Reflection on my 7 habits

Ah, assignments. This one is about the 7 habits from the book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. The instructions are as follows:

Include a reflection of the 7 habits; do you think they are important for you as a students? Why? Which of the 7 habits that you already have? Which you don't?

Again, those seven habits are:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the saw (upgrade your physical, mental, social, and spiritual health)

I think those habits are useful for everybody, student and professional alike. The first three are important for personal success. For example, there are many helpful programs in college, but they don't seek out students. Students need to be proactive and seek them out. For college students, beginning with the end in mind is the best way to take classes. I know several friends who take the classes they feel like taking, without any regard for what their overall college education will look like. That's the end, the goal of college - to be educated. How educated do 50 easy classes make a person? Not very educated at all.

The second three habits (#4-7) are important for group projects. In group projects, students need to work together to make sure everybody gets a good grade, and more importantly to make sure everybody learns from doing the project. If one person does it all, the entire group might get a good grade, but they wouldn't learn. That's the purpose of group projects. That's what "winning" means in the context of a group project.

Understanding others is also very important to group projects; both when listening to other people's presentations, and when presenting your own; you need to know the material before you can tell others about it. The last of these habits, synergizing is a very important part of being in a group.

The last habit, sharpening the saw, is perhaps the most important one for students. We're here to learn about our field of choice, but extraneous knowledge matters a lot in life. If we don't know basic things about geography, history, health, etc, we won't get far in life.