Week 3/4

               This week has been a pleasant week? I don't really know, the hurricane Irma stuff is pretty much over. Anyway, my moderation this week was actually pretty good. In the weekend, I actually did my homework. Since I had nothing to do, I did my English homework in about an hour. I only got distracted a couple of times but I controlled myself. After that, I helped my mom with the third party inventory. She kept getting confused which was sort of annoying. Anyway, I finished my homework in only two hours. I had done the ethics blogpost for week two that Wednesday that we got off from school which was also very productive. I also started reading My Sister's Keeper and the world history book. I usually don't read the assigned books so early but I did. Anyway, moderation was alright this week. Although, I will say, my confidence was pretty bad. It was so bad that when I was talking to someone they told me I shouldn't have such low self-esteem. I mean I am trying. 

Week 2

         Well, this week has been pretty boring.... except Hurricane Irma is coming and I'm freaking out. Anyways, virtues. Well, I think this week my confidence was pretty good. I went swimming on Sunday to practice and learned how to dive! Ok this sounds extremely pathetic, but it's always been extremely hard for me to dive. You may laugh as pretty much anyone I tell laughs about it (<-- whoops shouldn't even say that - gotta work on that confidence boosting). Anyway, Sunday i finally did it, after encouraging myself after much time. This boosted my confidence and now I'm not as afraid. Now, I did go driving before that with my dad. It was my first time ever so I was sorta scared. Right before we started I kept saying "Vamos a chocar! Vamos a chocar!" and while I was driving too. That was not very good in part with my confidence... I at least, actually, did not crash so my turns did get smoother. Well, anyway, my moderation this weekend sucked. Thursday I said "Oh I'll work on my homework Saturday, get it done." But yet came Monday and I was doing 90% of the homework that afternoon. It wasn't that bad but still. I gotta work on it. Well, gotta go start "evacuating."

Week 1 - My virtues

Well, to start off, honestly, I picked the virtues I thought I obviously need to work on. I hope I  have enough time to even make worthy progress but I'm working on managing my time for all this My first virtue is moderation. Probably a lot of us have this as one of our virtues. Moderation is having a healthy balance in life. You don’t play too much, you don’t work too much, and you don’t overdo certain things you like. It’s pretty much having self-discipline. When we live in the age of technology, phones, social media, etc. it’s extremely hard not to get distracted when doing homework. I try, I really do, but not enough. I need to start organizing my life, get my act together, and really try to control how long I take doing certain things—discipline myself to say when I’ve had enough of something. I already do try to control myself and my time-management but it’s going ok. If I improved this virtue I’d probably do my homework twice as fast. I’d count how much time I waste when “doing” homework but that’s too much math to do right now, and this is not math class. I plan to get better in my moderation by turning off my phone and shoving it in a drawer when I get home (I’m not even joking about this—it’s the only way), tracking how much time I take while doing my work, and getting my family to help by telling me to stop being distracted and such; even though they do that already but I’ll try hard to listen to them now.

My second virtue is assertiveness. I am an extremely shy person—especially in the classroom. This virtue is very important because to be heard, loud and clear, you need to be assertive. Assertiveness is the quality of being positive and confident; you express your ideas to others and think worthy of yourself. In the world, I think it’s important to be assertive and especially now in school. I mean it’s always been important to participate in school but now it’s really getting stuff. I mean in Greek geometry if I don’t participate, I’ll fail the class. I’m already certain I’m probably going to fail—my participation history isn’t exactly the greatest. It’s not that I am too lazy to participate, for me it’s just a scary thing to speak up and say what you think, especially in class. I fear looking ridiculous, or saying the wrong answer. Outside of class I am a little bit more assertive but mostly with people I know really, really well or I’m comfortable with, and that isn’t a lot. As assertive as I want to be, it’s hard. I’m going to start little by little, first by participating a little more in classes, and then by always raising my hand. Most of the time, I probably know the answer to what the teacher is asking and I’m too much of a wimp to say but I’ll start trying now. After all that, I’ll move on to speaking with other people more confidently and improving my public speaking.

Lastly, I’m going to work on my confidence/courage. Confidence is more about yourself. Confidence is when you have no self-doubt, you rely in others, you feel sure of yourself, and have faith. I plan to focus on my self-confidence—which is not the best. I want to work on the confidence I show and have on myself. Confidence is really important because it’s not only what you look like to others, but how you feel about yourself. I think having confidence really affects your outlook on life and what kind of energy you radiate (I sound like a hippy saying this but like I don’t how else to say it). I also want to have courage since I feel like it ties into confidence but it's more about taking a chance. I want to have less fears than I do now and doing things I think I can't do but I can. The more confident I can get, the better I can perform. Since I have very little confidence, I think less of myself, therefore believe I can achieve little or have no determination to try new things. I want to boost my confidence by talking good about myself (instead of insulting myself whenever I get the chance); believing I can do certain things even when I’m not so positive about them; and being confident by taking chances and trying new things. I will also get help from my friends so when I am not so confident, they boost it or tell me to stop being so negative about what I can do.  

Me reassuring myself I did this correctly: