Time Management Reflection

Time management plays a huge role in my life currently.  Balancing so many things such as schoolwork, a job, an internship, leadership, and other extra-curricular activities has taught me the importance of managing my time effectively to ensure that everything is completed on time.  The main strategy that I use is alarms on my phone to set a time for things to be started by.  I pretty much plan my whole day out through alarms.  I'm also very organized in my head and am pretty good at guessing how much time an activity will take, which makes it easy to plan out my schedule.  One thing that I discovered through my time mangement activities is that on weekdays I don't really have a lot of time to just relax, my schedule is always so packed and stressful that i don't really have time off.  I like having a busy schedule so that way I'm not getting bored, but I desperately need to find a way to get some time to relax so I'm not as stressed out.  One thing that I would really like to improve in my time management is taking the time to write things out.  In the future I see my time management skills progressing toward using a planner to stay a little more organized.  Also maybe dividing my activities into the 4 categories that we did in class so in my head I can make a list of priorities and get those done first.  I think that if i can figure a way to factor these two things into my time management planning, then I will be more efficient and more successful, which is my ultimate goal.  I think that the 80-20 rule is very accurate.  I notice that a lot of the time, especially relating to leadership, things that don't constitute much of what we do end up having greater effects than we anticipated.  For example, Homecoming is our biggest event and altogether is probably 20% of the stuff that we plan in Leadership, however we receive close to 80% of our yearly profit from this one event.  It is definitely prevalent in other areas, but I definitely recognize it the most in Leadership.  I think that i will start to design my daily schedule to reflect more of the importance of things that are getting done so I am not leaving things that are important for last minute.  I definitely do little things to keep busy while pushing off things that take time and need to get done, and that is something that I really want to change so i am less stressed.  I think writing is everything, even though so much stuff is online nowadays, when I write things down they really stick with me, so i will try to employ a little more writing into my time management that way it will be stuck in my head.  I will deal with procrastination by being more organized, like I said before the more organized I am the more successful I am, so I think by improving this area of my life I will be improving many more.  The one thing that I spend way too much time on is Leadership.  As President I have a lot of responsibility, however some of the things that I do could easily be delegated to other people.  I just like taking on as much as I can so i feel like I am helping the school, which is the main reason why I take the Leadership class, but it makes everything less productive and especially makes it harder for me to finish other things.  I love Leadership and it has always been a huge part of my high school, but I think that I need to trust people a little more to get things done without me helping.  Time management is one thing that everyone can improve on, and I'm happy that this class is giving me the tools necessary to improve my time management.

My Passion and Goals

My name is Andrew Cabral and I am going into my senior year of high school at Cal High.  I am very involved in the school, and am serving as the ASB President this year at Cal.  Leadership has always been one of my passions, I love working with people to reach a common goal.  To me, working with others to complete a task has its most direct ties into a career in business, which has also become a passion of mine.  My dad is a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of his company that works to create cloud software for pharmaceutical companies, and he has always been my biggest role model.  He has inspired me to follow my passion, which is one of the main reasons why I applied to be in the iQuest class.  Going into my senior year, I have high hopes for college.  I have always prided myself in being self-motivated and a hard worker, and I hope to be accepted into my dream school, UCLA.  I will be spending this year applying to colleges across the nation, working at Splash swim school, and getting great real-world experience in the business field through my internship. I am applying to many colleges as an Economics major, and I hope to take my first step into my future career through my internship and through taking the AP Economics class this year.  I work at Splash Swim School, and it is one of my favorite places to be.  I love working with kids and finding creative ways to get them to reach their goals.  I have began a summer internship at a company in Pleasanton called Veeva Systems, but I am not sure how long into the school year I will be continuing it.  I am currently looking for companies closer to Cal, but in the meantime continuing my internship while searching for other potential business to intern for.  At Veeva, I intern in marketing and help to give Veeva more of a brand.  In the internships that I am looking for, I would like to intern in more of a business management type position to gain more experience in that field and to see if that is truly the career path that I would wish to take.  I am very, very excited for my senior year, and I have high hopes for how this year will turn out.  I am most excited to figure out what college I will be going to in the fall of 2017, and to take my first family trip to Europe, a place that I have wanted to go ever since I was younger.