My Senior Project and the Importance of Effective Time Management

As I began my final year of high school, I was assigned a project to be completed over the course of my senior year. This project required me to complete an internship in the field I wished to enter professionally. Since the project was spread out over a year, I was tempted to delay starting it. After all, it was my senior year, and theoretically, I was supposed to be enjoying myself. Nevertheless, I eventually chose to complete many aspects of the project on time, or even early.

Throughout this process, I came to understand that many of the principles of scarcity outlined by Shafir and Mullainathan, such as abundance, vigilance, and neglect, were all present while I was working on this project. My good grade was a direct result of my effective management of these elements of scarcity.

The project involved a twenty-hour internship in marketing, which is my chosen field. However, that was only the beginning. During the internship, we were tasked with note-taking, asking questions, keeping journals, securing the requisite signatures on multiple documents, and ultimately discerning if the experience piqued our interests. Once the school year commenced, we were expected to create a resume, craft a tri-fold, send thank-you letters, and prepare a research paper detailing our experience and its implications on our future career choices. The most challenging part was finding the internship! Little did I know that the remaining process would prove to be considerably easier.

At the start of my senior year, my English teacher introduced the project and informed us that we would be submitting different parts of it over the course of the year. We were given a schedule detailing all submission deadlines. Owing to the lax monitoring of the assignments, many classmates decided to shirk their duties and pursue more leisurely activities. Unlike them, I chose to finish the project as soon as possible to minimize stress and anxiety during my senior year. I believe when the school designed this project, they didn’t fully consider how students would respond to having such a lengthy timeframe. As a patch-up measure, incremental due dates were set but rarely enforced.

Shafir and Mullainathan defined abundance as “freedom from trade-offs” (96). When blessed with abundance, we don’t have to be concerned about other possible options. The abundant time the school offered for this project meant we didn’t need to stress about sacrificing our grades. This links directly with the concept of fault tolerance. According to Shafir and Mullainathan, “fault tolerance allows the opportunities people receive to match the effort they put in and the circumstances they face” (171). Ideally, it’s the students’ responsibility to turn in assignments on the prescribed dates. Since there were no consequences for being tardy, many tasks were left undone. I chose to stick to the deadlines, even completing parts of the project early. Thanks to my diligent time management, I was far ahead of my peers. I discovered the advantages of early completion during this process.

As a student, I always try to improve myself. There is always room to turn an A into an A+ or spend more time studying. However, it is much easier for me to say that I am going to do something than actually do so. These kinds of commitments are referred to as vigilance choices, as they have to be constantly repeated to achieve the result(s) (211). In order for me to complete the project in the time I allotted for myself, I was going to need a large amount of self-discipline and stamina. I would also need to stay consistent and make sure that I was working often enough to ensure the project was getting done.

At the beginning of the year, when the project was assigned, it was easy for everyone to say: “I am going to complete this project early and get it out of the way.” Many students ended up procrastinating and completed the project at the last minute. Alternatively, I decided that I wanted to enjoy the latter half of my year and do the project early, which worked out well because “senioritis” had set in by early February. I remained vigilant and completed a majority of it early on, as I saw the benefit of completing the work early. However, many other students fell victim to falling behind due to the fact that the school did not consistently enforce the deadlines for the assignments.

Completing this project within the timeframe I set wasn’t exactly an easy feat. I had to ensure that I was staying on task and making significant progress every time I sat down to work. Despite my efforts, I often felt behind. The final stages of this project were hardly enjoyable. I found myself succumbing to something referred to as “tunneling.” Tunneling can be described as “the narrowing of the visual field in which the objects inside the tunnel come into sharper focus while rendering us blind to everything peripheral” (29). Ignoring these peripheral items meant neglecting them.

As the end of the project neared, I found myself with very little time left, as I wanted to complete the project by my self-imposed due date. I began to focus solely on the project, often declining invitations from my friends for a movie or a hangout. I was so fixated on finishing that I failed to realize it might have been better had I taken some time to take a break and see my friends. I spent a lot of time at my desk in my room, oblivious to many of the things happening around me. The project had consumed me, and I was anxiously awaiting that bright, beautiful light that would signify its completion.

The school tried to mitigate this last-minute tunneling. As mentioned before, there were set deadlines that we were required to meet and submit assignments for. Many students chose not to follow these deadlines, which led to them neglecting many parts of the project and tunneling. Some students, like myself, tried to manage their time wisely and worked diligently on the project. Unfortunately, the vast majority used their time ineffectively.

Overall, I feel that I effectively managed my time and was able to plan ahead so that I could enjoy my final year in high school. My final grade for the project was 98, which is an A+, and I was very happy with my success. I did my best to prevent ineffective uses of my time and worked a great deal on this project. The project was completed in a timely manner and it was not affected by the dreaded “senioritis” pandemic. Throughout the year, I learned that many of the aspects of scarcity described by Shafir and Mullainathan, such as abundance, vigilance, and neglect, were all prevalent while I was completing this project. My good grade on this project was due to my effective management of many aspects of scarcity.

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