Podcast Summary:
If you’re a blind or low-vision high school student heading to college, this College Readiness Workshop from State Services for the Blind of Minnesota breaks time management into a simple system you can actually use. Tou Yang and the SSB transition team talk with students about setting clear goals, knowing your “why” (motivation), building a realistic schedule, and staying disciplined—especially when you hit that week-two wall and want to quit. The group names common traps like procrastination and cramming, and offers practical fixes: block out study time, write everything down, set reminders, and cut distractions (yes, your phone). A key college takeaway is the “1 hour in class = 2 hours outside class” guideline, which shows how fast a 15-credit schedule becomes a full-time workload. Students also hear that schedules can flex—shift time between classes and protect downtime to avoid burnout.
To find out more about the services provided at State Services for the Blind, and what they can do for you, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or call Shane at 651-385-5205.
Full Transcript:
Jeff: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota, SSB, offers students opportunities to explore and engage in activities, events and opportunities to meet others sharing the same concerns and interests from canoeing adventures,
Speaker 2: Let’s power paddle forward all together. Let’s countdown together. All on 3. 1, 2, 3.
Jeff: camping excursions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did like a campfire with like marshmallows yesterday
Jeff: Open Chat meetups
Speaker 4: Before class starts, the number one thing I want to do with new teachers is build rapport because it’s a tool that you can utilize later and it will definitely help you in the long run.
Jeff: Snow shoeing
Speaker 5: They kind of feel like shoes except there’s, wow what are all these squares and rectangles on them? Are those to help it on the snow?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that’s right, traction so you don’t slip and slide on the ice. So they get more…
Jeff: Picnic gatherings, round table discussions with peers and much much more. You can find all these events and opportunities on the SSB website and be sure to check out and subscribe to the Spectacle newsletter and stay up to date with all the upcoming events. And check out the numerous podcast episodes on the news for teams page.
{Music}
Jeff: Recently, students from high school and college from around the state participated in the College Readiness Workshop, Mastering Time Management Transition Navigator Tou Yang headed up this event with students conversing about time management in relation to attending college from objective motivation and discipline. Students learn how these three factors build success with Tou yang. Leading the conversation and conducting a schedule building and practice session. There’s a lot to learn from this college readiness workshop put on by the team at State Services for the Blind of Minnesota. So without further ado, here’s Tou Yang. We hope you enjoy.
Tou: Welcome to the College Readiness Workshop Mastering Time Management. We got a lot in store for you, so I’m really happy you guys made it here. Before we go any further, I’m just going to first bring Sheila to the spotlight. Sheila’s our transition manager here. I’m just going to give her the spotlight here real quick. Sheila.
Sheila: Hey, everybody. I just wanted to say hello and welcome. And we’re glad you’re here. Totally open to ideas. I know too will talk about this later on, too. But we’ve got a couple other of these programs in the College Readiness Series. So if there are things that you want to talk about, learn about all that good stuff too. Will gather ideas later on. Mostly it’s just really great to be together and to have this kind of space where it’s not in person, but at least it’s having some kind of community anyway. So we’re really glad that you’re here, hope that it’s informative and that you also feel like, hey, I met some people I can talk with that’s that’s always great. And then we have another option this week too. That too. We’ll talk about later on. And that one is hosted by our peer ambassadors and is more like just a like a hangout. So that’s another opportunity for you. But thanks for being here. And I’ll probably hang around just for a couple minutes and then go ahead and leave it to two. And Randi, who are other staff people.
Tou: Thanks, Sheila. Yeah, let’s just jump in. Right. Again, welcome to the College Readiness Workshop mastering time management. My name is Tou Transition Navigator. Let’s go over our agenda. So I’m not sure you guys are screen reader users or low vision. Whatever the case, I’ll just try my best to describe what’s on the screen here. First, we’re going to go over introductions. I do want to get to know you guys and you guys to get to know me and the members of our staff here. And so I have a couple of fun little questions. And once we go over some of these questions we’re going to have a discussion. All right. And so just a little bit about this discussion. It’s going to be a lot less, hopefully a lot less of me, Tou, just talking, but more of us conversating. That’s kind of my goal for our workshop here. I’m a firm believer that, hey, we learn more when we interact and we converse with one another, so hopefully we’ll have a good discussion. Once we have our discussion, we’re going to do some practicing and so practicing, meaning we’ll try to apply a little bit of what we’ve learned from our discussion and what that practice is. We’ll see what that is in a bit, but hopefully we’ll be able to do some of that. It might be kind of courageous of us to try to do it. Maybe not. I don’t know. So we’re trying this and we’ll see how that goes. And then we’re going to wrap things up with some summary and go over some questions. If any of you guys have any at the end. And that’s sort of our schedule for the day. So let’s break into introductions. All right. Let’s go. Introductions. So I just have a couple of questions here for you guys. And my question for you guys is what is your name? What school do you attend? What’s your favorite hobby slash game. And what’s your New Year’s resolution. All right. And so again what’s your name. What school do you attend. What’s your favorite hobby slash game. What’s your New Year’s resolution. Whoever wants to go first just go ahead and unmute yourself. Introduce yourself. Yeah. Go for it.
Sophia: I’m Sophia. I’m a sophomore in college, so I attend Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. My favorite hobby slash game. There’s a million music. I like listening to a lot of different music. And can we say favorite game as well?
Tou: Okay, sure.
Sophia: This is the online platform, but it’s called Quincy’s Playroom and it has a lot of accessible games on it, and you can play against a lot of different people and they have like a ton of different games. So I’ve been playing a lot on there lately. I think you should download it if you have time.
Tou: That sounds great. You’re going to need a type that link to the chat or something, but go ahead. What is your New Year’s resolution?
Sophia: Mine. This is really like basic, but mine has just been to stay more positive and try to get better at just not having like so much negative, like mental health.
Tou: Okay, trying to stay positive, I like that. Cool. Thank you. Sophia.
Segal: My name is Segal. I attended Edison High School and my favorite hobby is writing poems. What, my new year resolution is becoming more independent.
Tou: Okay, thank you. Segal, do you have, like, a favorite poem?
Segal: I kind of write poems. I…
Tou: Okay.
Segal: I’m not really into people that poems, so I write poems.
Tou: All right, all right. I can accept that. Thank you. Segal.
Fathi: My name is Fathi. I go Washburn High School. I’m junior and in this year is positive. And I will be good this year. My like my greatest year my hobby is watching video.
Tou: Nice, nice, so I heard your goal or New Year’s resolution is to get better grades. Fathi: Yeah.
Tou: And your hobby is watching some videos. Okay. Sounds good.
Anna: Hello, my name is Anna. I’m from the Minnesota State Academy for the blind. My favorite game hobby is art, and my New Year’s resolution is I want to read the Bible more and get closer to God.
Tou: Lovely.
Anna: My name is Brianna. I am a senior and I go to the Minnesota State Academy for the blind, and my favorite game is Uno. And I like.
Tou: Sweet.
Anna: My name is Jose. I’m from the Minnesota State Academy for the blind, and my favorite hobby is reading books. And my name resolution is I don’t think I have.
Tou: Okay, that’s fine.
Anna: My name is Anna. I go to the Minnesota State Academy for the blind, my favorite game or hobby. I like listening to music and messing around with my voice like voice acting fun. My New Year’s resolution is that I continue sharing and teaching other students with singing or playing piano.
Tou: Cool.
Adam: Hi, my name is Adam. I go to the Academy and my favorite hobby is to listen to music.
Huber: Hi, my name is Huber. I am a student at the Academy for the blind and I like to listen to music.
Tou: Nice. Listen to music. Thanks, you guys, for sharing a little bit. So I’ll just share a little bit about myself and Randi. Sheila, want to share something yourself? My name is Tou. Cool fact is, I also went to Washburn for a little bit. Although I admit I did not graduate there. I went somewhere else to graduate. Yay go Millers! And my favorite game right now is a game called Hades two. It’s a video game. Really fun. It talks about Greek gods and that sort of thing. My New Year’s resolution is to try to get more quality rest, I guess. Be less stressed, get more rest. Randi. Sheila, want to say something real quick?
Randi: Sure. This is Randi. I am the other one of our transition navigators. I work with Tou in central and northern Minnesota, and I am an alumni of Saint Cloud and Bemidji State University. My favorite hobby slash game I would have to say is called the Spider game. I have a two year old at home, and he loves to play the spider game, where I take my hand and crawl at him like a spider, and he giggles incessantly. That’s the best. And as far as the New Year’s resolution, just trying to make some changes to be healthier overall and hopefully as a result, have more energy. So that’s me. And I will say also, I’m moderating the chat tonight, so feel free if you have questions or comments like Tou said, we encourage that you unmute, but if you don’t feel comfortable or unable to do that, you can put something in the chat and I will make sure to keep an eye on that. Thanks.
Sheila: Hi everyone, this is Sheila. I went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. Favorite hobby or game? I’m going gonna go cooking. Cooking is a lot of fun. I like cooking more than baking, but both are great. To me it’s just really relaxing and. New year’s resolution I always choose a word every year. So my word for this year is grateful. And it’s just kind of keeps me focused on remembering to just be grateful for things.
Tou: Nice, I like that. All right, moving on. I want us to go through a discussion. I want us to this to be interactive, less so me talking and us just having a conversation. So again, I encourage you guys to unmute and contribute to the conversation. Hopefully we get something meaningful out of our discussion here. So to start off our discussion, I just want us to ask the pretty basic question what is a New Year’s resolution? You know, we just talked about it like, what is a New Year’s resolution and what does it take to be successful, and when do you know you’re successful?
Segal: So for me, I just believe what does it take to be successful? Is anything that you put your mind to in the new year, and that’s when. And how do you know you’re successful is if you did accomplish it.
Tou: Right.
Tou: If you said something and then you do it okay. You’re successful. Okay.
Sophia: I kind of look at it as like a goal you have and.
Tou: Like, okay.
Sophia: How you want to set something that you know that you can achieve.
Tou: Right.
Sophia: And how you know that you achieve it is that if you’ve done something in like a certain period of time that, you know, like you’re working towards what you have said that you wanted to do.
Tou: right! I really like that. That’s perfect. That kind of leads us to our next slide, which I’ll get to in a bit. Any other takers on what is a New Year’s resolution?
Anna: I feel like a New Year’s resolution is something you want to be better at in the next year, whether it’s reading more or doing what you feel you know, doing anything, you feel like doing more. It’s kind of my take on resolutions. And being successful means that you get something accomplished that you either wanted to get accomplished, or that you met a goal that you set and how you will know that you’re successful is when you know that that thing is done. And after reflecting on what you’ve set your goal on that goal.
Tou: Yeah. Like these are pretty basic questions. Like they’re almost kind of self-explanatory, but at the same time it’s not very clear either. Right? But you really have a lot of intention for New Year’s resolution. I forget who said it, but you gotta put in some time into it. And you.
Sophia: I’m just going to say one more thing. I think you also have to like self motivate yourself.
Tou: Oh.
Sophia: Don’t do that for yourself. You’re not going to get anything done.
Tou: You guys are beating me to the punch. I might as well just call it a night now. I mean, all right, let’s move on. So here on my slide, I have a couple of example resolutions or goals. And my first example here is lose £20. Right. I’ve had that resolution before. But what if I told you that I lost £20 in a day? Would you guys believe me?
Segal: I know it sounds like something like an ad, right?
Tou: You’d be like.
Tou: What? This guy, If someone told you I lost £20 in a day, what kind of look would you give them? Mm.
Sophia: What kind of question is that?
Segal: Or a puzzled look.
Tou: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I love it. Puzzled look. Maybe a little scared for them. Like. Bro, are you are you healthy? Are you okay, man? Okay. And so I think most people would agree that hey, if you want to lose £20, that’s going to take a little bit of time, man. Like, you probably gotta set that apart a little bit in order for you to lose £20. All right. So my next example resolution here is to save a thousand bucks right. And same thing. What happens if someone told you like hey, I made a thousand bucks yesterday.
Segal: It’s kind of like you can do that, but it would take like many months or years to get to that point because, you know, sometimes you have to sacrifice your hard earned money to buy something that will help you in the future.
Tou: So yeah. Yeah.
Sophia: I would kind of question like where is your like fact? Like you say you did that, but where do you have any like evidence of that.
Tou: That’s cool. Right, right. So if you say you save a thousand bucks you’ll be like, mm I don’t believe it. Show me. Okay. So just moving on here. Our third example resolution here is to ace the science exam. And I’m gonna spin this a little bit differently. And let’s just say someone aced the science exam. But, you know, they did not study.
Segal: That’s what we call natural smart.
Tou: Natural smart. Alright. Natural smart. Who here has natural smarts? All right. And, um, my hand is down. Just to let you know, as I do not have the natural smarts. And so for most people, I think we would agree that if you want to, quote unquote, ace the science exam, um, you probably have to what?
Segal: Study study study.
Tou: Study. I only have to study. Can you study one day before the science exam?
Segal: Depends on how easy it is.
Tou: Not not how easy. Alright. I’m hearing. Do not do that.
Anna: I’ve done that. Do not do that.
Tou: Alright, I’ve heard, I’ve done that. Do not do that. Great advice.
Anna: A couple weeks before the exam.
Tou: Okay. Just study a couple of weeks before the exam. So do you only study a couple of weeks before the exam and then you wait until the test?
Anna: No.
Tou: Um, I think the answer is to kind of keep studying a couple of weeks before the exam until you take the exam or something like that, right?
Segal: I mean, like for me, it also depends on the teacher. Like if the teacher says, hey, this test is easy peasy. It won’t take you enough effort to learn. I’ll give you class time to do it then. Yeah, if it’s that easy. And if she allows you to have notes or he or she, then yeah, it’s easy. Then you can.
Tou: Okay.
Segal: Do it one day.
Tou: Yeah. So kind of it kind of depends on the test. Right. Okay. Let’s let’s go to our fourth example here and then we’ll move on to our next slide. All right. So our fourth example here of an example resolution is to win a gold medal. Right. So most of you guys probably know if you guys don’t know there’s the Winter Olympics going on right now. And Milan France…
(Buzzer Sounds)
Sophia: Italy.
(Ding-ding sound)
Tou: Excuse me. Thank you. Why did I think France I don’t know. And so let’s think about some of these people here. Right. Do they only practice the day before going to the games?
Segal: No. For me, I know very well that like people who do Olympics like that, especially sports and stuff, especially for one common one like running, you practice months before the tournament even comes.
Tou: Practice, Right? It’s hard. Is it easy for these guys?
Segal: No, I don’t think so.
Tou: Oh, okay.
Sophia: Some of these guys have been training for years.
Tou: Right? Been training for a long time. Would it be okay for them to not train at all and to show up at the Winter Olympic Games? I think we all agree. That’s crazy. Who in their right mind would do that? How would they look on screen if they did not practice at all? Oh man. Yeah, it’d be kind of embarrassing, right? Like, I don’t want to be that guy. Oh. Yeah. Sorry. My guy. All right, so I think we kind of agree here that if you want to win a gold medal. Oh, man, you gotta bust your butt. You gotta work real hard. I think we kind of agree that that’s also true for these other things. You want to lose £20? Oh, man, you better work hard. Save a thousand bucks. You better wipe your brows, both sides and work real hard for that, too. All right, let’s move on. So we’re going to ask this question. All right. This is a different kind of angle. And the question is why does the person choose the New Year’s resolutions that they do. Like what exactly is their intent. So our past example was lose £20, right. That was our past example. But why would someone choose to lose £20?
Anna: Maybe they want to feel better, or…
Tou: They want to feel better. Okay.
Anna: They want to look more appealing to themselves.
Tou: Right! Okay. They want to look more appealing to themselves. Okay. Right.
Segal: Maybe health issues.
Tou: They want to be healthier. They have health issues and they want to improve their health. Okay.
Segal: Anything goes to money. Maybe they have like, uh, some type of, like, debt or something that major that they need to pay off or want to save up.
Tou: Okay. So maybe there’s money reasons around that. Let’s think about our other example. Ace the science exam. So why would why would someone want that.
Segal: Maybe there’s like a grade in one exam. And if they don’t pass they have to repeat the class.
Tou: Right. There’s consequences.
Sophia: Maybe they need it for, like a certain part of, like a college exam. So they want to get, like, into a good college.
Tou: Right? They want to get into a good college. Okay. They want to basically get to this good college so they can get more opportunities or something like that.
Sophia: Yeah. That’s what I thought of.
Tou: Okay.
Anna: I was going to say that maybe they wanted to get good grades so that they can make their parents and teachers proud.
Tou: Oh yes, I love that.
Anna: And maybe if they don’t think they might be more upset with the kid.
Tou: Okay. Yeah. They want to make the people around them proud. And that kind of leads to our Olympic gold medalist example, which was, oh, if you don’t do your best and you just show up without practicing, man, is that embarrassing. So I definitely want to do your best and ace that exam. You want to make them proud. And so here I have on this slide is you know, the question which was why does a person choose the resolutions that they do. And on the bottom I wrote upside down. You know what most people would agree is they choose those resolutions because that is kind of their motivation to put it into one word. That’s their motivation. And on our next slide, I just have a list of potential motivation that pushes people to do the things that they do right, whether it’s resolutions or goals or whatever. Generally, most people chooses to do something because of something within these eight things. Right? And these are just eight things, just like a gazillion things. But I would say most people chooses to do something based off of some of these things. And so I’m just going to pick a few. I won’t go over all of them. But some of you guys already said it. All right. Which was, oh, I want to ace this exam because I want to make someone proud of me, right? That is socially, it is because of a relationship that you have. Right. And so this is a totally tangent thing, right? But I don’t remember the name of it. But there’s that really stinky fish from like Norwegian or something. You guys know what I’m talking about. Like it’s super smelly.
Anna: It’s called lutefisk.
Tou: Lutefisk okay. And so I’m thinking who in their right mind would do that. Why? Let’s ask that question real quick. Which one of these reasons here would a person do that? Let me just read it out loud. Personal growth, interest and joy, health and well-being, social or relationship or some sort of cause or change your beliefs and values, financial gain and legacy or recognition.
Anna: I would say relationship or social relationships.
Tou: Right, right. Yeah. Maybe because grandma gave it to them. I can’t say no to grandma. Don’t want grandma to be mad at me, okay? What about these? Lose £20. Where would that fall under?
Anna: Eating healthy, getting healthy.
Tou: Right?
Anna: Yeah.
Tou: What else could it fall under?
Segal: It can fall on to society or relationships. But that’s basically if you want to.
Tou: If you want it to.
Segal: Yeah. But I think it’s intent and joy.
Tou: Mhm. Yeah. Maybe this person just really likes to pump iron. Right. And they find a lot of joy and interest in that. They really really like that sort of thing. Right. And so just sticking with they lose £20. What else might also fall under that. Or a potential motivation for someone to want to lose £20. So we talked about health already and interest and joy, but what else might it also fall on?
Huber: Growth.
Tou: Growth right. Personal growth. They just want to be stronger. Maybe they don’t even like to work out. They just want to be stronger.
Adam: Or make better decisions for your life in general.
Tou: Right, right. Better decision for your life in general. That probably falls a little bit into health and wellbeing and personal growth. Yeah. Cool, cool.
Anna: Being helpful could be another one, right?
Tou: Being helpful. Yeah I would put that under, you know, for a cause or for some sort of change that you want to see in the world, right? I mean, if you want people to be healthy, you gotta be healthy first yourself.
Anna: What about exercising?
Tou: Yeah, exercising. So I’m going to move on to our next slide. We’re going to shift gears a little bit. Alright. So we’ve been talking a lot about goals and motivation. We’re going to go to the other side of that. And then the question here is what is procrastination. What do you guys think.
