Matthew Muccigrosso, Period 8, 10/29/20 (Late), Day C

 Goal Setting and Growth

At this current point in time, what specific goals do you have for yourself? Why?

Right now, the most pressing personal goal I have for myself is motivating myself, in general. Obviously, at this point in time, like everyone else my age, I’m mostly motivating myself to do my college applications. I know it’s unimaginably important to my future to get what I need to do done. Looking at the actual work I have to do, it’s objectively pretty easy. I should be able to do a few 600 word essays in my sleep. For whatever reason, though, its a struggle to be able to finish a single paragraph of a question I know that I know the answer to. My biggest goal at this time is just to finish the apps and get them over with. My secondary goal at this time is to work on my physical and mental health, both of which I definitely let slip in a major way over the last few months. I want to start exercising regularly again, but once again that really boils down to self-motivation. 

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal?

To be 100% honest, I can’t say I’ve demonstrated a significant amount of resilience towards achieving these goals. My work, both on my applications, and myself, has come in short spurts of a lot of productivity followed by periods of not doing much. I’d say my resilience is mostly mental. I think that I’m the most productive when I realize how much I’ve put off working, and that leads to the aforementioned spurt of productivity. Recently though, I think that I’ve finally managed to overcome this cycle and get myself into a good, balanced routine. I’ve been exercising consistently and actually getting work done pretty much every day for the last week rather than procrastinating and doing a ton of work in one day. 

How does the world around you affect your perception of these goals?

I think that the world around me has absolutely been the biggest contributor to the problems that I’m trying to address with my goals. The months-long isolation really killed my internal motivation to do pretty much anything. Without actually seeing them in the real world, problems I see only virtually are very easy to ignore, consciously or unconsciously. It can be hard to make things seem real when I only see them on a screen. I’d like to think that if things are normal I would’ve kept up with both my work and my health a lot better than I have. I’m really trying to make these things better, though. I know I can’t let the new world get the best of me.