I’m a sophomore atm and I have a million things on my bucket list like traveling the world, but my immediate goal is to get into a good college. I guess what drives me to do well to get into a good college, is so I can live an amazing life. What about you guys? Whats the reason behind your hard work, and wanting to keep up your GPAs and EC’s?
I work hard in my classes because they interest me, and I know that by working harder, they’ll interest me even more. For example, even though I’m a math kid, I put time and effort into English readings a) because they’re typically good and b) because class discussions can be really fun if I’m participating and have thoughts and questions to share.
I do my ECs as stress relievers, as they’re all quite fun, honestly.
When I’m overwhelmed, I make checklists; the sheer pleasure I take in checking things off is typically enough to get me started.
I know everything I have written here is pretty short-term, but I know that I’m happiest when I don’t see everything I’m doing as a means to an end. I would like to go to a college where I’ll be happy and challenged, but I’m pretty sure I could find that at my safety schools, so that isn’t quite the forward impetus it could be. I suppose my real goal is to lead an interesting life that I fill with interesting things and new discoveries, and I’m trying to develop focus and energy in my beginning of that life.
I have this image of myself opening my acceptance email with my best friend, and jumping and screaming all around the school and not caring that people think I’m crazy because I just got into NYU
Great thread.
@hotpinkk What kinds of things would be included if you were to live “an amazing life”? How will you know if you’ve achieved an amazing life when you’ve gotten there?
@pseudoprimal What makes a life interesting and what would be some interesting things you’d like to do and/or discoveries you’d like to expose yourself to? How will you know you’ve achieved an interesting life, when all is said and done?
The more specific you are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve all the things you set out to achieve and create all the things you set out to create. But without getting specific, there’s no way to take measured action towards the target (because there’s no tangible target.) Or, as Marie Forleo always says “you gotta name it to claim it.”
I work hard so I can go to a good college, and be successful when I’m older. I grew up with financial troubles, so that always motivated me to go to college.
@helpingteens I think that “interesting” could end up meaning a lot of different things for me. I don’t know what I want to do as a career yet, but I want it to be engaging and challenging. Even in general life though, things that I hope to do (or hope to replace with other hopes!) are to live in a country where I don’t know the language and learn it essentially from scratch, to bike across the country alone, to regularly read clumps of books (i.e. five or six books centered around a topic, e.g. reading a piece of older fiction, a biography of the author, a history of the setting, a “modernized” version of the book, and a series of literary analyses on it), and to be in an improv group.
Great @pseudoprimal
Those are certainly interesting things to want to have happen in your life. Great start.
So now for each one of these, ask yourself when you want to do these things by.
Then you need to know what resources you’ll need in order to make sure these things happen.
And also, just as importantly, you need to get clear about what might be getting in your way, to prevent each one from happening.
Something that drives my motivation is getting into a good school, so maintaining a high GPA. I am going for at least a 3.8-3.9 this year, unweighted. I also want to move my class rank up, so that’s one thing.
I guess I work hard because I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t working hard. It sounds weird but I’ve always been in accelerated programs and I just continued the momentum in high school. I also work hard for my parents to respect all they’ve done for me and all they have had to do as immigrants to this country. Most importantly, I work hard so I can ensure a successful future for myself where I don’t have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from and where I can travel comfortably around the world as that is my dream.