My Strategy for Success by Sierra

My Strategy for Success by Sierra - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

Planning and organization. That’s not two words you often hear from a high school student, but that’s the only way I survived. I used to be bad at procrastinating. I was a straight A student and a bit of a perfectionist, so you think I would use my time allotted for a project wisely, but waiting until the last minute seemed to be tradition for me, which meant losing a lot of sleep over every project I did. After a few almost sleepless nights, I reluctantly figured this out. I knew I had to change something if I wanted to continue with good grades in school, and be proud of my work at the same time, so I did. That is when I found my strategy for success.
I started planning. The day I was given a project to do, I wrote down the due date in my planner, so I could visualize how long I truly had to work on the project. By this, I mean the teacher may say I have two weeks to work on a project, but after band, drill and multiple other practices and responsibilities, I really had about four days I could work. Now on to the execution planning. For smaller projects, like PowerPoints, it was easier, because I could look at the rubric, get a rough draft of what I needed done, and use the rest of the time to add details and make it perfect (at least to my standards). Then, I would get a big project and “easy” wasn’t an option. Once I figured out what kind of project I had to conquer (diorama, model, final, essay, poster board, etc.), I sat down and thought through the best ways to express my subject or topic, which usually meant planning out how it would look and where each component would go. For crafts, like posters, I drew out what I wanted on it, and how that would look and fit together. For essays, I made an idea flow chart, so I could follow each paragraph easily. For models, I drew a picture of how I wanted the product to look, and planned the best material and where to get it. No matter what kind of project I was given, I made sure I was planning out where I wanted to go with it and how long I had to get there, but how was I going to keep track of everything?
Organization was key. Without being organized, I was the student who ran around trying to throw a project together and getting mad because every store is out of the one material I needed, but after I planned it out and got organized, I got everything done more efficiently and on time. Organizing my materials, ideas, and time saved me from a lot of chaos. I started with looking at my plans to see what information or materials I needed to gather. Depending on how much I planned on doing, I used a page protector or folder to keep it all together, and for when I needed to be crafty, I would use a box. When schools started to become more technologically savvy, I had to adapt my ways of organizing. For electronic projects, I used USB drives or Google drive to keep everything together, and I made sure to have a separate folder labeled only for that project, so I didn’t lose any pictures or information, and all my resources were conveniently stored in one place. Organizing my materials and keeping up with all my resources and ideas helped me get through each step of a project efficiently while still allowing me enough time to complete a product I was going to be proud of turning in.
Projects were my worst nightmare throughout school, I would always stress, procrastinate, and lose the grading rubric as soon as I got it, every time, without fail. When I finally decided to do something about it, everyone, especially my teachers, saw a change. I never thought planning and organizing was all that useful. I thought teachers and parents would preach strategies like that to try and get us to do our homework on time, but I never truly considered it being useful. I found my ultimate strategy for success, and it worked for more than just school projects, it helped me in all aspects of my life, and now I can tell other students who struggle about my experience and help them too.