Shifeng Xie, Period 6, 11/9/2022

 Atomic Habits & Growth

• At this current point in time, what specific standards have you set  for yourself? 

• How and why did you come to craft these standards? 

• How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving these standards?

• How do you assess yourself?  What adjustments do you make? How often?

My experiences throughout my high school career have taught me to set high expectations for myself and to forgive and learn from my mistakes. I believe being able to hold yourself to a certain standard also just changes the standards of the people with who you talk and hang around. If you hold yourself to a higher standard, you will naturally hold people around you to a similar standard. Some of the standards I’ve set for myself include spending two hours on schoolwork and studying after I get home from practice, going to the gym on my days off, reading a writing piece, whether it be an article or a novel, and the last one, surprisingly, is to have fun. But, when I say have fun, I don’t mean mindlessly playing video games until sunrise. I think it's essential for everyone to have a good work-fun balance, where work comes first but the fun comes directly after. These standards have been forged by my experiences over the past few years, trying to balance schoolwork with extracurriculars but also trying to maintain a social life and a want to enjoy life. 

I used to be like a lot of people, going to prep simply because my parents made me, hating every single second I was there. It made me realize that forcing myself to use up all my free time for studying was not something that I wanted. And to prove it to my parents, I had to set standards for myself to achieve so they could see that I could achieve good results without having to spend all my time doing something I didn’t like. It actually helped me learn that there is always an alternative that fits everyone. Since then, I have always kept this in mind every night when I assess myself, always looking for a different path that might be more suitable to me.