Anna: Procrastination is the lack of doing something. Waiting till the very last minute to get the the higher priority things done that should have been done a little while back. Think of like when you’re cleaning your room and your parents say, can you clean this up in two weeks? And then you wait and wait and wait and say, I’ll do this later. I’ll do this later. And then you did it. And I’m like, oh, I gotta clean my room.
Tou: Right?
Anna: Example of procrastination and what it is.
Tou: Oh perfect example. I love that.
Sophia: I’m just putting it off until like, you actually can’t do it anymore.
Tou: Like, oh yeah, when you wait so long that you can’t even do what you were supposed to do anymore. Mm. Perfect. Let’s hear what else is procrastination mean?
Anna: Like homework, sometimes you kind of put things off and you get the less priority things done. But you have to have the homework as your top priority.
Tou: right? It’s kind of like, well, if you don’t have that priority, like you said, then it’s probably not going to get done. So procrastination, you’re kind of waiting till the very end. It’s kind of like what I said earlier. Where can a person realistically lose £20 within one day? Well, usually when there’s procrastination, procrastination brings a friend. That friend is called cramming. Have you guys heard of that term before? Do you guys know what cramming is?
Sophia: That is when you have to literally put everything into like a span of a couple hours or like, not a lot of time. And I learned the hard way about that.
Tou: Yeah, I think that’s perfect. You know, usually when you wait until the very end and then you don’t have a lot of time to do what you’re supposed to do anymore. Right. And you’re just going back to, I guess, the gold medalist example, right? Let’s say a Olympian. I guess that’s what they’re called. They’re waiting until, like, the day before they fly off to the Olympic Games. And then they work out really, really, really hard for, like, the day before. Is that effective? Is that going to get them that gold medal that they want?
Anna: It’s going to exhaust them.
Tou: Oh man. They’re going to be way too exhausted. How much of that is actually going to be helpful? Probably not that much. So I mean, what happens because you procrastinate or what happens when a person procrastinate?
Anna: When people think they cannot be relied on as much because they put things off.
Tou: Because they put things off, they’re just not that reliable. Oh, that kind of hurts.
Anna: Sorry.
Tou: Yeah, no I know. That’s perfect. That’s like saying sorry to. I’ve seen how you’ve done your work. You’re not reliable.
Sophia: I just think it’s like you don’t get your best work done. Like, because you have to, like, make everything work. So you kind of just throw it together and it doesn’t exactly like you don’t get the best things done. Like it just kind of is right.
Tou: You’re exactly right. So when you cram and when you procrastinate, can you confidently say that that’s your best work? Oh probably not. Most people would probably say no. Like, yeah, I probably could have put more time into it. Yeah. It just wasn’t a priority and it just fell off the radar. Yeah. Thanks guys, for describing procrastination. It seems like you guys are quite familiar with it. So how exactly do we maximize. You know, we didn’t really talk about it yet, but how do we exactly do we maximize time management? How do we minimize procrastination? What do you guys think?
Anna: I would say prioritize your time, organize your schedule. Maybe you prioritize your needs.
Tou: Prioritize your meetings, management.
Anna: Time management. Uh, overall.
Tou: Okay, okay.
Sophia: I want to use an example of like a calendar, whether that’s like on your phone or like however like just knowing that like you have a schedule of like what needs to get done within a day because then you’re able to like, not only motivate yourself, but you know that you have certain things that have to get done before you can go do whatever. But I always try to, especially for like college homework and stuff like that.
Tou: Right, right. I’m here, you know, you have resources. You have, you know, use your calendar, write things down. Perfect, perfect. I’m gonna move forward a little bit here. You guys said some of these things already. You know, ways to manage time. And I’m just going to read some of these off here for us essentially, ways to manage time is if you know you need to do something, maybe you need to block off that time to do that work. Well, what do I mean when I say block off that time to do that work?
Anna: I think that means setting aside a certain amount of time each day week. However, often you want to be able to get done what you want to get done.
Tou: Mhm. So let me put that in the picture of trying to lose that £20. Right. What would blocking off time to lose £20 look like. What do you guys think.
Sophia: Like maybe setting a time every day to like work out.
Tou: Ok! Perfect. What if I wanted to lose £20 within, like, a month, and I only worked out one time? I blocked off time for one day of that month, expecting to lose £20. Is that. Is that reasonable?
Sophia: You’re not gonna. It’s not going to work.
Tou: Right, it’s not going to work like two. Are you crazy? Okay. Right, right. Let’s continue to move forward. So ways to manage time. We want to of course write down our meetings and appointments, take notes, set reminders. And I really like this last one which is Cut off distractions. Oh, man. What does cut off distractions mean?
Segal: Oh, I have a hard time with distractions.
Anna: Means maybe putting the things away that distract you the most. Especially the phone is a big one.
Adam: Oh, yeah!
Segal: Yeah. The phone. I mean, maybe putting it away and using another device that maybe doesn’t have games on it or anything. So putting something away that distracts you the most will help you to get things done.
Tou: Right, right. Putting things away so you can actually focus on what you’re supposed to do. Okay. Right? Right. Like your phone especially. I’m guilty of that.
Sophia: Or even if you do have your phone, just like, put it on silent.
Tou: Yeah. If you have your phone, put it on silent. I like that, you know, a lot of people because I’m not just calling out gym rats, but, um, or people that goes to the gym where they go to the gym, and then most of the time when they’re on their phone. And then I’ve been really working out. And so maybe it’s best if they just leave their phone in the locker right when they block off time, it’s just best for them to leave their phone in the locker so it won’t distract them. We just talked about how to manage our time, cut off distractions, write down our meetings, and block off time to dedicate work. But how do most people do that? Like what? What resource do they use to do that sort of thing?
Sophia: Communication.
Tou: Communication with.
Sophia: Your boss.
Tou: With your boss. Okay.
Adam: Your coworkers.
Tou: your coworkers, but what does everyone write this down onto?
Anna: A planner.
Tou: A planner, right?
Sophia: Or even like a reminder.
Tou: Right. You set up a reminder. So what I’m saying is, it’s really helpful to use a calendar to help keep track of all of your things. So who here uses a calendar in their daily living?
Sophia: I do.
Anna: I do.
Tou: Yeah. Well, if you said I do, can you maybe talk a little bit about it, I mean, I use Google Calendar.
Anna: I have like an event or someone sends me an invitation. For example, if I get an invitation to orientation mobility each week, my Google calendar, it buzzes and it reminds me, oh, I have orientation mobility this day. I use reminders a lot on my phone. On the Apple iPhone. Reminders are really nice.
Tou: Nice, nice.
Sophia: I like outlook app.
