This is a visual I made on Google Draw representing common issues with high school students, especially now. You need all 3 of these points on the triangle to have discipline and therefore be successful. The text in between explains what happens if you only have 2 of the 3 traits. The passages below act as a guide for people to obtain all 3 traits of discipline, which is becoming more and more crucial for students to succeed in online school.

Mindset

The aspect of online school isn’t great for everyone. It is easier for students like myself to slack off at home because there isn’t as much pressure or motivation to do otherwise.  Issues with online school are often the result of a lack of discipline. Students sometimes don’t understand what the point of online education is, and they lose motivation. I am one of those people. 

Anecdote
When the pandemic started, just two weeks after I got into NYOS Charter School, I was confused and worried. After a long spring break, my parents told me about the planned transition  to online school. I quickly got tired of the new system, and I began to lose my values. I became demotivated, my work ethic fell apart.   This continued until the beginning of September, when I realized that the values of online school are very similar to those of anything else. In order to be successful in almost everything, a great amount of discipline is required.  I have included a three-part solution on this common issue shared by so many students. It only takes some motivation, effort, and patience to change your life for the better.

Part 1) Motivation

Discipline doesn’t come out of nowhere. It starts small, and grows overtime. You may ask, “How do I start practicing some discipline?” The answer to that question is simple: You need to understand and acknowledge your specific struggles. Compartmentalize them. Next, come up with some small solutions that require patience and time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and long term solutions require patience and effort at the beginning of the process. It’s okay that you don’t have those right now. Create basic solutions, commit to adhering to your basic solutions for a while, until it comes naturally.

Part 2) Effort

After a while, you will realize that you are on the right path.Things will improve.  It’s time to add some difficulty. You will understand what needs to happen to improve your solutions. At this point, you have become motivated by completing the small goals, but you are missing the patience that is needed for a long term goal. Set some more challenging goals that require frequent attention. Focus on day-to-day improvements. This is the time to be ambitious, don’t make goals you can achieve easily. You will want to give up, but you will eventually realize that you have the capability to get through it. This becomes motivation, and your ambitious goals become less so as each day comes. Your internal strength begins to grow. You are training your mind to go just a little bit beyond the breaking point each day. The military uses similar tactics to train their soldiers. Good teachers follow similar tactics to teach their students. A great workout has most of the traits of this approach. The more efficiently you spend your time in this phase of a solution, the more disciplined you become. You should repeat this many times, gradually making goals more difficult to attain, until you have done everything you can to complete the task at hand.

Part 3) Patience 

You have the motivation and effort that is required to succeed. You earned the strength from your day-to-day input of relentless effort. You already have a general understanding of the long term solution to a problem. Now is the time to show it. Make a long-term plan on a solution with the motivation and effort of the shorter goals in mind. Day-to-day input is still required, and you shouldn’t scale back. Patience is the name of the game.  Fabulous results require significant amounts of time. Once your goal is accomplished, be proud of it! Use this as motivation to start another goal, repeating this format. Eventually, your whole life will change for the better, even online school.