Weekly Report #18: "Failures and Restarting" (Week of Jan 29th, 2024)

This week was a huge downgrade. Last week was slowly going down and then this week hit. I was unprepared for Acdec, and my competition went terribly. I need to make up for the tests which I missed due to the competition, and I have to get back up on ISM work. 

For Acdec, we had to give a speech and mine was a satirical one on how “babies are spies sent by the government”. When I gave the speech to my class at first it went terrible, but the day before the competition after practicing multiple times and in front of many people, it finally went amazing. I improvised a bit but my teachers and my teammates found it funny and even laughed a couple of times. My delivery was also good, and I didn't have much to improve on. I thought that I was ready for the speech, but no, it went extremely bad. I finished early so it was a time violation which is -100 points, but on top of that, I got only a score of 750 which means that 100 points were lost for something I don’t know. 

My other scores weren’t good either. As said before I hadn’t prepared that well, but I still expected a bit of a higher score for Science. I got only  740 which devastated me as I was hoping for at least a 900 or even an 800. I placed 2nd in science out of all of the scholastics, but I felt as if I didn’t deserve it. I became extremely disappointed in myself and started to give up whatever I had done. I was happy for my team as we placed 3rd and were going to state, but felt as if I brought my team down. 

At first my motivation had completely depleted. I started to study math because I felt that I needed to do more. I need to start studying for state now. While I was motivated to study, I still felt disappointed in myself, as If I was dumb and couldn’t do anything. While I may not be the smartest I know that I can still try to do good now. In the evening, my friend was at the gym and she asked me to come along. So I thought that I should stop moping and might as well go. Going to the gym boosted my mental state, and I felt ready to restart and try again. I can’t stay in the same state everytime I fail. I need to improve now so the same won’t happen in the state I want to do good, and I know I can. I’ve improved in other areas of my life too, so I know that I will be able to here. I’m aiming for more than 700 in all subjects and a 1000 in science. While it may be a bit of a reach, I want to try. Everytime I failed before I would just give up and be sad, but I actually want to do good now. I need to start focusing more and be disciplined again as I think I lost some of that discipline again in the past few weeks. There was this quote by Mike Tyson that spoke to me, "Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but nonetheless doing it like you love it.”

While quotes may seem cheesy sometimes it does speak to you in some way. The quote by Mike Tyson and the quote that I used in my portfolio by Mary Kom, “Never buy gold, simply earn it”, truly speaks to me today, and I will try my best to do good in the things that I’ve taken this year.