Let’s sum up the 30-day challenge

Nina Yang

Writing&Comp III

Ms. Guarino

05/11/2015

Let’s sum up the 30-day challenge!

  Scientists said that it would take proximately 3 weeks, which is about 21 days for a human being to form a habit. To be honest, I didn’t believe this statement at first because I thought I’m a lazy person who can only insist on eating and sleeping. I still thought that was true before I did the 30-day challenge, which actually changed my thought completely.

  When I was six-year old, I began to learn piano, and I gave it up when I was twelve- year old because I had to go to a boarding school, so I couldn’t practice playing piano every day. Besides, I began to learn dancing when I was five-year old, and I gave it up when I was fourteen- year old only because my father thought it was too hard for a young girl to practice doing the splits every day. These “give ups” were things that made me feel I can’t insist on doing anything. I rethought about these “failures” that happened on me, and I also blamed my parents who didn’t force me to keep on learning these hobbies. However, I finally realized that it was my own problem, and it was my responsibility to control over on my life. If I said no to my parents and insisted on doing them, I would not be as regretful as this right now.

  After Ms. Guarino assigned the 30- day challenge for us, I highly doubted myself on my insistence of doing the challenge thing. Since Ms. Guarino is the first teacher who has ever assigned homework as a challenge for me, I thought it’s going to be a great chance for me to actually complete something, which I never did before. My challenge was about memorize one word from a different language every day, which could summarize my day and made me rethink about my day. The purpose of this challenge was to make a self-reexamination, and to prevent myself from living in regretful for the next day. The hardest part for my challenge was not only doing the challenge every day, but also to write the 500 words blog post every other day. To write 500 words blog post every other day was like a huge challenge for me as a junior. First of all, as a junior, I have not only to prepare for my SAT, but also to pay attention on my academic grades. The time arrangement for me is really important. Therefore, if I have to submit the blog post next day, I would try to write it during the free period so that I don’t need to spend so much time on it during study hall. Besides, after this challenge, I really felt that I need only half of the time to complete the blog post compare to the time I needed at the beginning of the challenge. Second, at first, I didn’t have many things to write about, and my blog post was kind of boring. Then, I found out that I was not writing a dairy or some academic writing. The blog post was where I would like to express myself about my thoughts about life, or my feelings to a specific event. The topic for my blog post was not limited at all, and as long as I wrote about the words I learned for the previous days, that blog post should not be a hard thing for me. As the result, the challenge was also like a problem for me to solve, and I think I solve it perfectly. My blog posts then contained variety of topics. For example, on my 7^th blog post, I talked about what “free” means to me. I said “When I was in Primary School, I thought being away from my parents was free at that time. Children always have an “independent” thought deep inside their minds. Do not listen to their parents and do what they want to do. I was thinking like that at that time. However, my parents just couldn’t leave me along for even one second, and I didn’t think I was “free” at all at that time. People may not feel free at any time of their life. However, we don’t feel free only because the knowledge we have and the age we are limit our understanding of being free. Once we grow up and stand into a higher platform, we would not feel restricted anymore.” I also talked about life and problems in life sometimes.

  I felt like the 30-day challenge broadened my sight of seeing the world around me. I not only increased my knowledge on different languages, but also formed a habit in critical thinking that to rethink my day and myself. More importantly, I finally did something that can prove my insistence on doing things.