The True Balancing Act

The art of balancing your life is a skill we all have to grasp a hold of at some point in our lives. As a student, balancing my school life, my personal life, my extracurricular life, and now my new part-time job life has been an obstacle to overcome every week that passes by. School life itself always presents a challenge to divide my time equally between all my subjects. For these past couple of weeks, balancing my tasks and responsibilities in the classroom have been a challenge. Recently, most of my attention has been given to the assignment ‘Create A Space’, in which I have to create a visual project (it being a huge bulletin board in the achievement centre) that helps the students and directly involves them. I struggled most with the concept of my project and how it would look. I would say I am a fairly organized and clean person who likes projects like this to look as best as possible. Focusing on both my design while also tutoring my students have been quite a balancing act. One minute I would be tearing down the previous decorations of the board and the next I would be teaching how to algebraically find the point of intersection between two lines. Not only that, but a lot more students have been needing my help around the class. I want everyone to be treated equally and give equal attention to all the kids in the achievement centre. Of course, like my mother always says, there is a solution to every problem.

The way I conquered the challenge of dividing my time was being mindful of when it was time to pay attention to my assignment and when to teach lessons to my students. Whenever they were working on examples to practice what I had taught them, I would use that time to work on my project and talk with Mrs. Fernando and Mr. Morris about the ideas I had. Creating plans was a I could lay out what I had to do for my project and visually see what needed more time. I made sure to utilize my free time to its fullest while also making my rounds around the class, checking everyone periodically and offering my help to anyone who requested it helped ease my doubts of not giving everyone my equal attention and help. Not only that, but the kids in my class are honestly superstars. They are so kind and welcoming to my teaching attitude, one of them even complimented me about saying how chill I am and being that person they are willing to talk to. Just talking to them about subjects that aren’t necessarily school related helps calm my nerves about deadlines and not allocating enough time to everyone. I do my best, and I believe that my hard work really does reflect in the students I help and that is the best part about mentorship.

Mrs. Fernando and Mr. Morris are two teachers I honestly respect and look up to. I feel so lucky to have them as my mentorship teachers because they help me grow in this whole experience. Not only that, but they are two of the most helpful teachers I have ever met. Mr. Morris jokes around and makes everyone feel comfortable around him, or at least crack a smile even if they are struggling with the subjects they’re learning in the achievement centre. He is so willing and open, and those are traits I want to mirror in my own personality. Recently, he helped me with my resume and ran through practice interview questions because he genuinely saw how nervous I was about my interview. I didn’t even ask, but he decided to give me a little confidence boost anyways and that really did aid me in securing my new job. Mrs. Fernando is always checking in on me and she asks how the kids are doing. She trusts my opinion and has no problem taking over the lessons that I would rather watch than teach, or when I need to work on my bulletin board. Honestly, Mr. Morris and Mrs. Fernando are great and I feel like I constantly repeat myself when I say that, but they truly are the best.

The most valuable lesson I learned this week was time management. Learning that it is okay to take breaks and plan out my next steps to execute excellence for all my tasks these past weeks have really taken a toll on me. Now that it is getting into winter, I know I will be much busier. I know that I have to keep going forward because no one is going to slow down for me, especially not life itself. Learning little tricks like making to-do lists, writing down my goals, and even just vocalizing what I want to do for my assignment to my teachers has helped me immensely.

Balancing tasks and managing my time wisely is a skill that cannot be solved within a couple of days. Developing skills takes time, and I understand that. I feel that most definitely in the upcoming weeks, I will get better at managing all of my little tasks and obstacles into something I can overcome.

To conclude this blog post, as always, the motivational quote and meme of the week will be down below!