SEEQS Portfolio Defense

Managing Effectively - ʻEleu

My Understanding

To me, Managing Effectively means being able to do large projects and divide them into attainable and achievable steps. If you manage effectively, you also do your work efficiently and with quality. When Managing Effectively, you don't feel rushed or like you are losing track of time. When using this skill, you are focused and have a plan to move forward. An example of using this skill and being able to understand it would be trying to study for a big test.

Let's say that one may have 12 weeks to study for a test. If that person wanted to manage their time effectively, they could make a schedule for what they need to study everyday and for how long. This would help them feel prepared and ready for the big test.

The counterexample of Managing Effectively would be to not study for the test and not be aware of the work that needs to be done. That person would just realize that the test is approaching soon and frantically try to study as much as possible with very little quality. That person might feel very upset and probably get a bad test grade because they did not manage or use the time they had to study.

My Growth

I have grown a lot in Managing Effectively from our work this semester. I say this because in 8th grade I have been getting more homework. This means that by the end of the day, I have a pile of work that I need to accomplish. That was not the case for me in 6th and 7th grade. Most of the time, I would only have about 1 piece of work to do/finish. Now that I am getting more work, I have been able to get better at managing my time and work.

For example, I efficiently use my work time as much as I can. With the help of independent work time --a period that we have in online school dedicated to completing the work that we were given from classes. I was able to manage my time effectively so that I would be able to get my work done on time and with quality. That time of work for me has helped a lot in developing my Managing Effectively skill. After I get my homework assigned, I can plan when I will be able to finish it. Office hours (a period in online class where, after we received our school work, we can go to that teacher's class and receive help) also helped me a lot with Managing Effectively. This is because my teachers are helping me do my work and I try my best. If I have a question about having trouble with something, I can go to office hours to get my work done with quality. Going to office hours also proves that when I have a chance to do better and work harder, I will take it. This is an example of how I have grown in using this skill. In the past, I wouldn't really want to do that. In 6th grade, I wasn't yet fully connected with the skill Managing Effectively.

Now, I am proud of how much I have grown in Managing Effectively. I am able to move through the world in a way where I am seeking more feedback to improve myself and my work. This helps me create better things such as school documents. An example of this outside of school would be me trying to work out more. In the past years at SEEQS, before school, I started to work out and have begun getting stronger. Managing Effectively has helped me achieve this goal. One of the tools that I use when I am working out is using a calendar. For me, a calendar is a great tool to help organize and plan ahead of when I am going to start a challenge that is big.

At the end of the year, my goal was to be able to be way stronger than I was when I was in 6th grade. The calendar has helped me reach this goal, once every month, I set up my workout schedule for that month. One day I'll do upper body workouts, and the next day I'll do arms and lower body. This way, I would be able to see when I would workout and for how long. When working out, I have built a bigger understanding of Managing Effectively that has helped me look at things like large essays or getting really fit at the end of 8th grade, and see that I have been able to take them and build them into manageable steps.

What Project Helped Me Grow

To me, Managing Effectively means to be able to get your work done on time while being organized, putting in all your effort, and staying focused. In my Water Park project, I did exactly those things. In this water park project, we were supposed to pretend that we were creating our water park and needed to make our blueprints. The project was built in many different steps. It had several different parts of the project that needed to be done.

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In this project, I was organized in the way I created my plan on how I would get the job done. When distance learning started, we were given a new schedule that was made up of having all of our classes at the beginning of school, and then having the rest of the day until 2:45 to do that classwork or go to our teachers for help. During my work time for this Water Park Project, I stayed focused. I made a few mistakes and eventually got all my work done for the assignment.

Overall, I think I did a very great job in accomplishing my work. Another reason why I think that is because I was able to work with my father too, and he helped me understand something when I got confused, he helped me persevere when I made mistakes, and he supported me when I finished. Thanks to him, I was able to keep my spirits up, and manage my work and time effectively.

Now, I feel that I am soaring in the sustainability skill Managing Effectively because discovering the new changes for our 8th grade year, I think I have done a very great job on breaking all my classwork into attainable steps. I think that I have worked very hard on completing all my work with effort, good quality, and I am always seeking for ways to improve. When I was in 6th and 7th grade, I feel like I wasn't even close to where I am now in my understanding of the skill. I just thought that Managing Effectively meant to turn your work in on time. I rarely paid any attention to the skill of the workers. But as I got into 8th grade, I started to understand what the skill can help you with.

