Luis Cabrera

Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

Time Management

When I first started this semester, there was a feeling inside of me that felt that something

was missing. In a sense, I felt that creativity was that other piece that would full fill that

emptiness. Before this class, my world of thinking was that I was not capable of going through

college, through life. It seemed as if my struggles back at home were affecting the way I was

thinking, the decisions I made, and the actions I took. From what I have heard from my peers,

public high schools and the struggles back at home were going to have a huge negative impact

academically. Most undergraduate student are affected from it, especially for first year students

like me. These kinds of thoughts devastated me into thinking that I was not capable of graduating

from college. My thoughts were now more focused on how I was going to fail rather than

succeed. However succeed was the word that I wanted to understand from attending a four year

university, so I decided to search for a way that would lead me into a better future or just simply

graduation. However, I did not know where to start, but I had a gut feeling that this course was

going to lead me to what I was searching for. In a way, this project was going to be one of many

tests for me, into being a creative person. As I was trying to clarify before, I’m trying to move

out of my house, away from my family that I looked as a barrier that is holding me back from

taking a step into the real world. From my first semester in college, I realized that college is all

about time management. I knew I was horrible in managing my time. From what I have heard

from fourth year students and graduate students, managing time is really important when coming

to a four year university. With this in mind, I decided to apply for job to run away from family

financial struggles and saved enough money to rent an apartment for next year. I figured that

now that I added another issue into my life, time management would allow me to stimulate my

thinking and make it easier to resolve my family issues, college issues, and now my job issues. I
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

would then use the skills that I can learn from these problems and apply them to myself as a way

to motivate myself into continuing with this project. My goals for this project would then be to

live a more experiential life, challenge my values, and learning how to control my rebellion. The

next paragraphs will explain what led me into deciding on this project and the experiences I lived

as my first time in trying to manage my time.

First, I will explain the incentives that led me to decide to apply for a job and two great

mentors that helped me to take that extra step. The idea of applying for a job began to emerge

last semester. I wanted to know what it felt like earning your own money. I also wanted to save

money for my next year living expenses. I reached out to other college students with this kind of

experiential life and heard how they handled their situations. What they all had in common was

learning how to manage time. This justified whether or not they were successful or a failure.

Obviously I did not know what this meant. I have a friend, Jonathan, who once explained to me

that I was not going to understand anything until I lived that situation. Joni, as I call him, was the

first person who led me towards an experiential life and away from Hispanic traditional values.

Some of these Hispanic traditional values are that you cannot leave the house until you are

married. When I learned this from sociology, what first came into my mind was that I did not

want to live this life. I wanted to make my own decisions. I began to use empathy in a way of

putting myself into the shoes of my friend Joni. When I compared both of our lives, Joni was

living a more experiential life than I was, making his decisions and being independent. He is

what I know now, a creative problem solver. Throughout my first semester Joni was there with

me, pushing me trying to open my eyes that I was not living an experiential life but rather by the

strings of traditional values. This is when rumors started to merge together in my head that first

year students perform better in college by living on their own, away from families. However at
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

the time, I was not confident enough to take that extra step. I was afraid that things would not

turn out positive and lead to my parent’s disappointment. I did not think I was ready to become

an independent thinker. I consider my dad’s employee, Dona Vero as another mentor. Dona Vero

is an optimistic person who always seeks the good side whenever she is going through struggles.

She is an only parent to three daughters and has raised them by herself. She sometimes had two

jobs so that she could provide good services to her daughters. They live in a poor neighborhood,

only one bedroom apartment complex where they all slept together. However, she always kept

her head up and has always seemed to think positively, that they had nothing missing in life.

Dona Vero encouraged me to think that it was time to show the world that I was capable of

handling problems myself. I was capable of making my own decisions and the decisions I made

would show positive results. In a way, she helped me to make a decision to live an experiential

life by giving myself a chance to earn my own money for next year. When I first started this

project, I was already working for Wendy’s, I had already been through many struggles trying to

balance my life but most importantly, handling my problems.

