Metacognition:

• What have you discovered about your process, your habits?
• Now, what do you know you don’t know? Circle back to your essential question.

For me, senior project has been just as much time answering/learning about my essential question, as it is about learning more about myself as a student.

Since probably the first day of senior project, I realized that telling myself I will wake up at one specific time, and actually waking up at that specific time are two completely different ordeals. Up until midway through the project, I had such a hard time not being able to find a schedule and stick to it. It has always been tricky for me to motivate myself to get things done when there aren’t any deadlines or teachers pressuring you to do get things done all the time, but going into senior project just amplified that much more for me. 

I tried many times to plan out specific schedules either a day or sometimes even a week before. I could plan out every aspect of the day and feel so confident in that, but sometimes it just wouldn’t be that simple. 

Everything was so much easier said than done. Telling myself to wake up at 8:30am and work until 4 is way different than actually getting up at 8:30 am and working until 4. But it wasn’t only waking up early and being my own time manager that was tricky, it was also things like getting distracted or taking a break that would screw everything up.

It was probably about midway through the project when I learned that just because I couldn’t follow my own instructions all the time didn’t make me a bad student. It didn’t mean that I have bad work habits or don’t know how to manage my own time. If I just didn’t have the motivation to do something, I wasn’t going to make myself miserable do that. 

Nobody except myself told me to wake up at 8:30am and end at 4. There was no rule that said I had to do that. Maybe that is the time when I go to school and get home from school, but this isn’t school anymore, it’s a senior project.

When I came to this conclusion I started to create a schedule that corresponds with how I learn best. A schedule that switches up a bit daily and isn’t so strict to the point where I get mad at me for not following it.  I wake up when I wake up, I get to work and work to my best ability until my daily hours are up and then enjoy the rest of my day without stressing about tomorrow’s schedule.

And since making that my schedule, the work I’ve actually been doing for the senior project has improved so much that I only wish I could’ve realized all of this sooner.