There are a few things that have been challenging to me. I am struggling with time
management and increasing my interest in the topics we have to read. I have struggled with
time management before, and what seemed to help was creating reminders on my phone to
dedicate time to assignments. I hope the topics we read start to pique my interest and allow
me to connect more to them.
The challenge for me was getting my work done more efficiently. I didn't space out my work
that well and was left with a bit more than expected over the weekend. The solution to this is
to get on a consistent schedule throughout the week, allowing me to complete my work
slowly. This is very important, especially when you have multiple classes. This strategy is
better for retention of the subjects learned and higher grades on projects on most occasions.
Life is full of surprises, good times, bad times, and challenges. Whether we overcome those
challenges or let us defeat us is primarily up to the attitude we take them with. Thus far, the
most challenging part to keep up with the course is that I have a very demanding job "I work
in retail" I am a single mom of four, and even though some people might not find it
interesting or important, Applied Humanities is not easy to understand. There is actually a lot
of reading and information to learn how to appreciate art, music, and philosophy that I was
not counting on. Still, my most significant setback is that I am a big-time procrastinator.
However, like I said at the beginning, we are the only ones with the power to confront those
challenges, I for example, I decided to have a calendar on my desk and write all my
assignment due dates with notes as to why is important for me to accomplish such task, I also
have a note book with notes for my everyday routine, from the moment I have to wake up to
go work, to my to do list at work, to my to do list for when I get home. As to my
procrastination habit, I am actually working on it and I am proud to say that I have gotten so
much better, acknowledging how bad it makes me feel every time I lose 5 or 10 points just for
not turning my assignment in a timely manner has helped me understand that only I have
control of how I want to feel. I hope I get to accomplish my goal of not losing points for my
bad habit of procrastinating.
For me I found it challenging to understand the old English language thus some words used
were unfamiliar. However, using google dictionary, I was able to understand the meaning and
continue reading and participating in exercises. I hope everyone is having fun learning about
art and its impact on our society.
The most challenging part about this course thus far would be timing and a schedule. I have a
lot going on in my day-to-day life, so making time to study is on my priority list. I must learn
to make a schedule for my jobs, family, and school. It is not the easiest thing to do, but I will
make it work I am determined to make schoolwork. As for as the course itself, it has not been
challenging. I am learning the different ways to analyze and become a pro at looking at pieces
of art. The book as far as materials is easy to navigate as well. My family and their will and
pushing me is helping me overcome my challenges of timing.
I have faced some challenges in this course already. One of them was analyzing visual art.
Being able to understand what an artist is trying to convey through a painting or statue is quite
difficult for me, so I struggled with that a bit. Another challenge I faced was analyzing poetry.
Although I do feel that literature is one of my strengths, poetry is still difficult for me to
comprehend. Something that helped me overcome these challenges was by spending more
time analyzing them. As I looked over the artifacts more, they became easier for me to
understand.
hope you’ve all had a great week so far! For me, the most challenging thing about the course
is learning to stop and listen to the music and evaluate what I think the emotion behind it is, or
what the artist is trying to portray through the songs. Some of the songs throw me for a loop
because what may sound like surprise may be anger, and what sounds like sadness could be
anger. I had a hard time trying to clear my mind and just listen to what I heard to evaluate the
music, and even after listening to it over and over it again I still got it quite a bit wrong. I
found that the older songs were tough because I had to understand the time frame it came
from, and I’m still working on doing that, but hopefully with a little time I’ll get better at it.
The most challenging thing I am facing about getting through this course so far is time
management. Everything just came at once on me during these past weeks. I got a new job
that I started earlier this week, I moved into my new apartment couple of weeks ago which I
am still trying to get things in place and settle down. As well as started this new course couple
of weeks ago. With that been said, I have not overcome this challenge yet until I get
everything in place within two weeks from now, which will be the mid of this course. So
therefore, I plan on giving two to three hours by the end of each day to do my assignments as
well as readings in other for me to be up-to-date with my schoolwork.
