The project had quite a large impact
on myself and the others who worked towards their own goals alongside me.
Through personally analyzing my strengths and weaknesses in one aspect of my
life, I can easily translate the methods I've used to be honest with myself and
improve into other areas of my life. This project provided a basic plan for any
other area or situation in my life that I would seek to improve. Additionally,
I think this project has positively impacted all three of us (Samir Bahadur,
Jimmy McDonald, and myself) because we all had the opportunity to push each
other to accomplish our goals. I feel this was one of the most significant
parts of the project, as we were able to keep each other accountable and
accomplish something better than what would've been done alone.
The most difficult part of the
project was finding time outside of the given time in class to really focus and
practice the drills needed to accomplish my goals. Being in the later half of
the school year (especially Junior Year), the workload and stress level of
school increased by quite a large margin in comparison to the middle of the
year. With that in mind, it also was fairly difficult at times to have the
desire to get in the gym and practice when I was tired from football workouts 3
days a week. These combined factors, along with not always having access to a
gym within Dow, made it more tedious process to play than it should've been. I
also never expected that a group of 3 would sometimes be challenging to
practice with, as many of the drills I looked at were either one-on-one or
full-team (5 players) oriented.
The roadblock I experienced in my
project of having difficulty finding time to practice led to the insight that
in order to truly improve yourself, you must make it your top priority. For me,
the project was actually quite a high priority because of how much I enjoy the
sport. However, looking back on my goals I have little doubt that if I had made
the 20 Time project just that much higher of a priority I would've been able to
reach my 3-point shooting goal. It also changed the course of the project just
slightly because more than once, me and my project partners had to modify what
was planned for the day so that we could practice at least something. The worst
example of this came when we were unable to find an open gym for one of our
in-class work times and had to spend the day practicing dribbling and off-ball
moves. While we were able to be flexible enough to still practice, it was a
less than ideal solution.
I would consider my own project not
necessarily a success or failure, but somewhere in between. The 2 goals that I
was able to accomplish make my project a personal success, however, it was also
a little disappointing that I was unable to reach my third goal (especially
realizing I could've reached it). If I had to proportion the amount of success
versus failure I would say 80% of my project was a success with only 20% being
a failure. I feel that this is an accurate estimate as I was able to reach 2
out of 3 goals I had set for myself, while also gaining a few very critical
insights and teaching myself how to work towards a goal. I was very proud and
satisfied with the things I gained from this project when compared to the only
few things that went wrong.
While it varied quite greatly with
weeks where I had more extracurricular time and those where I had almost none,
I would venture to say that I spent around 5 hours a week on average on my
project. Whether that time was spent playing pick up games, or actually honing
in on a specific drill in which to improve on, I believe that every minute
playing basketball can channel the process of getting better. I had time on the
weekends and time after school on days without football workouts to work on my
project, and I took almost every opportunity I had to practice.
Most definitely I will continue to
not only strive to become a better basketball player through organized methods,
but I will try to extend what I have learned from this project to other
challenges presented in my life. Basketball is, and will be for a very long
time, something that I am very passionate about, and with that passion comes a
desire to become a better, smarter, and more athletic player. It was very
encouraging to partake in this project because it showed me that with a little
hard work, you can do just that. Additionally, with having already experienced
what it takes to improve and be successful in one area of my life, I can take
what I have learned to improve in some weaker areas of my life
(procrastination, stress, etc.).
A large part of the success in my
project can be attributed to the help, ideas, and information that I received
from online articles and another friend, Alec Marty. For the most part, all of
my traditional learning from the project was from the various articles that I
read during SSR that discussed numerous drills I could do to improve each area
of my game, the mentality that the best of the NBA have to be just that, and
the inspiration to start working hard now and improve in a similar fashion to
many others in the NBA. Additionally, Alec Marty contributed to my success
greatly, in that he gave me real tips, drills, and training that I could
practically implement in the 20 Time workouts.
This project was overall very
interesting and fun, and it was a unique learning experience that I will
probably only be able to be a part of once throughout my entire education. It's
a great idea to improve every student's mentality and focus towards school, and
teach students how to learn in different ways.
Stay ballin' world,
Brad
Brad
