Muhammad Chaudhry, Period 7, 02/08/22

 

Muhammad Chaudhry, Period 7, 02/08/22

Goal Setting & Growth

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

    First, I want to reflect on some of the goals I had set for myself last term. I said that I wanted to become an all-city linebacker for football. I achieved this goal last month when I was selected as a city all star. It feels great to know that 4 years of working during the hot summer days and freezing winter practices paid off. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my coaches who helped me all these years. Some of the other goals I set were to go to school debt-free, I haven’t been able to check this one off because most college acceptances haven’t arrived and neither have financial aid packages for the ones I did get back.

My current goal is to lose weight before this school year ends. I was extremely busy with college applications for the past 2-3 months and I couldn’t go but I’m definitely signing up for the gym again because that’s one of the places where I see tangible growth and improvement and it keeps me motivated. 

Another goal I have is to learn more coding languages before I start my first semester of college. Most of the colleges I applied to for computer science code in C++, C#, or python, and I really want to learn the fundamentals beforehand as it means I can just jump right into projects while in college and not have to worry about trying to pass the class because of trying to learn something from scratch on top of having a busy college schedule. 

My last goal is to meet new people and grow my network these last few months at tech. This is something that I’ve only realized recently but meeting new people is really exciting not only because you get fresh perspectives but because it's like a fresh start with this person, they don’t know about your past or the mistakes you have made, you get to use your wisdom to maintain a healthy friendship.

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

I work out at home, 10 push ups every hour so most days I do around 60 push ups, this keep my upper body in shape and gets my heart rate up which is good for cardiovascular health, I also play handball after school so it's a lot of running around so that's another way I’ve been working towards this goal. Once the weather gets above 45 degrees then I’m going to start bike riding with my friends so that I can burn more calories. 

I started learning a little bit of Python, even if its baby steps, it keeps the knowledge in my head longer and I don’t forget it then which I sometimes do if I don’t code for a long time. I’ve started learning some back-end programming for servers and storing user data so that’s another new process I’m learning. 

I’ve actually met a lot of people this past month, I transferred into a new gym period and I met a couple of kids who have similar interests to me and I invited them to my club so that we can create some cool projects. One of the kids runs their own programming organization so I’m trying to learn a little bit about C+ from him too.

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

I think what really pushed me to start working out again is the amount of people who went back to the gym. I was kind of making some excuses but now I really am motivated to go back. I also want to workout because I’m a little self conscious about my weight and sometimes I feel like people take notice of that but I don’t work out because of them, it just reminds me that I have a lot of things to improve to prove to myself that I can do it.  

The coding world is really focused around languages that I’m not currently utilizing so that made me worried because I didn’t want to pursue a field that I didn’t know much about. Another reason is because the college courses I’m going to be taking are all in new languages and I want to have some background knowledge before those classes.

 A lot of people have created a big network from their time at tech, and I just want to have a diverse network of people so that I can have contacts in the future that I can depend on to help me with a problem or help me connect with someone who can help me get a job. I just think networking as a whole is so important and that’s why I need a strong one.