FUN

You don't usually find the words work and fun in the same sentence. When you do, it's only in those special cases, like the guy who works at the jumping castle store. Otherwise, work usually gets the bad rep. I'm here to say that, although work may not necessarily be fun a lot of the time, fun is necessary for you to be able to do your absolute best.

 

This is true for sports, academics, music, or any other job. I always think of the Mary Poppins quote "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and SNAP! The job's a game!" Although this may not be very practical in most situations, there is some truth to it. Your work is only as fun as you make it. I personally do not find sports fun, except for maybe the occasional soccer game with my family. However, I know many who do and say that their game is not the same without it. They do their best when they are having fun. 

 

From experience, I know that I learn way better when I find something fun in my schoolwork. In middle school, my mom would have me memorize a long bible verse every month. She did the same with poetry in high school. At first, I was very bored with it and struggled to get the verses memorized. I found a solution to this by accident. Everytime I had to sit down and work on my memorization, I would find myself daydreaming and sometimes doodling rather than even looking at the words. I decided to try illustrating the bible verses and sometimes just drawing a picture for every word. Since I am a very visual learner (and love to draw, besides), this helped me memorize them very quickly. When I got to Biology, which has tons of definitions to be memorized, I tried the same strategy and it worked!

 

My chemistry teacher drew on the idea of fun in learning and had us make ice cream and carbonated lemonade in class. I will always remember that certain chemicals can raise and lower boiling and freezing temperatures and that different chemicals solubility rates can be raised and lowered with different temperatures.

 

Here's something funny I found on Pinterest. It's called "gummy bear motivation" :). When you have a long passage in a book to read, you place gummy bears all over it. When you reach a gummy bear, you get to eat it! See you can have fun in learning!

Any musician will tell you that, when music is your passion it is FUN pretty much all of the time! And no, by fun, I don't mean FUN. as in the band, even though they are great :)

True it can be a pain to have to practice all of those hours "some nights" (sorry, I had to :D), but overall, it is SO much fun! Starting off sometimes, though, you need a little motivation. You need to find something to make it fun. When I was little, my teacher was very good at this. He had an analogy about a song I was learning being like a double-stuffed oreo (if any of you remember those). The song had four sections- The beginning, two middle sections that are the same, and the last that is just like the beginning. When I played through the whole song (a monumentous occasion at my level and age) I got an oreo. Once I figured out that playing the song well and fast several times got my mom to give me more oreos, I was off with leaps and bounds. As I got older he would incorporate games ino my practice routine. If I stumbled on a part of the song, we would stop, roll the dice and see how many times I had to repeat that section correctly. This would lead to mastery. Every student's favorite game (besides the oreos), was the ball drop. This game taught us to watch our teacher carefully during performances for timing and synchronization. My teacher would drop the ball and everytime it bounced, we had to pluck the string on our guitars at the exact moment it touched the ground. This sounds simple enough, but once the bounces get shorter and quicker, it get's pretty tough. This game helped alot with our group performances. Every note became perfectly synchronized with each other until we sounded like our goal of one guitar.

 

Now that I'm older, I provide most of the fun and motivation in my playing. Now, just the playing itself has become its own reward (especially if you play fast!). I enjoy practicing and learning new pieces that I really like. That is in and of itself fun for me.

As you can see, work can be fun. you just have to take the time to find it.

 

(Okay, for this blog post, I did the unthinkable. I put in pictures from an unoriginal source. For anyone wanting to cause any trouble, I got these from imgur- gummy bears, and imgfave- FUN. I do not own these photos. I only put them in to serve my purpose. Please do not sue me :) thanks - Mara)

 

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Focus and Concentration- an Update

Here's an update on my past focus topic. Since that last post, procrastination has still obviously been a problem, but not quite as much. I have been trying to develop this habit of stopping and checking "am i doing what I should really be doing right now?" every few minutes. This is very effective, because most of the time, I'm not doing what I should. This helps me snap back into what I really should be doing.

 Something else that has helped is that my laptop charger cord has gotten loose and only works when it wants to. When it runs out of battery, I have to sit with it for about an hour holding the cord in place, thus making it virtually impossible to type quickly. This really stinks when it comes to schoolwork, but as for everyday use, it has actually helped me stop procrastinating a little.  Since I haven't gotten to take it in to get it fixed, I have been having to share my parent's computer. This means finding a time slot when my parents and younger brothers and sisters aren't using it. It's either that or working in the ASC when I get the chance. This has forced me into the mentality that when I get on the computer, I absolutely HAVE to get to work. 

