them out to be. We spend hours scrolling through social media or blogs searching for motivation when all that time could simply be spent getting things done to actually better ones self. There is a time and place for things like social media for staying in touch with people or using blogs to find important information to help you complete a task but mindlessly scrolling through with no intention or goal is a colossal waste of time. My generation truly struggles with this concept. Call me an old soul but I would rather leave my phone in a hotel room while on vacation rather than post every second of the vacation on a snap story which would cause me to miss actually interacting with the environment and people around me. So many people complain about not having time to do things or missing out on things but then when opportunity comes up we go straight to our phones for simple brain stimulation and sacrifice all basic people skills just to like a few posts and give ourselves arthritis.