Jacqueline Ramirez, Period 1, 01/10/2022

Jacqueline Ramirez, Period 1, 01/10/2022

Goal Setting & Growth 

At this current point in time, what specific goal(s) do you have for yourself? Why?

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? (or these goals?)

How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal? (or these goals?)

I’ve noticed hesitation about making formal goals because I have a history of making overly ambitious goals or self-sabotaging realistic ones. However, I know that goal-making and meeting are life skills that I can only improve on with practice and reflection.  

At this point in time, I have two main goals for myself. Resilience for these goals is setting in place accountability methods and believing in myself.

 

My first goal is, in the second semester, I want to manage assignments step by step instead of getting overwhelmed and letting them pile up. Through trial and failure in the fall, I’ve figured out strategies that will help me achieve this goal. To keep myself aware of assignments and tests, I’ll use Google Docs for daily reminder lists. I’ve experimented with planners, Docs, Notion, and calendars, and have concluded that Docs works best for me–I can’t obsess over efficient layouts or pretty pens or neat handwriting. To overcome procrastination and perfectionism, I will try to keep up with the pacing of my friends. Last week, to plan for this, I asked friends in mutual classes to text me when they start working on assignments or to call and work together quietly. To maintain a productive work environment, I will work at the place I’ve learned I focus best, my basement desk. For the first few months of the fall, I would come home, have a snack, try to work at my dining table, and somehow, much to my frustration, end up crying or sleeping. Since my mom started working long hours, doing homework at the dining table, the place I had worked since elementary school, became impossible. Constant reminders of the past year were around. The once-organized-but-now-disarrayed table reflected my and my mom’s chaotic headspaces. The metronomic dining room clock emphasized the silence of the house without my mom bustling around. The glass back door that anyone could look through reminded me of the vulnerability I felt alone at night. The messages of “do your work” on the whiteboard cued replaying of my mom’s daily disappointed rants of “you’re worthless” and “you’re not my daughter”. Once I realized that I needed a fresh workspace, I tried going to libraries after school. This was good for some time but eventually it started getting dark earlier and I had to leave mid workflow to avoid getting home too late. I started doing work in the basement over the weekends as a way to escape my mom’s rants and over time, I noticed that the brightly lit basement was comfortable for me. Going forward, I want to decorate the walls with positive posters to remind me of my purpose. Learning to manage assignments step by step is important to me because building habits like these will help me reach my career aspirations of designing my own inspirational fashion line, leading refugee mental health programs in an NGO or IGO, and working with schools to address the student mental health crisis in the education system. 

My second goal is to, sometime within the next 4 months (before June), start my Youtube channel! I’ve been saying I want to do this for a year but I don’t mind that it’s taking me time to get started. Teaching myself the filming and editing skills and choosing a brand to center my content around is a process. I really want to have a Youtube channel to document my life and help people the way my favorite creators helped me. Youtubers like Hana Lee, susiemeoww, Jenn Im, Lisa Rhee, Mei Yan, ur mom ashley, and Vanessa Nagoya, by being open and reflective about themselves and their unique journeys, taught me how to be kind to myself, believe in myself, and accept myself. A few days ago, after a year of pondering on what catchphrase to center my brand around, I finally decided on, “Make your dreams your reality.” I want to inspire people to express themselves as they are and to build the lives they want. I know that even though I worked really hard the past 17 years, because of my bad grades last spring and this fall, I may have a lower chance of going to the colleges I once dreamed of. While I logically know that college is what you make of it and where you go won’t determine your life, the pressures that me and the immediate world around me, my peers, scare me. Despite this, I am determined to keep rebuilding myself and make all my dreams come true someday. I have a Google Doc with video ideas planned out and I hope that in the new semester, as I meet my first goal and keep myself more organized with schoolwork, I will have time aside to edit videos and meet my second goal. 

The hardest question for me to word my answer to out of the three in the prompt was “how does the world around you affect your perception of these goals?” I'm aware that some people look down on me as naive. One particular teacher tells me on a regular basis that I haven’t experienced real hardships and that the real world would never accept the way I am now. These words on top of criticisms at home can make me feel like my goals of managing assignments step by step and starting Youtube are too small or silly. Despite this, I’m also aware that there are a lot of people who would patiently cheer me on in my goals. My jazz and classical piano teachers, many of my school teachers, my close friends, my favorite Youtubers, and when I need it most, my parents as well, are understanding. To answer the question above, the world around me simultaneously greatly affects and does not at all affect my perception of my goals. I am always aware of the world around me so it is inevitable for me to consider the perspectives of others when reflecting on my goals. At the same time, since I know that only I understand my truth, I give permission to myself to make the final choice on my perception of my goals. I choose to see my goals as valid and admirable goals!