Self-Scheduling

Here in Leap we, the students, are allowed to plan and commit to our own schedule. This gives us much choice and freedom but it can also bring up some challenges. Obviously the main benefit of having the ability to make your own schedule is the fact that, at least for me, it makes the day more fun by allowing you to spend more time on projects that are fun, but also ones that interest you more than some of the others. Not that every hour of every day in Leap is only spent on things that you like, because there may be moments in your project that get difficult. Though you must still work on it to be able to get back on track and finish the project up.

Another positive part of being able to plan your own schedule is the fact that this allows you to take breaks when you see fit, though most of us are so used to the normal school routine so mostly we break at the same time. This may sometimes cause a few of us to take more breaks than needed or to use the excuse “I’m on break right now, that’s why I’m not doing anything.”

For the most part, the reason being able to self schedule is so helpful is that you might be really into working on a project and you might be nearly done with a certain part of it, but then suddenly break hits, and normally you would have to clean up, head out and wait for next time to finish up. Whereas with this system, you can just keep working through break and when you feel things have come to a good stopping point, and everyone seems ready to take some time off, then you can cleanup and take some down time. These are the big benefits I see in allowing us to plan our own schedules, but this doesn’t come with it’s own sets challenges.

The challenges that arise when allowing us (or at least me) to plan our own schedules, is that sometimes you can end up procrastinating a whole lot of the time. The reason this may happen, is maybe I’ll be working on a project for a while, but then I realize I don’t have the materials to continue. Also, the person who could get me those materials won’t be back until after lunch. So instead of finding some other work to do, or completing another piece of the project, or maybe even helping someone else with their project, I’ll say to myself “You have done enough for right now, so why don’t you go take a break (even though I took one only 30 minutes ago) but since you can’t do anything right now, you might as well just do something fun, even if it isn’t really getting anything done for your project.” Or maybe I won’t even really take a break. I’ll just sit down somewhere and wait until something happens. This is even worse because I really don’t get a single thing accomplished, not even something fun for myself. So having the ability to plan my own schedule for what I work on throughout the day has it’s positives, but also it’s fair share of downsides.