Tou: Great. That’s what I use to keep track of all my meetings and appointments.
Anna: And, reminders to. And my reminders are for. I have reminders for my meds.
Tou: Mhm. Nice. Makes sense. And so let’s say we have our calendar and we’re motivated to do something right. Because we talked about the things that motivate us. But over time as we know things can get kind of hard. Things can get kind of dicey. And sometimes we’re like, oh man. Like, why did I even start this in the first place? Like, I’m I’m ready to give up. Like, it’s like week two to working out and I’ve, I’ve only lost like £1. Why? Why should I even keep going? And then it’s around this time where you might forget and question like, why? Why do I even start in the first place? This is stupid. Did you guys know what I’m talking about? Have you guys had this feeling before?
Sophia: To an extent, yeah.
Tou: It’s pretty sad, right? And I hate to say it, but not a lot of people gets through this. Right? We talked a little bit about New Year’s resolution and having these goals, and we talked about why people would choose those goals. We talked about maybe using your calendar to kind of help you reach some of those goals, or to plan and block time, set reminders, that sort of stuff. But as things just kind of move along, sometimes you might hit a wall or something that feels like a wall, right? And sometimes you ask yourself, man, this sucks, I’m done. Who has felt that way before?
Anna: I have.
Sophia:
I have.Tou: Oh man, let me say that that’s normal. Right? Normal to feel that way. So what the next question is, what do you do when you feel that way?
Anna: Talk to somebody about it.
Tou: Talk to somebody. Great, great.
Sophia: This is Sophia, and I just try to find someone that I know is going through the same thing and, like, share ideas with them.
Tou: Yeah, there’s strength and solidarity is what people say. Mhm.
Anna: And so what I usually do if I feel that way or if I’m stressed, I usually like take deep breaths or talk to someone. Uh my third option is I usually calm.
Tou: Mhm. Mhm. Great. Yeah. So there’s lots of different strategies in order for you to kind of like I don’t know get over that hill. Right. And so I guess the question that I want to ask is what is discipline. Oh man. You guys know what discipline is. I guess there’s several ways to discipline.
Segal: Discipline is when you mentally and physically put yourself in a task that you may know that you are struggling in. Like for example, I know some people when they’re in middle school, they had like an idea of putting assignments in the last minute, and then they did it in the last minute before it was due, and they still got a good grade and didn’t see any problem from it. But now since they’re in high school, uh, they got bad. So.
Tou: Right. so is that good discipline, you think? Or maybe not good discipline?
Segal: No. Like. Like they’re trying to get themselves to quit…
Tou: Oh, no.
Segal: Since they had it for a long time, it’s gonna be harder and they’re gonna slip up and then they’re gonna go back. So it depends, you know?
Tou: Okay, okay, I think I see where you’re kind of going with that. What else do you guys think? Like what? What what is discipline?
Anna: This is Anna. I think discipline is the self motivation to do something.
Tou: Oh.
Anna: And the self control.
Tou: Oh, I think you’re on to something. I like that self motivation. Self control.
Sophia: I just want to add to what you said. It’s also making sure that you kind of go back to what you feel is like important and like whether it’s like they use the example of grades a couple minutes ago and like if you feel it’s important to get good grades and stuff, then you know that you have to make sure that you do.
Tou: Oh, man.
Sophia: …to do to achieve that.
Tou: Yep, yep. Wow. I really like that. It’s like, if you know that you really want this, right? That’s your resolution, then you’re gonna need to be disciplined. You’re going to need to work hard towards that. So what I did was when I had looked up this word because everyone kind of know or has heard of the word discipline? But like, I just had to look it up and I was like, man, what is discipline? And according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, they said discipline and activity that one engages in regularly to train or improve oneself. And so when we think about again, losing our £20, can this person lose £20 without discipline? No. Probably not. Right. What about saving a thousand bucks? Can they do that without discipline?
Adam: No.
Anna: No.
Tou: Hmm. Go to Olympics and win a gold medal without discipline.
Anna: No. No.
Tou: No.
Anna: Earn it. In order to earn it, you need discipline.
Tou: Yeah. It’s almost impossible to me. It’s like. Which I will get to later. It’s like a leg. It’s like a stool. And one leg of the stool is, let’s just say, your goal, your resolution. In this case, the other leg, I guess, is your plan. That’s our calendar where we write down our plan. We put it down, we’re like, yep, I’m this, this is what I need to do. And the third one is, um, discipline. Now I need to actually do it. Oh, man. That’s hard. And they all kind of live with each other, and then one leg falls. You’re not doing too hot, right? You can have discipline and you can have your planner. But if you don’t have a vision or like that goal, you might not be successful. Or you can have a goal and you can have a planner, but if you don’t have discipline, you might be able to get started, but you’re not going very far. Does that does that make sense?
Anna: Yeah.
Sophia: Yes.
Tou: So here I have is a plain language version of the word discipline that I just kind of came up with that you guys basically said already too, but I’m just going to go ahead and read it here for us. Plain language version according to Tou, about what is discipline remembering why You started in the first place, then choosing to continue even when it’s hard. So to me, that’s discipline. And so going back to our motivators, right. Remember grandma, why it takes a lot of discipline I guess, to eat that, to eat that fish. But I guess because you’re so disciplined and because because you have a goal, you don’t want to disappoint grandma, because you got a plan. You’re going to follow through with being able to eat that fish. All of it, I guess. But beyond the fish losing £20, you’re going to remember why you want to lose that £20. And when you feel like giving up because you’re disciplined, you’re going to keep on continuing, even though it’s hard. Does that make sense?
Anna: Yeah. Part of that discipline also has to motivate yourself to be consistent.
Tou: Yes.
Anna: I personally struggle with that.
Tou: Yep. And so here is my attempt at like describing that stool. So I here I have a visual I guess. But it’s just a bunch of text right. So in the middle of this I guess circle of words is goals, objectives and resolutions. So that’s the middle. And around the middle is three words motivation. Time management and discipline. And so these three things kind of go around in a circle around your goals objectives and resolutions. They kind of orbit those objectives and resolution. And so one falls out of orbit. Or if there’s really none of it. And then it’s really, really hard for you to your goals objectives and resolution. And so I just want to do a quick summary here. Number one is we declare our objective right. That’s our, hey, this is my New Year’s resolution. I’m going to try to do something. Remind me what some of your New Year’s resolution was. Just just say it out loud. Let’s just hear it again.
Sophia: More positivity.
Tou: More positivity. Thank you.
Anna: Getting closer to God and reading the Bible more.
Tou: Ok, reading the Bible, having a closer relationship with God. Perfect.
Anna: Being able to share my gifts and teach others music and piano.
