Procrastination, Motivation, Organization. These three words briefly encapsulate my biggest problems with succeeding academically.
I definitely have never been an underachiever or someone who had given up easily when assigned a difficult task. Between kindergarten and 5th grade I never really enjoyed school. Not because I thought it was hard but because I thought I was just too smart for it. At that age learning reading and math just came easy to me and I was among the smartest kids in my grade. If a student had a problem with the work aside from the teacher I would be the first person they would refer to for help.
This felt great for a while, but eventually, I grew older and went up a few grades and the work only continued to get harder and more tedious. It wasn’t like I was behind in my studies or anything my grades and test scores were exceptional. I just started struggling with being motivated to do my work. Around fourth and fifth grade school became much harder and I stayed up late at night sometimes just trying to complete it. Because people knew I was smart I wanted to make sure I was always living up to those expectations. I didn’t want people’s perspective of me to change so I did everything I could to perform well in school. Some nights I’d even cry if I couldn’t understand a math problem. All this stress from schoolwork led to me getting burnt out making it hard to focus and stay up to speed. This was the point where I began losing my motivation for school.
Around the time I reached middle school was where my procrastination and lack of organization started and also met its peak. I still made good grades, and I was passing all my classes, but at what cost? First, I started becoming more and more disorganized. I would do my work and forget to turn it in, forget there was work and end up staying up extra late to get it done, forget work at home, and lose work due to my messy backpack and miscellaneous folders. The list of ways I was struggling goes on and on. I noticed how much I had changed and how much I struggled with this issue compared to other kids and I really beat myself up about it. I wondered “How is it so easy for them and so difficult for me?” and I eventually just chalked it up to me being lazy. I wanted to change and fix these habits but I just didn’t know how to.
I became more and more careless with my work. If I didn’t have enough time to do an assignment I would just throw together whatever I could do in a short amount of time and turn that in. Sometimes I’d think “This won’t affect my grade that badly I’ll just do it later” or “One missing assignment won’t hurt”, yeah my grades were still good but repeating this was a huge mistake because it started the worst habit I have and still struggle with to this day, procrastination. Procrastination played a huge part in interfering with my academics. It’s an unhealthy coping mechanism I used whenever I felt stressed because it made every task seem less daunting. At this point, I became irresponsible and reckless regarding my work and felt guilty every time my carelessness would catch up to me.
These problems repeated over and over again with school and even in my personal life leaving me in a cycle I felt like I would never escape. I tried so many things and had so many conversations with different people. It seemed like no matter who I asked, no matter what I tried, no matter how many times I tried to change, I just couldn’t. I said all this to say, don’t let school get you burnt out, and don’t put things to the last minute because it will only end up hurting you in the long run. I know you have probably been told a thousand times to “learn how to manage your time” and “stay organized” and no one ever told you how exactly to do that. I want to tell you that there is so much hope for our future and though everything may seem pointless now it will all pay off later.
We got accepted into the Daniel Murphy scholarship fund to help pay for our school. I want to tell you that we got so much more from this opportunity than just a scholarship. There’s a program DMSF has called Summer Bridge that basically prepares us for things we will have to do in high school and teaches us skills that we will need in it. Habits and Strategies is one of my favorite classes in Summer Bridge because it finally gave me the advice to help with my problems that clicked in my brain. In this class, we learned strategies to stay organized, stop procrastinating, advocate for yourself, and stay motivated in school which were all things I deeply struggled with for a long time. I’m glad we had this class as a part of the program because I feel we are never taught how to manage school in a way that makes it easier which made me appreciate having Summer Bridge even more. I haven’t just stopped struggling with these things, I know that I am still a work in progress and that there is always room for improvement. I am very confident that I will still be using the strategies taught to me in this class in the future, and soon applying these strategies will become second nature.
Photo Credits: Adobe Stock by Srvon
Zamaria Buckley-DeLaSalle-DMSF Class of 2028