Post by Flamberge on Sept 5, 2005 7:14:56 GMT -6
This is Part 3 of a general discussion appearing on Schermaonline.com about how to reconcile fencing and schoolwork. Part 1 was directed to the teachers. Part 2 to the parents. Part 3 is specifically for the young student-fencers.
www.schermaonline.com/scherma/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=337&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0
FOR THE YOUNG STUDENT-FENCERS
(edited from Maestro Bernacchi)
Part 3
(edited from Maestro Bernacchi)
Part 3
You must learn and know how to plan and organize your day.
The day has 24 hours. A good number of them must be reserved to sleeping, especially during your growing period. Therefore, it is bad and counterproductive to end up, already when in middle school, doing your homework until midnight so that you can train at the club until 9 PM.
The best advice is to always go to bed early in the evening after having completed everything you wanted to do for the day, including a little TV or some other relaxing activity. You must make sure that training must be of quality and not only of quantity. Remember that even though your training may be more enjoyable than doing your homework, the true ability of the student-athlete is in knowing how to use time effectively. This will help avoid a conflict between school and sport needs.
When you study, you study. When you train, you train. When you have fun, you have fun. All this can and must be mixed because fencing is studying, training, and having fun. However, you must also know how to be three persons in one and well balanced in all three. Your success is not wasting even a minute in your day. This doesn't mean you should behave like a robot, but you should know how to match your commitments to the goals and satisfactions you wish to reach and get from each activity you are involved.
You also must know how to give up something, sometimes just for a short period of time rather than completely, in order to obtain a certain result. If you like to watch a TV program before your homework, but you know that Mondays and Wednesdays you must be at the club to train between 6 and 8, it is logical not to spend the usual time in front of the TV on Mondays and Wednesdays. In other words you must act like a manager or like Napoleon when he was allocating his troops in the battlefield before confronting the enemy.
You must try and check everything. You try, you check the results, and eventually you come up with a daily routine which should be in place more or less the entire school year, but which will be modified and fine tuned day after day.
If you feel dissatisfied with school, or because you missed something in your athletic preparation, if you are always stressed and you finish everything at the last minute, this means that in the way you've lined up your troops something isn't working. It is essential to revise your plan, obviously always with the help and advice of your parents.
It's an easy co pout to say "the teachers give me too much homework, therefore they don't want for me to fence." Let's first see if the time allocated to complete the homework was used in the best way possible, without extraneous distractions.
If you have a project due on Wednesday, don't wait 'till Tuesday afternoon. If you have completed all the homework for the next day, start on something else which is due a later date. By managing your homework assignments this way you will not be forced to renounce going to the club or you will not worry during your fencing workout that after you get home you still have homework to do. If you have a big test and you feel that you have to skip a competition just before the test, if you manage your program effectively, you should be in a position to do well in both.
The 12 Golden Rules for a good student-athlete:
The magic formula to successfully reconcile sport and school requires to know how to organize your time calmly, without stress or (op)pression by anyone. What counts in the end is balance in your growth. You cannot do everything every day, but you can do everything at the right time and reach the end of the school year and the fencing season with good grades and the satisfaction of your fencing accomplishments.
Now all of you can incorporate these suggestions with your comments and your own personal experience!
Maestro Bernacchi
I hope that this three parts series is helpful to teachers, parents, and student-fencers.