Tou: Okay. Perfect. Sharing your talent. So now that we have our objective. Right, let’s move on to step number two was what is motivating us to choose that as our resolution. Right. And so we need to identify what is motivating us to pursue that objective. And so you guys remember when a person wants and I was saying to lose £20, maybe they just want to become healthy. Or maybe they just want to look nice, or maybe they want to improve their relationship. Do you guys want to share a little bit about some of your motivations to reach your resolutions?
Sophia: Just having better relationships with people and not showing off how like it’s valid to feel how you feel, but not making it so that you don’t show the negativity towards other people and just making sure that like you’re taking accountability.
Tou: Mhm. Mhm. Right.
Anna: My reason for wanting to get closer with God and reading the Bible more. I want to dive deeper into the word and stay grounded in the faith. I want to stay firm in the faith. And reading God’s Word will help me do that. But if I am more consistent and reading the Bible, I will also feel more at peace.
Tou: Okay.
Anna: And help teach other scripture and bring the glory to God, and also share the love of Christ with others.
Tou: Uh, I heard a lot of reasons in that one. Thanks for sharing. It’s almost like maybe if you have more than one reason, or if you have a really strong reason, it really helps you to kind of hone in on your goal. You know, your objective that you’re trying to reach. So I’m going to move over to number three, which is now that we have declared our objective, we found the motivators that will help us reach our objective. We want to develop that schedule. Write those reminders to block off those times, to develop some sort of plan, to help us work towards our goal. Right. And then number four, which is probably the hardest one, is to stay disciplined, which is to actually actualize work in your schedule, work out the schedule that you built, and then to remember why you started and to keep going at it even when it gets hard. So that is our discussion in a nutshell. Any questions about that? Is that pretty pretty pretty straightforward.
Adam: Yep.
Tou: And so again it’s kind of like this chair where success kind of sits on top of this chair or your goal. And it’s stood up by three legs your objective, your motivation and your discipline. One of them falls. It’s likely to all kind of like collapse or it’s really hard to make it stay up. But now we’re going to begin to try to do number three. All right. So we’re going to try to do number three together for the remainder of the hour here, which is to develop a schedule to work towards your objective. Right. And so this is what I would call is the time management part. And I heard some of you guys said you guys set reminders and have a calendar. So this might be a little bit of review for some of you guys. But we’re going to try to do this together and hopefully we have fun doing this together. What I’m going to have us do is actually we’re going to talk about this first because this is part of a discussion. But what do you guys think when you guys hear what you put in is what you get back? What do you guys think when you guys hear that.
Anna: Reminds me of a parable that Jesus taught, kind of like the Golden rule. Like you treat others what you want to be treated or okay, you get what you pay for.
Tou: That’s right.
Anna: You get the app. You know, I’ve experienced this firsthand. So imagine if you want to get an A, you’re probably going to have to take a lot, put a lot of time in it and pull an all nighter. That’s what I did.
Tou: Perfect, perfect.
Anna: Sometimes you have to sacrifice some things.
Tou: Right, right. Thank you, Anna, for sharing. Any other takers on. You know what this means to them? I heard so far, it’s kind of like golden rule.
Sophia: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Tou: Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. Feels like if you want to be loved, you want to, you know, love others too. All right. Perfect. And so I really like this because this is something pretty universal. And most people would agree with this, right? And so this is a college readiness workshop anyway. And so this is basically the same as the first one. Now it is academic specific. And let me go over this for us. For every one hour you spend inside of class, you spend two hours outside of class studying for that class. Now, let me just say that again. Right. And let us think about this. For every one hour you spend in class, you spend two hours outside of class studying for that class. So who here does that? Do you do that?
Sophia: No.
Tou: That’s kind of hard.
Sophia: And as someone who is in college currently and has. This is just me, but I feel like it almost depends on the class for that one.
Tou: Mhm.
Sophia: Some classes you will. Some classes aren’t as bad.
Tou: Thanks Sophia for sharing. But would you say that this is generally a pretty good idea?
Sophia: For the most part.
Tou: Or for the most part? Well, thank you for sharing. I’m biased, but I think this is a great idea and this is where we’re going to try to roll with today, right? This is we’re going to try to build a mock calendar around this statement. I think most people might find to do this really, really hard. But I would say that sometimes you might need three hours outside of class for every one hour you spend in class. Sometimes that’s just where people are at and kind of like what Sophia was saying. Maybe that’s more like one hour, maybe that’s just 30 minutes. But pretty much every university that you go to, almost all of them recommends this model, which is again, for every one hour you spend in class, you should be spending two hours outside of class studying for that class. And so let’s put this into perspective. Right. And so I’m on my next slide now. And here I have in front of us is a example fall semester for the University of Minnesota Twin Cities for their accounting program. And here I have this for classes. First class is econ 1165 Business Economics. That’s a four credit class. The second class is Business Administration. 2551 Business statistics. And ah, that’s also a four credit class. And then we have business administration 1011 leading self and teams business administration. 1021 design your life. And lastly we have RIT 1301 first year writing. So this is an example, first semester for a freshman college student that is focused on accounting major. And if we add up all these credits, do you guys want to do the math here? Four plus four plus two plus one plus four. What are we sitting at? How many credits total?
Anna: 15.
Tou: I heard it.
Sophia: 1515.
Tou: Yeah, we’re sitting at 15. What is 15 credits mean? Like, why does that number matter?
Sophia: That is over full time.
Tou: Mhm.
Sophia: That’s about average though.
Tou: Yeah 15 credits. So any takers on what 15 credits mean. So I heard it’s about full time but what does that mean. It’s full time.
Anna: I personally think that means it’s like that’s like half of your semester. That’s like your semester. So that would be part of your grade. So like let’s say if you don’t do too well, you’re missing like a big portion of your grade or your requirement for to be able to graduate from that.
Tou: Okay, I kind of see where you’re going with that. I think you’re partially on the right track. The 15 credits that we see here is it’s basically how many hours you’re going to be spending in class for one week, right. So let’s put that into perspective. So 15 credits or one week. That means you’re spending 15 hours in class for one week. And if you were to apply that model right, the model that we just said before, for every hour you should be spending in class, you should be spending two hours outside of class studying for that class. And so what is 15 times two?
Group voices: 30.
Tou: 30. Right. So we have 15 hours that we’re spending in class, and then we have 30 hours that we’re spending outside of class. So what’s 15 plus.
Group voices: 35, 45.
Tou: 45. That is huge. 45 is huge. Just think about it. Adults. We only work 40 hours a week in our jobs and universities. They’re telling students to work overtime. You kind of hear what I’m saying here. They’re telling students to work 45 hours a week, 15 hours inside a class, 30 hours outside of class, studying for their classes, 45 hours total within one week that they are committing to their class work. Does that make sense?