As a way to not fall behind in my classes, I was in need to create a vision for this project

that would allow me to prioritize my academics to accomplish my goals but first I needed some

research. I did some research in ways to gather data and other analysis to see the results. What I

found was that there has been an increase in the dropout rate. The main reason these students

drop out (forty-six percent) was family financial problems, followed by academic

disqualifications (twenty-eight percent). This study has also shown that most of the students who

have dropped out were first year students. I am shocked to find that family support falls in third

place, with nine percent. This is a serious problem that affects everyone because when a student

drops out of college, he fails, the university fails, but most importantly, society fails. Some of the
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

reasons that first year student’s parents won’t support them financially is that parents have this

pressure, this doubt, they are not convinced college would benefit them in their future. Why do

they think these ideas? It’s easy, they did not live this kind of situation, they did not experience

education, and they believe that if they made it on their own without college, their children

would too. Most colleges blame the students. Today, the idea of college has shifted and now

symbolizes the idea that college life is really party time. The secretary of education for

postsecondary education, Martha Kanter, said that college students have “[everything] on the

table… we just have too much failure. Too many students have fallen out.” Another reason why

they have fallen out was due to an increase of spending too many hours socializing rather than

studying. Today, students spent about forty-one percent socializing compared to the 2003 census,

with only twenty-five percent. I would not be surprised to find that Facebook is one reason for

the increase of socialization. One other reason would be the under preparedness and their

expectations of college does not seem to match up once they get there. How does this affect me?

Well if I want to do time management, it would be difficult if I am going through these struggles:

limited proficiency, lack of motivation, under prepared, and poor study skills. It seemed as if I

were to do time management I would first need to master all of these issues. In a way,

experiences should weigh more on the goals I have set for myself. By personalizing my

incentives, this will help me to learn how to say no to anything that will get me off track. There

are also other students across the nation that are experiencing this situation, and therefore this

topic is really important. As a way to consider myself successful or a failure, I will evaluate my

project as follows.

How will I approach my goal and what would seem to be the process? I am a rebellious

character when it comes to getting what I want. I seem to have built a strong vision of myself
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

after I finished with this project. Like Alexander Hamilton, I believe that through incremental

amount of success, my confidence will increase. I seem to be more worry about my academics

and my job. Therefore, I will propose a time frame each week by creating a block on my

schedule every other Friday. Secondly, at my job, I will work as efficient as possible while

keeping a smile on my face so that people will see my positive aspects of myself and not

negatives. Lastly, I will try to study 6 hours a week per course that I have. That being done, I will

evaluate my project by the amounts of hours I spent in each of the following criteria’s:

academics, social life, health, job, getting involved, and my free time. This will later show the

percentage amount of where I am investing my time in and gather my data. I decided to add the

extra free time to see for myself what other things I dedicate my time to. My first successful

evaluation back then was that whenever I reached 90 percent of my hours spent in academics, I

will consider myself successful. I now know that was impossible to achieve due to my lack of

motivation and under preparedness.

Initially, I was really inspired by the fact that I wanted to view myself as a successful

person. I created myself an illusion; the first time I would try managing time, I would walk out

feeling successful with everyone being proud of me. However, this was only the incubation

process. Like professor Speck mentioned in one of the lectures, “creativity involves ten percent

inspiration and ninety percent hard work.” I was not ready for this and I have previously

explained my reasons. What kept me alive was my faith. It was really strong in the beginning of

this project because I wanted to pass all of my classes with at least a B average. I was scared to

fail, which in some sense motivated me to focus my priorities. I began to think optimistically

about myself because it was the only way it made me feel better about myself and built hope that

just maybe things will turn out to be fine. They did not at first. I showed up late to my classes,
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

late to work, and arrived home really late. I was not used to sleeping fewer hours and working

twice as hard. At this point, I showed negative results.

