So, the past week has been kinda rough. I’m used to having deadlines, don’t get me wrong. In IGCSE I took systems and control, and the week leading up to our final submission – I was definitely not getting enough sleep (although that’s likely a testament to my shitty time management skills as opposed to anything else).
But this past week, it’s been different. For one thing, I’ve been forced to be far more efficient with my time in the past – whereas previously I could only spend 30 minutes of an hour productively (and still get the job done), I now have to use the entire 60 minutes. After all, when you have a 4 minute Spanish oral on Friday and are staying at school until 8 pm every day of the week (ensuring suppliers are paid for the products you’ve ordered from them, printing out the placards and lanyards, directing your team to organize the bags for each schools delegation …), taxi rides are no longer a time to listen to the Killer’s Day and Age album. It’s a fervent rush of scriptwriting and memorization, getting incredibly frustrated trying to figure out if a sentence needs to use the indicative or the subjunctive …
When I first read the description of learning outcome 2 for CAS (undertake challenges and develop new skills) I didn’t take it all too seriously. Yes, I’d develop my ‘collaborative’ skills perhaps, working with others in a team, or my ‘resilience’ – going through some sort of failure at a MUN conference or with some other project I was undertaking, and learn from that. The short of bland, repetitive statements that I’ve been putting down in reflections like this for years now. What I’ve since found out, is that actually, for the first time, I’m really starting to understand what those soft skills mean (what they actually look like).
Take time management for example. By no means am I saying that I’m anywhere close to being highly effective with the way I manage my time – I have a lot to learn. But like I pointed out above, by necessity, I’ve started to better understand this principle of prioritization, intentionally ignoring certain tasks that I might have due, to instead focus on other ones that carry more significance and weight. To give you an example – take completing a physics lab report (worth 0% of your grade) over studying for a Spanish test (worth 10%). In the past, I would have 100% completed the lab report first – not only is it simpler to do, but it felt like a more concrete action (the satisfaction of saying you have finished doing something), as opposed to studying for a test (which, if it does pay you any benefit, will only do so at a later stage).
The idea of being busy, ensuring my day was ‘filled up’ with TODOs was my idea of time management all these years. “If you’re busy, you have to be getting things done” (not TRUE). My recent experiences with taking on more responsibilities on the exec team (what a journey is in charge of logistics for the conference has been …) is what has taught me both this skill, and the idea that there is far more depth to these buzz words like “critical thinking”, “resilience” or indeed, “time management”.
Example Email Chain For MUN Procurement