Sophia: I know.
Tou: Right? So if you think about it right now, I think most high school is only six hours in class. Yeah, right. I think that’s about right. So let’s do the math right. Six times five. That’s 30. Right. 30. So you’re in class 30 hours per week. Let’s be real here. Alright. I know we like I know we like to procrastinate and to cram. How many hours do you actually spend studying for your high school class?
Anna: It depends on the person and their work ethic.
Tou: Right? Depends on that person. I would say maybe five hours, maybe ten hours. So I guess if you’re a studious person and then you might be sitting at 35 hours, 40 hours per week, right. And so as a college student, all that studying is now placed on the student, right? So 15 hours you’re in class, but then now 30 whole hours, you’re supposed to be doing that on your own. Like you’re not doing that in class anymore. Most of that studying is now shifted to the student. And so 15 credits, you’re in class, you’re spending 15 hours in class. But as a high school student, you’re spending 30 hours in class. But then now you’re only spending 15 hours in class. And so all that studying time, those 30 hours that you’re supposed to be spending studying outside of class, that’s all on you. And what does that take? What does that word that we just covered? What special word that we just talked about earlier today does? Does it require?
Anna: discipline?
Tou: Oh thank you. It requires a ton of discipline. And can discipline stand on its own? No, no. It can be disciplined. But what if you don’t have a plan? It can be disciplined. But what if you’re not motivated? Or if you don’t know what your motivation is? And so I’m going to say if we have enough time for this, I think we will, but we’re going to draft up a my schedule, kind of see what this looks like. All right. And so I want us to build a basic schedule so that we can kind of see what this looks like. And so within our schedule I first want us to cover the in class hours, followed up by the devoted time to study the time that we’re supposed to put into studying outside of class. Then I want us to cover our basic needs within our daily schedule, as well as transportation, followed up by some other things in our life that might fall into our schedule. So that might be relationships, might be things that we want to do for fun. It might be work. And so we’ll talk about all of these things. And we’re trying to build the schedule, see what it looks like. And when we’re done we’re going to try to see how we feel about it and what we need to do to be successful at making the schedule happen. What I’m going to do is I’m going to pop up Google Calendar. I’ll try my best to describe what’s going on. If you guys want, you guys can try to tag along to on your own Google Calendar app. It’ll be mostly a visual thing, but like I said, I’ll try my best to describe it so that you know our screen reader users can tag along too.
All right, all right. So I got my Google calendar up here and I’m going to use next week as an example. All right. What I want us to do is we’re going to make this mock schedule, and we’re going to pretend we are a freshman college student studying accounting. And we’re going to go use that example first semester as something that we can use. So our first class was a four credit class and that was business economics. So you guys remember what a four credit class mean four hours. Exactly. That means that that would be a four hour our class. That means that we’re spending four hours in class, and I’m just going to make something up here. And I’m going to say that this class is going to be Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.. Business. Economics. So boom, I have here our first class. We have business economics and it is from Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.. And so that’s just an example right? It can be anything that the college says it is. But we’re just using this as our example. And our next class is business statistics. And that’s also a four credit class.
Tou: This one might be a little bit different but I’m just going to make something up. I’m going to say that is a two hour class from Tuesday Thursday business stats. That is a two hour class because that’s two hours that we’re spending in class. We are two out of five down. And so our next class is a two credit class, which means that is a two hour class. And this one is called Business Administration. I’m going to say maybe that is a Wednesday class for two hours. And maybe it’s maybe we’re lucky. And it’s also from one till three that lines up kind of nice. And moving on to our fourth class, there’s five classes total. We have business Administration Design Your Life. That is a one credit class, which means that we are one hour in. Maybe that is Mondays at one. That’s kind of coming together. And then we have our last class rates, 1301 first year writing. That is a four credit class. Okay, maybe this is a really long class right. Sometimes we have these classes and I’m just going to say this class is from 1 p.m. till 5 p.m. on Friday. Honestly, I try not to do those classes. I think there’s still classes that does that, but there’s not a lot of classes that does. A full four hour class.
Sophia: Like, the most I Had is three.
Tou: That is three. All right. Yeah. Honestly, I don’t remember having a four hour straight class, so maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s only three. But for the sake of this exercise, we’re going to say that it exists. All right. So we got our 15 hours in. And next up is now we try to enter in the time that we should be spending to study for each of these classes. All right. So so far we are currently booked Monday through Thursday 10 to 11. And then a lot of the 1 to 3 p.m. is booked also. And so let’s first try to tackle business economics. When should we be studying business economics. So we’re spending four hours for business economics, which means that we should be spending eight hours outside of business. Economic class. Studying for business economics. Well, where could we commit eight hours committing to business economics? What do you guys think?
Anna: I would spread it out, Like two hours each day for like four days of that week.
Tou: Mhm, perfect. I like that since the class starts at ten, maybe we can do 8 a.m. till 10 a.m. for two hours Monday through Thursday, right before each of the classes. That sounds pretty good. I’ll say study for biz econ. That is a lot of time. But every Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. till 10 a.m., I am studying for business economics and then the class itself. Business economics is from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. because again, that’s the model that we’re trying to follow, right? The model again, it’s for every one hour we spend in class, we should be spending two hours outside of class studying for that class. All right, so we got our first class knocked out. Let’s go to business statistics. All right. So same thing. That is a four credit class. We’re spending four hours in class, which means that we should be spending eight hours studying for that class. So where could we commit eight hours studying for business statistics.
Anna: Anna speaking. I would say the same thing, but maybe have that after, One of them on a Friday after the class.
Tou: Ok., one of them after the class, yeah, so we do a full four hours after the class.
Anna: Put it out. That was what I was suggesting. That way, if it happened to be a math class, that we wouldn’t get our brains so stuffed that we could refreshing every day and we can get back to it.
Tou: Okay, so maybe we can do 3 p.m. till 5 p.m.. Awesome. Monday through Thursday. Yeah, let’s try that now. We have Monday through Thursday from 3 to 5. We should be studying for business statistics, but the class itself is Tuesday and Thursday from one till three, so it means that we’re spreading it out. So maybe it’s a little bit more digestible. And then we’re studying for it Monday through Thursday classes is Tuesday. All right. Next up we have leading self. So Wednesday from 1 to 3 we have the class leading self and team. So that’s a two hour class which means we should be spending four hours studying for that class. So where should we put that one. Any any suggestions.
Anna: We could spread them out so so that they’re also digestible. So maybe like a one hour class for four days a week.
Tou: One hours for four days a week. Okay. Maybe we can do leading self and teams from 11 leading I’ll just call it leading study Monday through Thursday from 11 till 12. All right. And so there’s still like two more classes. But I want us to add some other stuff too, right? What about, like, lunch or eating? Right? I think most people we should probably schedule that lunch 12 to 1. What about dinner? When should we have dinner?
