GRAPPLING WITH HABITS.
At left, 16 year-old Lhaila Legendre and 19 year-old Tamla Thaw kicked a bad habit, or took on a good habit – for 21 days.
Photo by Kristy Wallace
For the past 21 days, 19-year-old Tamla Thaw cut back on his caffeine intake.
Lhaila Legendre, 16, started to dedicate an hour to homework and studying every evening.
These Woodroffe High School students, along with the rest of Idil Abdulkadir’s Designing Your Future class, were challenged to either take up a good habit or quit a bad habit throughout the month of October.
Abdulkadir, in addition to many of the school’s staff, also got on board.
“I was supposed to exercise every other day. I was less successful than my students,” said Abdulkadir.
As part of her course, she said her students are learning about the importance of habits and how they shape who you are.
People can often feel down about their bad habits, and she wanted this exercise to teach students that they can overcome them.
“Our tagline is, ‘You’re stronger than your habits,’ ” Abdulkadir said. “Even if (my students) weren’t 100 per cent successful, they know they’re working on themselves.”
The exercise taught her students how to set realistic goals, she said – a lesson even she learned.
“I’m working out two days a week,” she said. “That’s more realistic and conquerable.”
Thaw changed his habit of drinking too much coffee by drinking a smaller cup everyday as opposed to his usual extra large.
He said he took up the habit when he started his weekend job, which requires him to wake up at 5:30 a.m.
“I only want coffee in the morning when I feel tired,” Thaw said. “But it doesn’t mean I really need it. I can’t stop drinking coffee, but I can drink less.”
He said cutting his caffeine intake actually wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be, and he learned that he is bigger than his bad habit.
Legendre said she decided to take up a good habit, which was dedicating an hour to homework every night.
“At first it was hard. I couldn’t even do 20 minutes,” she said, adding that even though the challenge is over, she’s still continuing with her good habit. In fact, Legendre has set a personal goal to raise her homework and study time to two hours a night.
“My teachers are saying whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” she said, adding that she recently achieved an 86 per cent on a biology test. She usually scored in the low 70s.
“I studied, and I still had 20 minutes left so I made a study sheet,” Legendre said. “Now I’m actually doing study sheets for every period.”
The most important lesson Legendre learned was that she was the only person standing in her way of achieving more.
“Before I thought it was too hard, but it was just me,” she said. “I’m just stepping up my game. In the beginning it’s hard because you don’t want to do it, but if you motivate yourself, it pays off in the end.”