First Mile of My Learning Marathon

Review of my first week
Looking back at my first week, I believe it went well due to various reasons. One of the reasons why my first week went well is because I was able to navigate my way around the college because all my lessons are in the same building. This means that I would not be late to lessons throughout the day; this allowed me to create a good impression. Another reason why the week was good for me is because of the long breaks that I have between my lessons which allowed me to get ahead of work. The fact that I started school at 10:10am on Friday is a positive because it meant that my train was not congested and uncomfortable.


Challenges
The main challenges that I faced in my first week was waking up early because I was used to waking up late throughout the summer, so my body found it hard to adapt to the early mornings in my first week. Another challenge is sorting out my transport because when I miss the fast train that comes at 8:02am I have to wait for the train that gets me to Twickenham at 8:47am which means that I have to speed walk to college in order for me not to be late. A challenge that I just noticed lately is my management of money. Now that I have to pay more for travel card I have to budget my money which means that I cannot spend money on junk food and games like I did in secondary school. I might struggle to change from the way I learned in secondary school which was by being a passive learner to being an independent learner which is important in BTEC course in order to get the top grade. I would benefit from changing the way I learn because it will prepare me for university where you have to be an independent learner to be successful.


Result of challenges
The result of waking up late is missing the fast train, which means that I will be late to my first lesson because I would have to go and collect a late slip which will take 20 minutes because of the long queue at the beginning of the day. By the time I get to the lesson I would have missed out on key information that I need to get the top grades. Poor management of money would mean that I would not have enough money for travel card which means that I would not be able to come to college. Missing college because of poor management of money would affect my attendance and could possibly affect my chance of getting a job in the future if they ask for school attendance record. The result of me struggling to change from being a passive learner in college would be that I would not be able research for my coursework. This is something I need to be able to do in order to pass this course.


How to overcome challenges
I am going to overcome waking up late by setting an alarm on my phone and putting my phone next to the door which would prevent me from pressing the snooze button. This would mean that I would have to walk to the door to turn off the alarm. I can resolve my money management issue by buying monthly travel passes which means that travelling to college would be sorted, this means I don’t have to worry about making sure I keep enough money on me to buy travel pass each day. I can change from being a passive learner by starting to research information about the units, if I do this consistently I believe I would eventually get out of my secondary school way of being a passive learner.