14A Tenaciousness

For this exercise, I'd like you reflect on the past two months. In your post for this exercise, pretend that you're talking to a student from next semester's course. What would you tell them?

1) Tenaciousness is a competency. What are the behaviors that you have used (or developed) to keep up with the requirements of this course? 

I’ve developed a new sense of proactiveness and patience with people, for sure. I’m already not a people person (hence why I take an all online course) and to top that off with the workload from this class… You’ve got to be on your toes for the entire time. Even last week, I thought I’d hit the declare button for my peer reviews and I didn’t so that, with the quiz meant I lost three points and that took a hard hit.

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude. Talk about a moment or two when you felt like "giving up." What pulled you through? Do you feel like you've developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months? What experience or experiences most contributed to this?

The interviews have definitely made my socializing skills a little less stressful. There are a lot of opportunities to learn and grow from other people that I initially wasn’t planning on thinking twice about. I’m very passionate about my research because it’s something I’m currently acting on now, but interviewing people who didn’t see the importance of adding another youth program definitely took a hit at my pride and slowed me down during this process. As the semester goes on, so does my patience with seeing that not everyone will see this elite swim team as a priority to youth athletes and that’s probably been the best lesson. Because, now I’m persuading and learning the correct terminology to develop and produce the correct product to the city, city council and ultimately, the mayor.

3) Three tips. What are three tips you would offer next semester's student about (1) fostering the skills that support tenacity and (2) developing the 'tenacious mindset' ?

1. Have a calender, planner, alarm in your phone for ALL assignments. You’ll lose track of some and this will help you stay on your game.
2. Watch the lectures. The quizzes are the lectures. They’re tedious, but the professor does a great job pulling you in and truly making you understand the awkward aspects of where your project can go.
3. Take the interviews seriously. You’ll learn so much from people and from yourself. There were so many additional perspectives that helped challenge and change the marketing perspective of my project, and the comments from other students helped clarify that even though I may know what I’m talking about, not everyone does. 

For this post, please include at least one image.

This was probably one of my “reviving” moments for why I am trying to make this elite team happen. In this photo (because it’s not specified what kind of photo), my college senior swam her last mile race and had a best time she’d been trying to achieve for over six years. This is the more “emotional” and “passion” side of the sport that you can’t market to certain degrees. You tell people they’ll make memories that last a lifetime, but it’s rare to capture the memories in the making.