Diary of a Sailor: Offering Tips to Help Any Student Stay Organized

Hi everybody,

This past week has been very interesting for me.  As you know, I previously started my Chinese Mandarin language course and have been participating in classes twice a week. It is actually very fun and I am shocked how fast I am progressing, being able to speak several sentences and knowing almost a hundred words. I enjoy my instructor and classmates and it is really cool being active in a virtual classroom and talking to people through microphones online.

Lately I’ve been juggling a lot on my plate and time management has been a big part of my survival. Between tennis, Chinese, Patch, and school activities and homework it is really important that I am organized and don’t forget my responsibilities. For those of you out there who have trouble balancing school, sports, or whatever extra-curricular activities you have, this is how I stay prepared.

First, I find it very helpful to keep a planner or notebook and write down all assignments and tasks that need to be done. Second, I think it is very important to pay attention to due dates and the time consumption of projects, always completing the assignments that are due the soonest or will take the longest first. Lastly, the most essential part to managing multi-tasking is to stay organized, keeping your binders or desk at home structured and sectioned into specific parts. Hopefully that will be helpful to some of you, but sorry if I bored you with that.

In tennis news, I once again lost in the first round of my tournament this past weekend. It’s really upsetting to see that I am failing to adapt to a higher age division, but am feeling confident that I have fixed the issues I was having and that I am going to win my next one. It seems that all of the older girls are just bigger and stronger, and so the game is faster.  Recently I’ve been working a lot on footwork, something pretty much relevant with every sport. You would think that because tennis is played with a racquet that you would mostly be using your arms, but you would be amazed at how much your ability to have good footwork affects your game.

Wrapping up, hope you guys have an extraordinary week (especially if you’re on break like me), and can’t wait to tell you guys all about it!

Kate