Getting this far in the course has been quite challenging for me. I have been through several
ups and downs. One of the major challenges that I faced during the course was managing and
completing all the tasks within the set deadlines. I remain so packed with my schedule that it
becomes very hard for me to handle several tasks in a day. I was not able to focus on any task
properly and had to struggle to complete them at the right time. To overcome this challenge, I
decided to work on my time management skills. I started preparing a schedule daily to keep
track of all the tasks that I had to complete. This helped me to prioritize the tasks that were
most important, and I completed them the first. Then I focused on the lesser important tasks
(Pisoni et al., 2019). It helped me concentrate on one task at a time better and complete all the
assigned tasks within the given deadlines. At times, when I felt too much stressed, I tried
getting involved in some meditation and yoga exercises. This, in turn, helped me to
effectively overcome stress and concentrate on the tasks better. I remained awake late in the
night many times to complete the tasks. I kept pushing myself to finish the tasks and meet the
deadline without fail. The journey of reaching this far in the course was indeed tough.
However, the desire to reach my goal motivated me to overcome the challenges that came in
the way.
I have had a few things that make getting through this course so far, a little challenging. I'm a
stay-at-home-mom and while my oldest is in school, I still have a 2-year-old that runs around
at home all day and likes to get into things he shouldn't be and climb any furniture he can. On
top of chasing after him and making sure he does not hurt himself; I also have a small
business that I run completely by myself. What has been helping me to overcome those
challenges is to schedule my time better to make sure I have the most effective time to
complete my school work.
I hope this does not come across the wrong way however I feel that this question is a bit
premature as we are only in our second week, and while things may be more challenging for
others, I have yet to find anything super challenging that I would consider worthy of writing
about. For the sake of this post, I will reflect on the last module and found that the literature
part of our assignment was the most challenging as it used examples that were written in Old
English and then went on to ask us as students what we thought the meaning was and what
our feelings were. For me, I have always had a hard time understanding Old English....
(Forget it Shakespeare!) With that in mind, I found that by breaking it down sentence by
sentence (and using the great and wonderful Google) as an aid to help me dumb down and
make sense of what I have just read.
I am having a hard time getting through the reading part solely because I am not intrigued by
some parts of the text. I find myself trying to do it while I am at work and when I finally get
home and I end up falling asleep. This is because I work 12hour days though not because of
the reading. I am trying to do better with time management and compartmentalization but, I
do not think anything I am doing is working. I am really winging it. I believe after this
upcoming week I will be on a better track.
I have had two challenges so far in the course, including sickness and difficulty perceiving the
musical portion of our work. For the past month, I have been recovering from COVID, which
takes a toll on my daily activities by inducing chronic migraines and draining my energy.
Thankfully, I am starting to recover and have managed my illness and schoolwork by
listening to my body when it needs nutrients, rest, and working during the times I have the
most energy. As for challenges within the course, I struggle with the musical aspects due to
not understanding elements of music, even when going through and re-reading the previous
chapter a multitude of times. I have not overcome this challenge, but possible solutions are
looking into third-party explanations and reaching out to others for more information.
So far in this course, I have found my biggest challenge to be time management. I love the
course material but finding the time to sit down and receive the information has been a bit
challenging. I work full time at AAA towing overnight and part time at another company on
my days off from AAA. Regardless, I've seemed to figure out some sort of a way to get it
done and that's all that matters! I have been trying to get my schedule with work nailed down
more definitively so that I can get a school schedule set up that works with work. Once I get
into the groove of things it will be much easier to find the time to get things done. The hardest
thing for me throughout this course so far has been the visual arts. I am not an artistic person
so I never really got into art. I am trying hard to get into it through the reading and
assignments we have but it’s just not interesting to me. So, to this day I am still trying to find
a way to overcome that.
It can often be exceedingly hard for me to concentrate when doing many things, and class
work is no exemption. It has been a challenge keeping track, because I tend to clutter my
mind and my workspace, which ultimately stresses me out. Simply not giving up has helped
me to work on overcoming this challenge. I have started to work on my organization skills,
and though I may have a long road ahead of me, I will not give up. I know ultimately it will
pay off in the end when I learn to create an organized environment around me.
