Michael Chen, Period 7, 9/16/2022

Atomic Habits & Growth

Although this is the start of the new school year, I have made some standards that I wish to follow. Most of these standards come from what I have learned to do and not to do in the previous years, and I hope that these standards will help me become a stronger student. One of the most important standards that I must follow is to write down all the homework I was given for the day since I have learned that I can not mentally remember what I must do after all my classes as there are simply too many events that would prompt my loss of memory. Therefore, I would have a special notebook where I would write down the homework every time I was given an assignment. When I get home, I would open the book and lay it on my table. I hate open books on my table. Every time I finish my homework, I cross it out of my book. Another important standard I would follow is to write down the days of the important events such as tests because this would prompt me to study a week before the test and is also a way to stay on top of the days. But to achieve any of these, I would need to stay organized. I usually have a hard time being tidy with my papers and notebook, which can cause quite some trouble for me as I would lose my work. The solution was this standard I would follow: I would try to make everything digital such as notes, homework, and worksheets. However, even when storing these items online, it also requires organization. I have weighed the pros and cons of such a solution and did find it more beneficial for me to get everything to be digitalized because there is no way to lose them. I would create folders that would not break compared to the physical folders and label them. To enforce them, I made my computer and phone background to list down the three standards I would have to follow.

As of right now, there is no way to assess myself yet because it is still the start of school. I would need to wait till the end of this semester to evaluate how well I follow the standard and how well did the standard serve me. However, I can foresee some problems with this standard: I am most likely to change my background because it doesn’t look good. I would just randomly change it, and forget it. It would also take me a while to get used to following the standard because I do not usually have a set standard that I would follow in a day to day life. Once I get to the middle of the semester I would check how many assignments have I missed, how well did I do on tests, and whether am I still organized. If I get low amounts of missing assignments, do well on tests, and still organize in the end, then the standards that are set are working. Then I would follow it till the end of the school year. However, if one of these doesn’t meet the expectation, I would try to make some adjustments, but I need to see where the problem stems from. For example, if I can’t stay organized at the end with my digital files, then I might try new methods such as keeping track physically, getting different color folders for different subjects, and color notebooks for different classes. I would then compare both methods and see which one works better.