Monday, March 11, 2013

Managing Big Time Projects with Big Time Training

Time management can be a critical part to becoming a successful cyclist and person itself. From September 2012 to Early March 2013, I have had the opportunity to work on a rigorous history project that was then entered into the competition for History Day. This project consisted of lots of historical research on a European event that had turning points in history. Our group chose to do our research on Trench Warfare. Along with this research, there were annotated bibliographies, quotes, pictures, interviews, etc. Our group worked on this project every single week at least 2 times a week for 3 hours at a time. At the same time I was working on this project, I had to still keep up with my training during the off-season with 15+ hours taken out of my week itself just for training. Add up the extra 6+ hours a week for my project and that's a minimum of 21 hours a week just for my project and training. Bare in mind that these 21 hours don't include time at school and family time. Thus saying, this has taught me to create a rigorous time management schedule to keep up with my studies, family, and training and whatever else is important in my life.

Long story short, our project moved on from the Upland District Competition to the San Bernardino County Competition. A little bit more work and we could have had a chance to move onto the State Competition and possibly the History Day National Championship Competition in Washington D.C.

From seeing how others projects compared to ours and how much time this takes to be competitive and keep up with other important aspects in my life, I now know for next year what I need to do to move forward to History Day Nationals next year.


Thanks for reading,
Nicholas Castellano

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