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Grade 6: The Secret of Time Management

October 10, 2017

Grade 6: The Secret of Time Management

Sometimes, I wonder why classes can’t be a bit more outside the norm. In school, most classes follow a similar theme and rarely go beyond the same old topics and we learn what we’re assigned. But this year is the sixth, and a slight change to my time table has changed everything. There was a class inserted into my schedule that I’ve never seen or heard before. “What is this class called Youth Development?” I wondered to myself. After a minute of sitting in this new class, my question was answered and I was excited to learn more.

During my second class, I wasn’t sure what were we going to do and how we could do everything outlined in our first class because it seemed like there were so many topics to learn about. It seemed intimidating and I wondered where we would start. YD class is all about teaching students how to develop better in the future. To develop better, we needed to start out with a solid foundation, so this class started with time management.

“Tiiiiiime management! That sounds so boring!” I thought. How disappointing, right? Actually, as the class continued, I suddenly found myself more and more interested. When I think of time management, I think that no matter how hard I try, there is always a dark angel in my mind that tempts me to do anything other than my work. It seems to say: “Relax, you still have a lot of time.” I guess a lot of my classmates also have this problem, because when our homeroom teachers started on this topic, my classmates’ faces looked as sour as mine did. They moaned about how their minds just go fiasco and tell them to do whatever they wanted such as play video games, go on YouTube etc, just like mine does. But, we didn’t just talk about managing our time, we also watched an amazing TED TALK lecture and had an insightful activity.

In the video, a man called Tim Burners talked about how his mind just takes over when it comes to work. He told us about how he managed his time to write his Dissertation when he was in college. He was supposed to have a year to do his thesis, but the irrational monkey in his head took over and told him to relax. ‘One year’ became ‘one day’. That’s when the panic monster in his head popped out and scares the monkey away. And then that’s when he started his thesis, 3 days before the due date. He rushed over and did a horrible job. Then, all of us found out that we have the same situation. But how do we solve this?

My second YD class was very useful to me, my friends, and I believe every one. We learned that there is this kind of irrational monkey in our heads that tried to distract us and we need to find ways to ignore it so we can finish important tasks first. Practicing is the best way to learn what we’re been taught, so the class was divided into different groups to play a wonderful game. We were supposed to put the cards in order according to a list. Unfortunately, all the groups failed on the first try. But, then we were able to regroup and use time management skill we had talked about to complete our task effectively. Nearly all the teams had a successful try the second time around because they used different organizational and time management methods. We learned that having a time and strategy plan before doing something is quite important.

Having good time management skills can help lead to success in the future. That will be the first step to make me and everyone develop better.

(Written by 6 (8) Eva Picture by Lily Yao)