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Throughout the past year, my motivation is not where it should be, prior to that I had a strong motivational work ethic for quite a while. However, since online learning took control of my education my motivation has declined, nonetheless, it’s beginning to turn itself around. I have begun to set up a schedule for myself, while with the semester ending, my schedule will be changing drastically due to summer break. Yet, I am trying my best to stick to a schedule at least for the last week of this semester to try and end strong. I have done many different things to try and better my motivation, many of these things are mentioned in the module. I have started to go to bed around the same time every night, I have begun to exercise more strategically by sticking to a schedule and going almost every day around the same time. However, one thing that was mentioned in the module that has not yet helped me out was using different time management apps. I have used it in my past and it has worked for me, but recently it has not. I’m hoping that I will be able to use it again the same way I did previously. One reason I believe that apps and websites have become useless for me is that I don’t use them every day. If I would have checked up on those apps every day I believe that I would have grown to constantly use them. I do believe that in the near future I think I am going to hold myself accountable to sticking to a schedule or doing things every day, like going to the gym, checking my schedule, and adjusting it if need be. I do believe that I will get back on track to where I was prior to COVID.

The majority of this module was more of a refresher for me because I have taken many writing courses in previous years prior to COVID that required me to do extensive research covering a very specific topic. However, I haven’t had to construct a research paper, project, etc. since COVID and virtual learning began. So I am unaware of whether or not the steps I would take to write sed paper would differ from online to in-person. Nonetheless, a handful of topics in the weekly lesson stuck out to me. The one topic that caught my attention was the “Boolean Logic” referred to in the lesson. One issue I have when writing research papers is too many sentences and not enough sentences, and those sentences consisting of bland content that give more information than required. The issue can be fixed using this Boolean Logic because it helps me shorten my sentences while proving the perfect amount required to give detail on a topic. The lesson also reminded me of scholarly research articles on the internet, which are basically are detailed articles, books, etc. written by people with great credentials that are masters and what they are writing about, and not some website, for example, “Wikipedia” where anybody can put their own input on something rather than a professional whom you can trust based on their credentials and previous studies or work.

This weekly lesson was basically reiterating what I have recently started to do regarding online reading and not taking. What I began to do on my own, regardless of the professor offers notes over the lecture or not I have started writing my own notes. I prefer doing this because I can actually write down what is important and when I write my own notes I have to think about what I am writing and I am not just mindlessly highlighting sentences I will never go back to. On page seven of the weekly lesson, alongside the video helped me to understand where, when, and what I need to highlight. The reason I write my own notes is that I would just mindlessly highlight something that was either unnecessary or I highlighted more than I needed to. What I started to do is highlight an important piece of information and either write a note next to it or write the page I highlighted from the lecture slides or the book in my notes so I can go back and reread or go over what I highlighted later. I also started to make my own diagrams and graphs that help me understand the information I just wrote down.

College is a stressful time, and now, in this strange time, it is even more stressful especially when many people get their education through a computer screen or on the other side of a mask, some issues may get worse or, in my case, start to reemerge themselves like procrastination and time management issues. However, there are ways to combat these issues, and this course is a great guide on how to do so. This week definitely taught me a lot, especially the google calendar we created and the timesheet from last week that we each created because it showed me what I do during the week and how I can adjust my weekly schedule. The google calendar helped me put my weekly schedule in order and labeled everything I had to do. I’ve had a google calendar for some time, however, after this week I learned a plethora of new tools to use and what best benefits me. The one specific topic in the modules that helped me the most was to break down large tasks, found on page 14 of the Lesson. An example of how I applied this to my life was instead of labeling study times in my calendar, “Study for Math Test,” I set it as, “Look over integrals,” “Look over graphs,” and so on and so forth. This helps me not get as overwhelmed when taking on a huge task. Huge tasks along with smaller tasks can and will get stressful during this school year, however there are always paths you can take to help with these issues.

This is not my first blog post ever. During the spring semester of my second year here I created my blog and I only posted once then covid hit and then I didn’t have to post due to a change in curriculum. However, the previous two semesters including this one have been difficult for me. The online courses, the distance between the learner and the professor have been quite difficult in my case. Nonetheless, I believe that this course is helping me understand what I can do better. The quiz this week helped me to understand what problems I have and what I can do to fix those issues. Issues ranging from time management to distractions. Focusing on my schoolwork from my bedroom has caused me to become more vulnerable to distractions easier, because of this I have started to try new things like going to the library again and getting my day started earlier rather than later. I believe that if I keep to this course and going into this course hoping to get something out of it and trying my very best will cause me to complete this course with a better skill set than when I began it.

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