Anna: 5 to 7.
Tou: 5 to 7. You said five. Let’s do 5 to 6.
Anna: 5 to 6. Because I think it also like, sometimes people have to cook dinner. And just giving that time for people to cook dinner is also giving that extra time. And if you’re done with dinner, you can just settle down or clean up. So that’s why I say 5 to 7.
Tou: Right. And so we didn’t get the time to add the other classes. But from our basic schedule, what is it list. We said basic needs that’ll be eating right. So we got that down. We didn’t put down sleeping but that might be you know, from maybe 10 p.m. to like 7 a.m. or something. What about transportation?
Sophia: Yeah that’s right. I was thinking because you had in your schedule one of your study periods right before one of your classes.
tou: Yeah.
Sophia: And I was looking at that and I was like, that works for most of it. But then you have to like depending on like, say if you either have to like walk to class or whether you like, have to figure out some way to get there. You have to like schedule that. You’re going to have to.
Tou: Yeah.
Tou: You’re right. You have to schedule it. What happens if you live off campus? It takes a little bit more time to walk to classes. If you live off campus, and even if you live on campus, you still have to walk to your different classes too, which might hopefully take you a little bit less time. And so there’s just one more thing I want us to add a little block for, which is the other part, right. But let’s just say you wanted to work. Does this person have time to work kind of hard, right? It’s not impossible. So if you think about it, we didn’t add the other, um, or I didn’t add it yet, but this person, they’d be booked basically 8 a.m. all the way till 8 p.m. Monday through Friday. They were to follow this model, right? So that means that if a person wanted to work, they wouldn’t have time or I wouldn’t recommend them working during the weekday, and then they would have to work during the weekend. The weekend is still free. If they want to work during the weekend, they can. But is that really what you want to do during the weekend though? It’s kind of hard. What are you giving up if you’re working during the weekend.
Anna: Your family, your friends.
Tou: Time with your family and friends? Yeah. So if you’re giving up your family and your friends, that means that you have a different objective than your family and friends, right? That means that whatever it is that you’re working on, that motivation is now stronger than that social relationship motivation. And so maybe that motivation instead is your finances. Maybe you want to gain some skills. Maybe before you start working. You gotta tell your family and friends, hey guys, I love you guys, but I really want to work on this right now. You guys might see me a lot less. And that doesn’t mean that I love you guys less, but it just means that I’m working on myself right now, right? Is that. Does that make sense?
And so. But let’s just say this person is working and they’re part of the club and they are doing some other things that is booking up a lot of their time. What’s going to end up happening to them?
Sophia: You’re going to burn out real quickly.
Tou: Oh, you took the words out of my mouth. What happens if I try to add too much to your goals and schedule? You are gonna burn out. You’re gonna burn out. So it’s really important to what guys/ And what’s there to keep your schedule with the things the top priority.
Anna: And have some stuff for the things that are less important but can wait. And then the final part is still less important. But it’s not really, really urgent.
Tou: Right? Right. Like, you know, having dinner with your mom. Like, that’s that’s that’s important. But at the same time, like, I got a test coming up, mom, like, we set this aside, for example. All right, I want to go over the takeaways real quick. In a nutshell, we want to have a very clear objective, right? Our objective, which are like our New Year’s resolutions, maybe lose £20, maybe save some money, want to make our objectives pretty clear, and then we want to identify the reasons that makes us even say that in the first place. Like, why do I even want set aside a thousand bucks, right? Is it for family? Is it because I want to get something nice for myself? Is it just because I just like money? And then we’re going to develop that schedule, which we just did right to help us reach that objective. And then once we have this schedule, this plan, we need to stay disciplined, right. Discipline really hard. Probably the hardest thing out of all of us to do. It’s easy to build a schedule. It’s easy to come up with that New Year’s resolution. It’s easier to come up with a reason why we choose a resolution, but to actually start it and to keep going, even when you feel like it doesn’t even make sense anymore. And then you remember, oh yeah, that’s why that’s why I started. And then you keep going. Discipline really hard. That is the hardest part. And something like that. You don’t build over a day. It takes a lifetime. And the last thing which we just talked about is to balance one through four that I just said, that is really hard. Otherwise, if you cannot balance that and then you’re going to risk burning out. So all really important and definitely things to consider. So with that said what do you guys think? What what questions do you guys have?
Anna: I have a question. So I know there’s some weeks where you don’t may not need to do as much studying or you finish your homework, but we potentially like adjust it for that day as like free time for the rest of that time. Like like, let’s say if I had if I just got done studying or I just got all my homework done for that day, I could have free time for the rest of that day and maybe do a little bit of studying each day on like a Quizlet or something until that class. But I also do that.
Tou: Yeah, I think that schedule is very flexible. Right. But that is like a recommendation. Of course it’s not firm or it’s not permanent. I think once you begin to know that class and you begin to know your level of need within that class, You can, of course make adjustments to what makes sense to you, but I think it’s really important to start off with that model for your first semester, first year, to really get a gauge to how much effort you need to put in per class. So because some classes, it might be for every one hour you spend in that class, you should be spending 30 minutes for that class, right? Because you’re just maybe a little bit better around that topic. And then maybe you can use that time that you saved to kind of maybe chill or just hang out with some friends, or maybe you can devote that time to study for another class where maybe that other class, instead of spending two hours outside of class, you you realize that you should be spending three hours outside of class studying for that class. You can kind of loan that study time from one class to another class that you might be struggling with. Other thoughts and questions. I’m still here, right? Or did I disappear? Okay, you’re scaring me.
I just want to thank you guys for coming. And, um, thank you guys for contributing to the discussion. And if you guys have any questions, do reach out to me. I think most of you guys have my contact. Or if you guys don’t have my contact, you guys can ask your counselor to connect me or ask your, you know, maybe a teacher or staff to connect me. But I hope you guys had a great time. I definitely had a great conversation and discussion with you guys. Oh, and this Thursday there is a chill and chat by our peer ambassadors. You guys probably receive something from your counselor about joining the chill and chat this Thursday. So if you consider going to that, you guys take care.
Sophia: Bye. I’ll be at this meeting next time.
Tou: Perfect. Thank you.
Randi: Bye bye. Thank you for joining us. I just wanted to thank you guys for coming. And to those of you who are actively participating in the conversation. That’s it. Thank you.
{Music}
Jeff: To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact Shane.DeSantis at state.mn.us. That’s Shane dot d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s at state.mn .us.
(Music)
Jeff: Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc Rehab and find out what they can do for you.
Live, work, read, succeed.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities