Time to FOCUS!!!!

Alright - so MOST of you got a nice "heart to heart" on focusing today. I get it.... it is BEAUTIFUL outside...... HOT in here...... or "It's FIRST Pd Miss E... " "It's Just after Lunch Miss E...." "It's almost lunch Miss E....." "It's 9th Pd Miss E....." "But we are having cheering try outs today Miss E....." ENOUGH :) I can COMPLETELY sympathize with you when you have a MILLION things on your mind and the LAST thing you want to think about is school. Here's the deal..... this is where you are... so BE HERE :)!! I explained today that I am not that different than you in my mind's tendency to get distracted VERY easily. I had to learn to COPE with that though!

Today's daily question gave me a chance to show you how I would have gone about answering it. Instead of just reading it going.... "Oh Miss E, this is too difficult" take a step back and just focus on the question itself. Almost EVERY student I worked with one on one could figure it out once I got them to FOCUS on the question!! I know this is not going to work for everyone, but just writing the question and underlining/highlighting/ circling things as you go FORCES you to keep your mind on the problem and NOT on what Bob is doing next to you?!?!?! I showed some of you an example of my Genetics text book from college. (Keep in mind - I PAID for this, so please don't do this with YOUR books!!) Where you CAN do this though is in your notes. As I go back over notes - when i emphasize (or fist pump) something - UNDERLINE it, Circle it, Star it - SOMETHING. Even if you never look back on it, the fact that you consciously drew attention to it, means you are more likely to remember it.

So despite what you may think, learning didn't just come easy to me. I struggled a LOT but finally figured out that the only way I was going to get this was to teach myself to focus on what was in front of me and not ALL the many places my brain wanted to go.

This isn't a skill that you will set aside when you graduate either. Every meeting, doctors appointment, phone call I am on there is a piece of paper with me and I am jotting down random stuff that i may NEVER look at again, BUT..... it FORCES me to focus on what I am doing at THAT time. The example I gave you was taking my mom to the hospital. There was a TON on my mind but it was VERY important that i listen to everything the doctor said so I knew what we needed to do. I couldn't afford to let my mind go off in lala land at that point. Here is just a PORTION of my "focus doodling" as I guess i would call it.

I understand that some of you are lucky enough to have a naturally focused mind and just listening to me gets you through. That is great and I hope you can continue to learn to focus through all of the chaos that is life. But in reality, even the most focused of us are going to have a time when NO part of their brain wants to focus on what it needs to because daydreaming about someone or fuming about something someone put on facebook last night is SOOO much more entertaining than what you HAVE to do right now!!

Well.... that's enough of my "life lesson" rant for today. Stay posted for the actual CONTENT that we discussed today in another post :)