Throughout my first year of high school, I have learnt a lot about myself. I have learnt that the best way for me to adapt to change or overcome a challenge is by setting myself a goal and sticking to it. At the beginning of the school year, I quickly realised that high school is drastically different to middle school. In high school, I receive a lot more homework and assessments on a regular basis compared to middle school. Because of this, I have had to think of ways to organise my tasks more efficiently and manage my time better. In order to do so, I set myself some personal goals in the hope that I would achieve them by the end of the year and put me on the right track for the years of high school to come. The main goal that I set myself was to learn how to efficiently balance my academic, social, and sports life. I believe this to be a very important skill as it will not only help me in high school and university, but also my life after school. Having multiple tasks can be very overwhelming and stressful, however once I am able to balance and organise them, they will quickly become much more manageable.

Balancing my social, academic and sports life has always been something I have really struggled with and I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of tasks I have to do. I set this as my goal because I felt that if I could balance all my tasks and manage my time properly I would be a lot less stressed and it would improve my organisation skills which would benefit my academic performance. To achieve this, I made a planner which I update weekly which enables me to always know what I have to do and when I have to do it by. It also tells me when I have time to do the specific tasks. When I look at the planner I am able to see whether my week is balanced between my sports, social and academic tasks. Although my goal is not always easy to achieve, I have found that over the course of the year it has progressively become more manageable.

I understand that this specific goal is extremely relevant to my life and will continue to be for a very long time. Balancing work and social life is a commonly discussed topic around the world as it is a challenge faced by a very large number of people. In previous school years, I have researched this topic and learnt that not being able to balance the two lifestyles can lead to more serious problems such as stress or failing to achieve success in either department. I believe that if I am able to achieve my goal now and master this skill, I will be able to achieve much more in the future.

This past year I have experienced a number of changes which over time I have learnt to adapt to. Grade 9 has taught me the importance of goal setting and it’s impact on progress, success and organisation.