I had many mentors at work just like Jane Goodall had over her career. One of them was

my manager Felix, who was strictly at the beginning with me. He’s reason was to get me used to

the way of how to do my job fast. He would make me feel down by comparing me to previous

employees and telling me stories how they had done my job faster. This, in some way, allowed

me to put more effort into my job just to prove to him that I was as good as the others. I soon

began to notice that Wendy’s was giving me too many days of work; I was working six days a

week. This did not help me, I needed more time to study. I rebelled against my boss and

reminded him that I was going to college. I needed fewer days of work. My boss, Rick, did not

like the idea but he did as I asked; I now work four days a week. I was still working long hours

and had a heavy workload and things to take care of. However, my motivation to continue with

this project allowed me to stay to see the results and continue the experience. Like Dona Vero

had mentioned, focused on my studies. I did as she advised and I began to see positive results in

my assignments and midterms. Unfortunately during spring break, now that I had more time, I

used that time with friends and wasted it rather than using it for my studying. I then began to see

negative results by not using my time correctly. There were days when I thought about my

situation that I began to feel frustrated and depressed. I saw my grades and testing results fall.

There were moments when I just wanted to quit my job and focus on my classes. But this was a

challenge I had set for myself for this semester; it needed to be carried out throughout the spring

semester. At another lecture, after discussing the ten dualities, professor Speck suggested the

class try to be surprised by something every day and surprise at least one person every day. I

took this advice and to my surprise I discover new routes that helped me get to class on time.
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

I’ve also begun to see different perspectives towards my life and began to make positive

decisions. I opened up to my boss and explained to him the struggles I was facing. Rick is a

stand out business person who is always on top of things. His psychological mind helps him keep

his employees happy and active at work. When I finished explaining to him my situation, he

responded that what I needed to do was to work in teams. All this time I’ve been trying to work

my problems by myself. Somehow, I needed to bring my problems together and used that to

analyze what really needs to get finished. This is when hybridization hit me. What we learned in

class, I need to create myself a timeline frame as a way to hybridize all of my three main issues

and work to solve them all. I then began to use teamwork and collaboration as a way to get my

things done faster not only at work but at home as well. This allowed me to have extra time to

study. At the end of the month of March, I gathered my analysis and wrote down my results in a

graph. What I found was that I spent twenty-seven percent of my time on my academics and

twenty-three percent on free time. This matched the results from the research that I’ve done, if I

were to combine my job and my free time which in a way it involved a little bit of socializing in

both. This meant that I was spending about forty percent socializing rather than studying.

Was I successful or did I fail? I do not feel that I was successful. However, I do not feel

ashamed of myself or disappointed. I have learned to fail and learn from my mistakes, that I now

honor failures more than success. From failures we learned a lot, from success not so much.

After seeing my results of spending a lot of my time free, rather than my academics I thought

that I could have made this a better project and a much better presentation. My initial evaluation

was to have ninety percent of my time in academics. I now know that is unrealistic when you are

a first year student. What I do recommend to those in search for this kind of experience, I

encourage them to try it and learn from it. However, they first need to learn how to hybridize
 Luis Cabrera
Lic247
Michael Lama: F 11-12pm

their problems together in a way that would make it easier for him or her to control. In a way, the

key to accomplishing your goals is by using everything we learned in this course and applying it

to our everyday life towards our goals. I personally think that the results will be positive and

successful. I did achieve my goals for this project and I am now planning to move out of my

house. I will be living on Riverside for the next year and have raised about one thousand dollars

for living expenses. My next goal for the summer is to save two thousand dollars more. I am

currently in the process of signing the lease and through this project I have convinced my parents

to support me in my time of need. Overall, I am now more confident towards what I want and

hopefully become a mentor for my family.

MLA CITATION

Duck9, comp. "Why College Students Drop Out." Chart. 2007 Statistics on College Student Drop Out

Rates. Duck9, Dec. 2007. Web. 10 May 2011. <http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-

Out-Rates.htm>.

LEWIS, KATHERINE R. "High College Dropout Rate Threatens U.S. Growth." Www.thefiscaltimes.com/lifeandmoney. The

Fiscal Times, 28 Oct. 2010. Web. 10 May 2011. <http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2010/10/28/High-College-

Dropout-Rate-Threatens-US-Growth.aspx>.

Martindale, Gayla. "College Drop Out Rates - Who's to Blame?" Web log post. College and University Blog. U.S. University

Directory, 27 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 May 2011. <http://www.stateuniversity.com/blog/permalink/College-Drop-Out-

Rates-Who-s-to-Blame-.html>.