Life skills

Good evening, everyone. I’d like to start with hoping everyone is enjoying graduation. Second, I’d like to introduce myself. Like most of you know I’m Adam Greenwood for those who don’t, I’m a senior at Oak Hill (soon to be graduate). I’ve been attending Oak Hill since pre-k. I’ve lived a pretty normal life, I played baseball and soccer up until high school, went to church, attended youth groups, and was part of multiple small clubs throughout the school. Overall a pretty ordinary life, up until I started high school then school went south. Throughout school, I never really struggled academically up until freshman year, which is when the schools closed due to quarantine, but I’m not here to sulk about how my school grades went to crap because of quarantine because it isn’t anyone’s fault but mine, but I’m here to talk about why and how people should avoid this habit. For example, I’m writing this essay 48 hours before this speech is due.

As I said, during quarantine was when my grades went south, but it wasn’t particularly quarantine’s fault, before quarantine I was an overall good student. I wasn’t really late on assignments and produced quality work. When we went remote in school I lost all my work ethics, got lazy and got fat. Along with all these my grades plummeted. This happened because of multiple reasons the first reason being my work ethic. At first I was motivated to work and still do school even if we were online, But as we sat online I realized who was there to tell me what to do? or who’s gonna hold me accountable for it? So freshman year I barely passed. Come sophomore year we were 50/50 online and offline school. This is where I lost a sense of work ethics for school but I persevered, I took initiation and finished through only failing 1 class of 8.

The second cause being lack of motivation. When stuck at home it takes a lot to do school work especially when there’s a Xbox sitting right there basically telling me to play Siege. Just like the other reason this was something that was self-inflicted. I should have taken initiation but instead, I got lazy and didn’t do anything, by the time quarantine was over I was so behind on how to do school I screwed myself over thinking I could slide through school without doing real work, but with this issue, it was gonna take more than just initiation to get going on school. I had real scares of failing school and even possibly staying back. That’s when I had to get my butt off my chair and xbox and get my crap together. 

When sitting through high school, my grades were not the only thing that went south before we went remote. I was a consistent participant in the weight room for a few months. I lost about 25 pounds very fast and started working on my physical self and my mental self. This was before remote. As soon as remote happened those 2 bad habits started Between no motivation and work ethic I shot myself up to almost 230 pounds at 15! But these were self-inflicted upon me, I had no motivation. I could eat anything I wanted with any portions. And by the end of my last covid related year in school, I was 250 pounds in March of my junior year. 

There are multiple problems at this point in my life because of my lack of motivation and work ethic. One, I was failing school. Two, I was at serious health risk at this point. But there is one more factor to this equation that truly caused this wreck of a student. Time management. I believe that time management is the most important thing someone should learn and practice. The way you waste or use your time is the most important and expensive thing in a person’s life. The way I squandered my time in high school I look back and realize how much I lost, but this changed in March of 2022. I got my butt out of the house and got my life back together. I got a job with a consistent schedule and got back into sports and even started my life back in the gym. In a matter of months I lost most of my weight I gained, and even became a more all-around healthy person mentally too. I was happier and got my social life back too. Made more new friends and met new people. This is the turnaround of high school. By the end of junior year, I had lost some decent weight and passed all my classes for that semester. That summer I got a full-time job with the same schedule, I developed a sense of time management again, and I was able to lose a ton of weight (hahaha no Kaydo not literally a ton) and make time for my friends. Come the end of the summer I had developed the skills I was lacking to be successful. Once senior year started I was hit with a reality check of what school work was like again I hadn’t done school work in what felt like forever and then it went downhill again come to the end of the semester of my fall semester I was lacking in work ethic and was not producing good work and this carried into the next semester and then there is now. Now I’m writing this essay in a rush to get all my English work done for the end of the year and soon be graduating. 

At the end of all of this, I failed my goals for high school, and no it wasn’t to pass with flying colors and have a perfect GPA my real and true goal was to keep up with the pace and have a good work ethic in school then the good grades would follow. But that’s why I’m here writing this for everyone who hasn’t graduated or finished school, don’t make the mistakes I did and create a bad work ethic and cause no motivation, and not practice good time management. 

The three critical keys to success I believe are a good work ethic, strong motivation, and good time management skills. If you can practice these you won’t make the mistakes I did and be stuck writing this on a Sunday afternoon when I could be fishing or something more fun, but now I’m stuck writing this during the last week of school because of the lack of my work. 

“Lazy Drinker – Borracho huevón” by KobraSoft is licensed under CC BY 2.0.