When was a time that you felt you developed ineffective study habits/learning skills (such as watching TV while studying)? Why? How does this affect your current growth as a graduate-level learner?

Study habits are how a student studies and what are his activities during the study. The study habits induce impact on the learning skills and academic performance. The study habits hugely influence academic achievement. The lack of effective and positive study habits can cause problems for the students. The process of learning is little mysterious but studying involves high active behavior. During my graduation, I started practicing and developing good habits that can contribute positively to my learning process. I believe that my habits were completely organized during my graduation. At the beginning of graduation, I developed some ineffective study habits such as using Facebook, Instagram, and social media. The other activities were watching TV while studying. The habits induced impact negative impact on my performance such as on the reading, doing my homework, getting enough sleep, and pursuing hobbies. During my graduation, I spent hours on watching movies and TV shows that resulted in obesity and weight gain. TV watching replaced my activities of studies and resulted in low grades during the first semester of graduation. The grades were not very low, but it affected by overall educational achievement.

2.     How often during the day did/do you spend doing activities that were unproductive or a waste of time and hindered your learning (e.g., watching TV, social media, video games, etc.)?

During graduation, I realized that time is easy to waste particularly when students are not highly focused on their studies. I realized my mistake of wasting time in the unproductive activities after having a session with my lecturer of ethics. During the discussion with him, the most clicking quote that he mentioned was “The problem with time is that it is always keeping on ticking away where you notice it or not”. The words touch my thoughts and I changed my habits of wasting time and spending it in some productive activities. On average, I spend five hours watching television. Besides watching TV, I was used to spending approximately 3 hours on social media with my friends and classmates. In fact, I realized that some of the researchers suggest that student between the age range of 18 – 34 should spend two hours on the internet or social media per week. It’s pretty obvious at this level that spending time while sitting around all day watching TV was bad for my health and studies. These activities resulted in poor cognitive performance and aggressive behavior (Karim., 2015).

3.     What strengths (including writing, APA, research/library skills, and learning strategies) have you developed throughout your schooling to be successful in your educational experiences? How did you learn these strategies? Did someone mentor you? Was that mentoring experience positive or negative? Was there ever a time when these strategies were not successful? What did you do?

School life is hard as students are young at this stage and they are mainly focused on enjoying the time instead of developing skills. During my school life, I was most likely to balance my classes, friends, homework, co-curricular involvements, relationship, and my social life. It’s no wonder that I sometimes spend time-wasting and resting, but this time-wasting habit was useful and productive in my case. During this time, I learned about writing skills, grammar and learning strategies. I still remember the book gifted by my grandfather and this book was about ten personality traits that you need to develop in order to have a successful and educational career. This book helped me in learning leadership, management skills, writing and reading skills, extracting the theme from the books. I developed the number of skills in school life such as problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration across network and how it influences effective written and oral communication, analyzing and accessing information, imagination and curiosity. Yes, as a school going student, it is not easy to develop multiple skills and it is important to have a mentor that helps you and guide you in the process. My mentor was my grandfather and my teacher of ethics. The mentoring experience was extremely positive, and I learned a lot. The learning was then proved fruitful in my future. At the beginning of my graduation, these strategies were not working as they should be. I become involved in watching TV, spending time with my friends, wasting time on social media. At this level, the advice of my teachers and guideline of my grandfather helped me to overcome the issues and to focus back on my studies. Although it was difficult to reschedule my habits and focus on my main objectives, but I overcome it (Kaushar, 2013).

4.     What challenges or difficulties have you faced in your education so far? Why do you think they were challenges? What was the outcome? Did you overcome the challenges? Did you figure it out on your own or did someone guide you?

At the beginning of my education, it was like starting a new life, and I was prepared to overcome challenges. The biggest difficulty that I faced during my education was to manage my time and to adjust in the new life. The campus environment was my first experience to spend life and vacations at university. The first year of the graduation was extra hard and it was very difficult for me to adjust in new life. In the beginning, it was like a culture shock as the things were different as compared to the school and home. Additionally, it was important to not get frenzy at this stage, so I gave some time to myself and expected to get a little bamboozled. The second issue I faced was time management. I was trying to study alone and to do the required chores. I was spending my time in irregular patterns and watching TV shows. The behavior was unsustainable, and I think that the challenges were difficult. I realized the only way to avoid mental anxiety and it was to manage the time and spend it in learning. After exercising effective strategies, I overcame the challenge and started learning again. I figured out the solution by reading effective books and involved myself in activities. Balancing my time was the best strategy that I used. I was keen that my social relationships are not taking mine overtime of the study. I did not lose sight of doing effective work particularly in achieving my goals. My teacher helped me in overcoming the issue. Some of my friends were also helping me in managing the time. The strategies I used are listed below,

1)      Managing the time by investing in the daily planner and schedule.

2)      Learning the study skills, by participating in the discussion.

3)      Seeking academic advising.

4)      Managing the financial life.

