Balancing life and school is certainly important for learners. Judging from the comparisons between the initial and current scores on various aspects related school and life balance; I have done tremendously well over the past few days. There are various changes that have taken place, and nearly of them are for the better. For example, I scored 10 in the health section. This meant that I started eating healthy and exercising more frequently unlike before. Positive nutritional intake and regular exercise translated to maintaining a good weight. Health also does encompass appropriate better ways of managing stress; as set out after the initial assessment, I engaged in the recommended approaches towards mitigating stress including engaging in hobbies, adequate sleep and defining innermost desires (Free Management Books, 2015). All these modifications contributed to the highest possible score on the Quality of Life Self Care Wheel. With regards to rest/recreation, career and passion I scored an eight out of a possible ten in each while in personal development/relationships I scored seven out of the possible ten scores. These scores showed an improvement courtesy of the strategies put in place to mitigate negative live and school imbalance.
On a scale of 1-10, my current level of stress is 3. It has substantially reduced since the implementations of various strategies aimed at reducing stress. The immediate strategy that seems to have contributed significantly to a reduction in stress levels is the spending some time in park as from 5 o’clock in the afternoon every weekend, going to parties at least twice a month and spending quality time with family members. These strategies seem simple to the ordinary eye. Nonetheless, I have learnt and gained a lot. For example, relaxing in the park has thought me that there are a lot of interesting activities that taken place from there; often such activities go unnoticed when people go to the park for other reasons besides recreational ones. There are all sorts of people engaging in different activities, and one cannot lack individuals with similar interests. In addition to this, fulfillment of one’s dreams is known to elicit a high sense of gratification, higher levels of happiness and reduced levels of stress. The strategies that I put earlier of depositing $100 every weekend from daily savings of $20 seems to bear great fruits. The savings were fuelled by my desire to fulfill passion and dreams that have always been curtailed lack of finances. With $400 monthly savings, I can buy new books that can help me to expand my knowledge base. Though farfetched, I am convinced that such smaller adjustments are immensely contributing to the overall reduction in stress levels. Well, I cannot that the adjustments have been a smooth ride all the way. There have been some few challenges with regards to a reduction of personal time and spending less every day by $20. With regards to savings, I have learnt to compare prices in different store and go for the cheapest commodities with average quality (Napoli & Roe, 2011).
I have realized that I use a lot on food during the lunch hour. Well, I can only think of one suitable strategy to reverse this trend. I intend to start carrying packed lunch from home to school. This will mean that I will save all the large money. Carrying packed lunch has other benefits including controlling the amount of fat and salt in my diet thereby contributing to the maintenance of good weight and better health in general.
References
Free Management Books. (2015). SMART-specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.free-management-ebooks.com/faqps/goal-04.htm.
Napoli, M., & Roe, S. (2011). Life by personal design: Limitless Horizons. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt. Print.
