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Latwell Nyangu Youth Interactive Writer
Not planning ahead may cost you more than you think!
Planning your life is like having a road map that helps you reach your desired destination. Unless you have already been to the place you want to go numerous times and already know how to get there, you will need a good directions.
It would be foolish to get in your car and drive around aimlessly, hoping to eventually reach your destination.
As students we are no strangers to a mid-assignment existential crisis. We then lose our motivation because we don’t believe we belong where we are, but the truth is that we belong wherever we want to be.
The struggle to finish an assignment is one of the most frustrating moments. While some struggle more than others, understanding the challenges students face can help you defuse such battles before starting.
If truth be told, assignments give students torrid moments, especially in the initial stages of being at college.
Assignment deadlines often have us scrambling to finish our work in time, but don’t let a due date rush you to the point that you lose all motivation to finish it at all. The truth is that just by being who you are, you are already capable of doing this work.
As a learner myself, I would prefer an in-class or an exam than an assignment. However, the purpose of an assignment is to allow students to research.
Learning can be scary, especially if we are being pushed beyond something we have ever ventured to try before.
I remember at some point having over 14 assignments that had concurrent deadlines. The pressure was unbearable, but I still had to deliver.
With such pressures, some students resort to copying the assignments or have someone to write for them for a fee, such is college life.
The curse of assignment writing forces other students out of the track where they end up not writing, resulting in poor course work.
What matters most is proper planning.
Most students fail to balance happy, wild moments and meeting deadlines at college.
In the midst of a particularly gruelling essays we often fail to see the benefit in risk. When we take a risk we almost always reap the reward.
When you take the time to plan your life, you are taking the steps to not only identify and reach your desired goal, but also to do so in the most efficient manner.
Rather than relying on pure chance, a life plan details the exact route to take.
It helps you get there in the shortest time possible without running out of ideas.
Benjamin Franklin summarised it all when he said: “Failing to plan is planning to fail”.
The debate surrounding assignments is not a new phenomenon, and, in fact, it has gone through cycles throughout the last century.
Learning to stay on top of your assignments plays an important role in your academic outcome. College students often find themselves facing a number of different outside factors that make focussing a challenge, with multiple classes that have intensive schedules, external commitments, and interpersonal relationships.
As many as a quarter of college students also become chronic procrastinators, which can greatly impact their ability to complete their assignments and successfully obtain their degrees.
Fortunately, with proper planning, you can learn to improve your ability to stay on top of your assignments and assessments, improving your performance and setting you on the path towards success.
Assignments are always associated with procrastination resulting in failure to meet deadlines. As the saying goes: procrastination is the thief of time. While time is a good teacher, it kills all its students.
Fortunately, times have changed and teachers are now encouraged to ensure that students of all levels are appropriately challenged. Thank goodness for that because in order to develop a growth mindset, students must experience challenges and struggles.
Challenge is the core of the growth mindset; without it, students don’t get the opportunities to take risks, learn to fail and figure out how to pick themselves up again. This “sense of progress” as Dweck calls it, is central to developing growth mindsets.
Your comfort zone is basically the type of environment that you have grown used to living in, or what you are comfortable doing. It usually defines the type of lifestyle you lead, and most students tend to live in their comfort zones.
College is a great time to step out of your comfort zone. In fact, you will probably be forced to do so whether you want to or not.
Many students are not averse to trying new things if they are offered to them in the right way. They must be transparently shared with students what the intended outcome is and what they will get from it before the beginning.
The advantages of properly planning against the curse of assignment writing are numerous, but the most obvious ones are: to have better outcomes, to use resources efficiently, to establish good research skills and to better manage expectations.
Without planning, a student cannot reach their full potential.
No person or business accidentally succeeds, their success is a result from constructing and executing their plan.
Planning is often called the primary management function as it establishes the basis for all other tasks managers perform both formal and informal.
At the core of the discussion should be the reminder that the purpose of assignment writing should be to increase student learning.
Fight the curse of assignment writing!
Online Reporter