This has also partially lessened the distraction, since if I want to get on Facebook or Pinterest, I have to wait until my mom is done checking emails, etc. and the kids are done with their schoolwork or games. Since my computer has been down and I have been more focused, I have found more practice time that I had been struggling to make. Overall, this has snowballed into better focus. I still want my computer back, though. :)

Update on my Transition into College

Yesterday, I was walking across campus thinking about how well and how smoothly  my transition has gone from high school to college. For me coming to college hasn't felt like a huge deal. This is thanks to my older sister, who we call "the family guineapig." Since she is the oldest, she always has to experience the huge life milestones before anyone else in the family. She was the first to homeschool through high school and graduate, first to get her driver's license, and then first to go to college. With all these things, I have always had the chance to get used to the idea of things before having to experience them for myself. The same was true for college. She had already started here at TLU last fall, before my senior year, so I kind of knew what to expect. Now, here I am.

 

Thinking about where I probably was at this exact moment last year. I woul probably be sitting in my bed, in my pajamas (don't say "lucky homeschoolers" just yet!), reading my physics chapter trying to make heads or tails of it alone, or writing one of the two 3 page essays I had due every week, plus written homework responses and all of the reading I had to do. Just the usual routine I have had over the past 12 years of my education. Now, here I am going from class to class like it's no big deal.

 

The routine has become fused in my mind already, and like I said earlier, I don't find it wierd anymore. My study habits are improving and declining at the same time. My procrastination levels are still about the same, but I am more focused since I have bigger goals now that I have my mind set on college. My junior year, I loathed the idea of college. I thought, "what is the use of spending tons of money for classes I don't even care about. I want to teach music!" Now, I see it as improving myself to help me improve my future students and the extra classes help make me a well-rounded person academically (TLU has me sold over the "liberal arts education" idea). The better I become, the better I can help them become. This "bigger picture" focus, helps to keep me set to my work.

 

However, now I don't have my mom here to make sure I'm working on my essays instead of on facebook. Responsibility is about the same, although in different ways. In high school, I was responsible for both teaching myself the material, and making sure that I learned it well. This is a HUGE load for any person of any age, and has really matured me. Now, in college, I just have to take notes, and make sure I'm learning enough to pass the tests and (in the case of music classes) make sure I am prepared for my career. In this way, responsibility has even decreased a little. In other life areas, however, I have had more responsibility placed on me. I don't have my mom to make sure I'm where I need to be on time, I am responsible for managing my own money, and as I mentioned earlier am solely responsible for getting my work done.

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.

Get your Head in the Game!

This week's topic is focus- a difficult thing to keep when you are surrounded by so many sources of distraction in our technology flooded world. Focus is important in academics as well in sports. Just like  an athlete will lose a match if his or her head isn't in the game, a writer or student will miss deadlines and get bad grades if they don't get their head in the game and get to it. During any sport, an athlete always needs to be in the game one hundred percent. If they get distracted, they will most likely fumble, maybe miss a catch, and ultimately mess up the play entirely. 

The same happens with students. It is very difficult to keep focus when you are surrounded by so many distractions an are living in such a fast-paced world. There are emails to reply to, texts to read, status updates to look at, Pinterest projects to try (my guilty pleasure), TV shows to watch, and your best friend- the bed- to doze off on. So many distractions! It's no wonder almost every student I have met to date has to deal with procrastination. There is just so much to do. And yet, half of the time we don't do what we really need to do.

I know that my biggest problem is distractions in my head - worrying about what I have to do and when I need it done rather than actually doing it. I can sit down for hours on end planning and worrying and not even write one word of my essay. I've been struggling with this more and more as I get further into my school year. This is no bueno...not good! I know that if I want things done, I've got to get to it and do them, I just struggle getting started.

 Usually what it takes to get me started is turning of the music, blocking time-wasters on the internet using "Chrome Nanny" (my best friend- look it up in the Google chrome apps), going somewhere to be alone, and grabbing a snack so I have no excuse to leave my work undone. I know for many people it can also help to turn off your phone, or an even better solution, someone recommended giving your phone to your roommate or friend while you study. For a while, I argued with my sister and mom that I could focus with music playing in the background just as long as it wasn't anything loud. I began to find myself so bored with my work that I would get distracted by the music no matter what kind or how soft or slow it was. Now, I just turn it off completely. The most important thing to remember is to just get to work. Just worrying about it won't get it done, you have to sit down and get to it. Okay,... go now...I mean it! Get to work!

Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.