5.     Were you ever taught or mentored on specific strategies for learning, such as time management? APA? Scholarly writing? Research skills? How has this affected your graduate work?

For the learning purposes, I have been taught on specified strategies regarding the time management. As time is money so it is mandatory to manage the time as per the deadline provided for a particular task. It is better to do something within a particular provided time rather than missing a deadline. It tends to provide a person with empty hands. For today’s world, time is perceived as the indefinitely separable and practical commodity. A task is if managed with a given time span, tends to provide the students with the good grades It also helps the students for their professional life which leads them towards meeting the deadlines and contributing significantly to achieve the company’s strategic goals and objectives. Time is the only remarkable asset that can neither be altered nor it can be stored/ purchased. Effective time management is the key to success in a human being’s life. For everyone, availability of the time is equal. The only thing that is desirable is to formulate an effective strategy for the time management. For the graduate student, the time management is of equal importance. It makes them to manage even the short deadlines effectively. It is the most crucial thing which provides the building blocks for everything. If this asset is managed efficiently, many of the other related things are also well-managed (Khan, 2015).

6.     In a separate paragraph after your responses organized by week, summarize each learning outcome for this course (e.g., time management) and indicate what you learned from it, and what you still need to improve.

Not everything can be grabbed and absorbed at the first glance. So as is the case with the time management strategies regarding the completion of the class assignments and the tasks. To experience something, a person needs to dive. This is the way he can better determine whether the experience was good or bad. Without practicing something, one cannot evaluate the related outcomes. The time is the most sensitive part of everyone’s life. One who utilizes it efficiently becomes more successful as compared to the one who keeps on wasting the time.

For doing something and achieving the desired goals, the only thing which is desirable is the strong will & the determination. A person who pre-defines the goals and objectives and sticks to a point can become the leader at some point. This is so because, he has been spent enough time to think over a point and now it is just the time for the implementation of the ideas. Time never stops for anyone rather it keeps passing on. It is up to a person’s will whether he makes the effective use of the same or just waits for it to pass on (without doing any productive thing). To be successful, especially the students should learn to value it (Sevari, 2011).

7.     Identify the three most valuable pieces of information you learned during this course and how it will help you to succeed in your program.

Following is the description for the most valuable pieces of the information that I have learnt during this course (which also helped me to succeed in the program):

·         The effective development of the good habits in order to better support the learning process. It helped me throughout the course. It basically provided with the basis for grabbing the knowledge and unique ideas by just streamlining the learning processes. At the beginning of graduation, I developed some ineffective study habits such as using Facebook, Instagram, and social media. The other activities were watching TV while studying. The time when I evaluated my performance by taking into consideration these activities, I just found my performance to be ineffective. This is because of the negative impact of these habits on my studies and performance. The more I developed effective learning habits, the more it helped me through the course.

·         The effective time management leads towards the success. I realized that time is easy to waste particularly when students are not highly focused on their studies. It is so easy to waste the time for the unproductive activities. I realized this fact after attending the session of my lecturer of the subject ethics. After this session, I just realized how important is it to cash the time in order to attain the desired goals as well as the objectives (Razali, 2018).

·         Confidence makes a person never to fail in any field of life. It can be gained more by participating to the discussion to the possible extent. It can be taken as the key to success for those who were less confident at some point of time. Then they just groomed themselves by participating to the discussions and developed unbeatable confidence. It helped me to reduce the factor of shyness.

8.     Determine three areas you still need to strengthen to do better in future graduate courses. Discuss how you are currently working on improving those areas (be specific—e.g., webinars, reading a scholarly writing manual, etc.).

In order to better excel in the future graduate courses, the areas that need to be strengthened are as follows:

·         The academic advice is as mandatory as is the course itself. For the said purpose, the mentors need to provide the students with the sessions that better helps them in the career counseling. It may include the advice regarding the selection of a subject.

·         For student life, another important thing is the management of the financial resources. The more the resources are effectively managed at this level. The more it will help in the professional life to manage the huge amount of the finances.

·         Stress management is also of immense significance for the students. At present, I am working under the stresses situations and trying to get the confidence over the outcomes, being obtained under these weird circumstances (Bhargava, 2018). 

References of Social Media

Bhargava, D. &. (2018). A Study of Causes of Stress and Stress Management among Youth. International Journal of Management & Social Sciences , 108-117.

Karim., &. M. (2015). Time management skills impact on self-efficacy and academic performance. Journal of American Science, 1-15.

Kaushar, M. (2013). Study of Impact of Time Management on Academic Performance of College Students. Journal of Business and Management, 9(6), 59-60.

Khan, S. N. (2015). The Impact of Time Management on the Students’ Academic Achievements. Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 11, 66-72.

Razali, M. S. (2018). The Impact of Time Management on Students’ Academic Achievement. Journal of Physics, 1-7.

Sevari, K. &. (2011). Time management skills impact on self-efficacy and academic performance. Journal of American Science, 7(12), 720-726.