Halfway Reflection

                Now that we are half way through the course, it is a good time to reflect upon the last two months of the course and evaluate what has been effective and what has not been.

1) Tenaciousness is a competency. The main behavior I have had to develop for this class is consistency in terms of when I am working on this class. Many of the assignments require gathering information from external sources through interviews which requires planning ahead. I try to check on the upcoming assignments the Sunday before so that I can plan when I can do whatever the required activities are. I try to watch lectures the same days every week but this is difficult some weeks when I have exams for other classes so I need to improve that aspect. Additionally, I get all my required information I need for the week's assignments by Thursday so that I can make my blog posts by Friday every week. 

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude.  While this class is not meant to be difficult, it does require effort and time that needs to be dedicated to it. There have been times where I have given up or considered giving up but that is not sustainable if I want to succeed in this course. I feel like the biggest wall I ran into was when we had to give elevator pitches. The week of that assignment I had three exams and by the time I was done with all of them, I did not want to give an elevator pitch, record it, and submit it. I regret missing that assignment now because I still could have done it but the experience made me realize I cannot continue to feel demotivated and not work, I want to be successful and self-pity will not lead to that. 

3) Three tips for becoming tenacious. The first is to always keep your goal in mind. If you always have what you want to achieve in the forefront of your thoughts, you become much harder to stop from achieving those goals. The second is be prepared for days that you don't want to do anything. No matter how diligent you are, you will face a period where you want to give up or not do the work required. How you handle this will determine whether you are able to achieve your goals or not. The third is probably most important: be prepared to fail. You will face obstacles and setbacks in life and in this class. You may struggle to find people to interview, you may be nervous about public speaking, you may not read all parts of a required assignment. The failures will happen occasionally and they do not determine whether you will inevitably succeed or not. That is determined by how you choose to respond to that that failure.