I would have to say the most challenging thing about getting through this course is trying to
understand the work within the web-text. I will be reading the chapters and comprehending
what is being said, turn to whichever piece of art we are focused on during the module and,
completely lose all understanding of what is happening. At times I will feel really confident in
my answers, and then when I hit submit, my answers are completely different than what the
preferred answer is, and I feel a lot less of myself. What is helping me to slowly begin
tackling this issue is by re-reading the text. Even if this means re-reading it two or three times,
going slower each time, notetaking and writing down vocabulary I've never seen before, just
to make sure I am understanding everything in front of me.
Honestly, nothing about this class itself has been challenging; however, work and life things
have been a big issue the last couple weeks that tends to take away from my time for
homework. We have been working lots of extra hours at the Post Office due to short staffing
from COVID, along with being extra tired by the time I get home and needing to sleep before
the next long day. Honestly, homework has been one of my lower priorities the last couple
weeks. I have yet to overcome this challenge fully, but taking a minute every day to remind
myself how much my education means to me has helped give me the motivation even when
tried to work on homework for at least an hour or two. I am hoping the stress and overtime
from work will calm down soon so I can focus more on what is important to my future.
I would not say that I have found the class to be challenging thus far, at least not the
assignments to this point. The only thing that makes it difficult has more to do with me just
finding the time to do said assignments. d The job I have has weird, fluctuating hours and a lot
of times I end up brining my work home with me because things get hectic up at work as well.
To try and avoid being rushed or finding the best times to do the assignments, I have found
that starting immediately when the week starts or even working ahead once I am done with
the previous week’s assignments, usually keeps me in a decent place to get things done on
time. d
So, this week I feel like the biggest challenge I had would have been balancing the workload
with my schedule. The job I work at is overly exhausting and that makes it harder to
concentrate on other things. I sometimes feel so lost trying to navigate through the heartache
and physical demand that working the at the hospital that I let other things slip. I have a few
meditation activities that help with the stress. I have been trying to do the one day at a time for
the rest of the stress. I work such long nights that I rarely see family when I am working so
my support system gets a little thin during the work week. I suppose that I need to remind
myself that I do not have to be perfect just do what I can when I can. I know that I can do this,
and I will keep pushing because I need to follow my path.
So far, the most challenging part of the course was trying to understand some of the art that
was featured in last week’s module. Also, finding the time to complete all my work can be a
bit challenging, but putting my mind to it and more effectively budgeting my time has worked
well so far. To overcome the challenge of interpreting art, I just made sure to take adequate
time to make sure I had a grasp on things. that extra time helped to improve my
understanding.
I have a few challenges that I am learning to overcome in this class so far. One example is
analysing music and literature. I must read and listen so many times that I get discouraged.
Something that helps me is stop rushing and really sit and think about what I am looking at or
listening to. A second example is distractions from the outside world. I work full time, a
mother of 3, so I am kind of busy. To help organize myself and give myself ample time to
study and get my work done, I must take myself out of mom/businesswoman mode and turn
into student mode. It is hard but time management is key for me to success in this class.
To be honest, things got difficult for me recently. I deployed to Japan a few days ago & did
not complete a few assignments which set me back, but I am here and ready to go. The
difficult part for me now is developing a suitable routine in this new chapter in my life--let me
explain.
First and foremost, my sleep schedule has now drastically changed, 17 hours ahead to be
exact. Granted, it only really affected me for the first two days, but I cannot say that I am at
100%. Secondly, I am now during establishing a new routine. With a different work schedule
and different methods of completing tasks, I must now find the most suitable methods of
completion. Lastly, I am now combating a lack of motivation to complete these tasks. The act
of 'Figuring things out' takes a lot out of you, I must admit.
To end this gripe session on a better note, I will say that I am making progress. The more I do,
the more I accomplish, so I must keep moving. My objective is to do a little bit of each of the
things that I have to do, and slowly increase time spent doing it. After a few weeks, this
objective will be complete!
Refereneces
Pisoni, G., Segovia, J., Stoycheva, M., & Marchese, M. (2019, September). Distributed
student team work in challenge-based innovation and entrepreneurship (i&e) course. In
International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Education (pp. 155-163). Springer,
Cham.
