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.

Class Summary, Nov 8

This week we only had one speaker: Reagan Pollack of WorldMusicLink. He was more of a businessman than most other people we've had, and he had some good advice for people planning to start a business. He recommends we use our class mates for feedback, since it's free and they're always going to be there to help. He also recommends we know a little bit about everything, so we can follow along wherever we are. Apparently a lot of the things he's used haven't been the main things taught in CST classes - his extraneous knowledge has come in handy. A phrase he likes is "think digitally, act analogically". This means we should think through all the possibilities, but only take small steps. I guess it's similar to the phrase "tread lightly".

Reagan and our instructor both mentioned the Marina Technology Center, which is a group in Marina that gives startup funds and space to new companies. If I was starting a company, that would be very useful.

We spent a fair amount of time talking about the book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. 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)

1-3 help you succeed by yourself; 4-6 help you succeed when working with other people, and #7 helps balance them all out and keep them going.

The assignment for this week includes a few more things (besides the weekly reflection). The first is to establish our big goals in life. I'd say my biggest goal is to get a secure job in the computer industry. I don't really care what part of the industry I'm in - I do have a specific area in mind, but if my career happened to veer off in another computer-oriented direction, that would be fine. There are other "big goals" in my life, of course, but I'd say a good career is the most important one to me right now.

The second other thing is to plan toward our futures. Ha! That's what the ILPs are for; that's what this class is all about. As Berj of the EOP office says, I've got my plans pretty well laid out. All I have to do is follow them. I haven't secured a position for after I graduate, but I think it would be silly to do so now, since I've got about two years of college left. The industry will change by that time. How much more planning could I possibly do?

The third thing to do is to sharpen our saws - to find a way to improve our physical, mental, social, and/or spiritual health. I think I'm improving on several of those fronts. My social health is definitely improving, mostly thanks to living on-campus for the first time. All this semester I've been meeting people and meeting opportunities. I plan to continue to do that in the upcoming semesters. The more I sharpen this saw, the better I'll get at sharpening it. I am sharpening other teeth of the metaphorical saw, but those are more personal things, and this is enough writing for one blog post.