Writing a Novel is one of the biggest tasks that I have been assigned to in 8th grade. This task took me a whole month to accomplish. Since the task was very large, I needed a plan on how to solve it. Using the Novel Tracker, I assigned myself a daily word writing goal. This allowed me to make sure that I wasn't falling behind on my writing. Using this tracker also gave me a clearer picture for me to see how much I would need to write if I skipped a few days. At the end of the project, I ended up with about 13,000 words and 34 pages. This was one of my greatest pieces I had ever written. Even though I didn't follow the tracker 100% I still was able to go further then what I needed on my goal. This is a great example because if you look at the tracker, there was a time where in a 2 day span, I wrote 2,000 words. This is because I have also been Managing Effectively in other classes to give me more time to work on the novel.

You can see that there is evidence of that by how I reached my goal a week before the due date had come. This is showing that I used my time effectively so that I would be able to get my Novel done. Another reason why this tracker had helped me in Managing Effectively is how when I finished putting in my dates for how many words per day, I saw how I had noticed that I wanted to keep a few days for editing my Novel. I realized that I wanted 2 day for editing. Knowing this, I was able to look ahead of time and remind myself that if I wanted to have 2 days for editing. I would want to write more than expected in 2 days. I have grown so much in this skill. In the beginning of the school year in 6th grade, I had already established a skill in my head that I am able to manage effectively in my head. But as I have grown in SEEQS, not only have I gotten better at using this skill, but I have been able to notice that I am doing it more. And the more I use it, the more I feel proud of myself and want to do it more. Overall, writing this novel was a great experience in growing in the skill Managing Effectively.

As I understood how Managing Effectively can help you be organized and get work done on time and with quality. I started to grow in the skill more and more. As we started online school, I felt a sense of independence. I understood that as I got older, I needed to be more independent. Because of this, I started to be more organized in my work. With the help of my calendar, I was able to track and catch up with all the work I needed to do everyday. I used my calendar for my Water Park Project and Novel. After all of our classes at school when we had independent work time, I would gather the work I was given and plan out how I was going to complete it. I did this with the Water Park Project along with my Novel. I was able to make myself time to do good work and complete it on time. Thinking of an example other than My water Park Project, where I Managed Effectively was my novel.

How This Project Relates To the Skill

For me, the project process that I had completing this assignment was done very well. First, I needed to understand and plan how I was going to complete the project. To start, I read the instructions for this assignment and thought out in my head what I wanted my ending draft to look like. My next steps were to just draw an original sketch of my waterpark with all of its necessary needs. Next, I had to fill in the points where the entrances and lines were. By doing that, I would be able to plot the points on my sheet of graph paper. I was very happy about the way I was doing this before the assignment was due, but I had a few questions about the assignment so I emailed Ms. Janelle for some clarifying questions. I really wanted to do this assignment to the best of my ability so I had to make sure that I did nothing wrong.

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As we started the project, I analyzed the steps that I had to complete to finish the project. I noticed that 1st, we had to sketch out our park. We met the standard on what we had to add in the park. Slides, Kid pool, Gift shop, Security, ect. After this, we needed to plot out the quardinits to all of the entrances to our slides, entrances to the park, security, ect. Once I had my answers, I started to re-draw the sketch of my water park on the graph paper. Once I completed my sketch, I colored it in so I could prove that I took a lot of time to finish the experiment with quality. Now I have completed task 1 out of 3. I was proud of the way I have managed to follow the steps correctly so far. Later in the day, I worked on the project even more. I stayed inside and worked. I was able to get task 2 out of 3 done. Task 2 was built up by writing down the coordinates of my water park. I found out where the entrances were for all the attractions, and wrote them down. I had to be very careful and work very hard to make sure all the coordinates were right. It was getting late, so to stay on schedule, I made a plan that I would work on this on my independent work time next class. And that's exactly what I did.

When the time came, I got right to work and did just what I said. After 30 minutes I thought I did it all right and I had finished everything, but as I checked my answers with my dad, I realized that I had switched up some numbers. I made a mistake, but I took a deep breath, fixed it, worked hard to get it right, and finally finished all of my steps to completing the project. This is how I have been able to grow in the skill of Managing Effectively.