Keeping on Track

The hardest thing that I am experiencing throughout the MAPP is staying on track. I think I am enjoying the element of 'discovering' too much. I start teaching most days at 8:00 AM and I end teaching most days at 8:00 PM because of this, time is very limited making it an extremely valuable commodity. Like any valuable commodity it needs to be used wisely, any minor distractions may become the difference between success and failure. Learning to stay focused is essential for any goal oriented project with a deadline to be delivered on time. The more time one is able to devote to the project the more quality the project should attain.

Using time wisely is unfortunately, for myself, much more easily said than done. This may be because of dyslexia, or ADHD, or it could really be more common than not, and I am just not aware of other peoples feelings on this. Reading books such as "The Mature Student's Handbook" by Lucinda Becker is both an immense help, and also perhaps also a little detrimental, as it makes the planning that is required to stay on track seem easy. This already can be extremely difficult for individuals who come from professional dance backgrounds because, as in my own case, and in the case of a few other acquaintances,  I have found that we (dancers) have been conditioned to thinking about many different subjects simultaneously due to the nature of dance. And on top of all of this thinking while doing, being a dancer also that you need know a little about variety of subjects such as mathematics, kinesthetics, and other various humanities in order to succeed and do your job as a dancer professionally. The difficulty with learning about our own professional experiences, and what we have learned, is that we don't consider what we do as learning, or learning in a form that can be documented because to us, all of our multiple subjects, is just what we do, dance.

All of this learning, and doing is very difficult on people in general, so how does this connect with time management? Dancers are used to doing a multitude of activities at all times, perhaps this multitude of activities makes dancers constantly over stimulated? whatever the reason, I find that dancers in general tend to 'run away' with various tangents frequently, whether the dancers are in rehearsal, or actively choreographing, or in discussions with other people (which we have seen evident in each and everyone one of our Skype sessions). I would even go so far to say that without our advisers we are basically a bunch of school children who are fighting over who has the ball, and then where the ball gets thrown. So now imagine ourselves trying to be organized, and productive, and stick to one subject without advisers, parents, or some form of authority making sure that we stay on track. I think I am one of the children with the ball. However, I will keep pushing until I get it done.