Halfway Reflection
Dear Future Student,
As a student half-way through my semester of ENT3003, I have a lot of advice for you on how to do well in this course. Here are some of the things that I have learned in the past two months.
1) Some of the behaviors that I have developed in order to do well in this course are doing work way ahead of time and paying a lot of detail to the little things. Although I have a really busy schedule, I take a lot of time out of my day to get started on assignments for this class a long time before they are due. Since this class involves a lot of hands-on work it is difficult to stay ahead of the curve without putting a lot of time in. The most important behavior you can learn is to get started early.
2) A moment when I felt like "giving up" in this course was when I realized that many of the other students that have taken this class in previous years probably had a lot of similar ideas to mine. It is hard to swallow the pill that some or all of my ideas are not necessarily unique, but what pulled me through is knowing that they don't have to be. It is more important to accept my previous ignorance than to cling to it. I feel that I have developed a much more tenacious attitude during the past couple of months because I am now able to see when I am clinging to a bad idea and realize that there is no shame in letting go. The experience that most contributed to this attitude was when I realized from the lectures that an app is not a great, easy concept. I know nothing about apps! It is more important to stick to what you know than try to create the "next big thing".
3) Here are three tips for each of the following topics:
Fostering the skills that support tenacity:
- Learn to seek out criticism. Your ego is not as important as fixing the mistakes that come up in the editing process.
- Try not to fail, but don't be upset when you do. Everyone misses deadlines but that does not mean you have to miss more.
- Learn from your mistakes. If you screw up, you shouldn't pretend that it didn't happen. Try to find out what lead to that mistake and fix it for the next time around.
Developing the "Tenacious Mindset":
- Let people know that you are open to suggestions. If you tell people that you aren't a fan of criticism, they will not give you criticism that can help.
- Do not be offended when someone tells you that you need to scrap your idea. New ideas will come and you can't coddle a potential service that nobody wants to use.
- It is better to be ambitious than to be basic. If you think you have a crazy idea you should try to get advice on it before sticking with something basic. Try to solve big problems!
As a student half-way through my semester of ENT3003, I have a lot of advice for you on how to do well in this course. Here are some of the things that I have learned in the past two months.
1) Some of the behaviors that I have developed in order to do well in this course are doing work way ahead of time and paying a lot of detail to the little things. Although I have a really busy schedule, I take a lot of time out of my day to get started on assignments for this class a long time before they are due. Since this class involves a lot of hands-on work it is difficult to stay ahead of the curve without putting a lot of time in. The most important behavior you can learn is to get started early.
2) A moment when I felt like "giving up" in this course was when I realized that many of the other students that have taken this class in previous years probably had a lot of similar ideas to mine. It is hard to swallow the pill that some or all of my ideas are not necessarily unique, but what pulled me through is knowing that they don't have to be. It is more important to accept my previous ignorance than to cling to it. I feel that I have developed a much more tenacious attitude during the past couple of months because I am now able to see when I am clinging to a bad idea and realize that there is no shame in letting go. The experience that most contributed to this attitude was when I realized from the lectures that an app is not a great, easy concept. I know nothing about apps! It is more important to stick to what you know than try to create the "next big thing".
3) Here are three tips for each of the following topics:
Fostering the skills that support tenacity:
- Learn to seek out criticism. Your ego is not as important as fixing the mistakes that come up in the editing process.
- Try not to fail, but don't be upset when you do. Everyone misses deadlines but that does not mean you have to miss more.
- Learn from your mistakes. If you screw up, you shouldn't pretend that it didn't happen. Try to find out what lead to that mistake and fix it for the next time around.
Developing the "Tenacious Mindset":
- Let people know that you are open to suggestions. If you tell people that you aren't a fan of criticism, they will not give you criticism that can help.
- Do not be offended when someone tells you that you need to scrap your idea. New ideas will come and you can't coddle a potential service that nobody wants to use.
- It is better to be ambitious than to be basic. If you think you have a crazy idea you should try to get advice on it before sticking with something basic. Try to solve big problems!
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