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Ace Your Learning​ Blog
Easy Study and Life Hacks

Achieve Your Goals with Self Love

2/6/2023

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Valentine's Day Starts with You

During the month of February, many people focus on relationships with others. If you struggle with executive functioning, prioritizing your relationship with yourself can propel you more deeply into the goals you may have set for the new year. 

Like many people, some of your New Year’s dreams may seem to fall away as time passes, if maintaining traction is not your strong suit. You may have a learning difference, or just be like most of us: Life happens, and we get derailed. 

If you like to dream big, but tend to drop the ball when it comes to execution, consider slowing down. You know what they say about too much of a good thing! You might have an even better experience when you don't cram too many "wonderful" activities into your valuable schedule. 

Our culture tends to push us to achieve, sometimes before we even know what to do, or why we are doing it. Without deliberate measures to keep us on track, we can get pulled in every direction. Routine demands of everyday life can pressure us to let some of our longer-term plans fall by the wayside. 

Where is the self-love in this? 

Even during downtime, we can push ourselves. I have at times bitten off more than I needed to chew, such as taking a relatively ambitious 2.5 hour drive to a beautiful coastline. While these day trips were gorgeous and fun, they also required a commitment to an intense commute. By contrast, I've gotten tons of enjoyment from 15 minute jaunts to a stunning local park. I even had time to get a slew of other things done that day!

Tapping into the quieter parts of yourself can yield precious insight. 

Why not schedule less, listen more, and make sure the activities you ARE prioritizing are the things that will make the most difference for you? Self-love is about discernment, and starts with inward reflection. It requires stepping back from external distractions that pull your attention. 

You can focus on signals from the outside world once you are ready, but if you first know what will balance your life, you will make more strategic decisions, and say yes to options that will be both energizing and inspiring. 

​​A recent Forbes article on 6 Ways to Practice Self-Love describes a number of options for cultivating better relationships with ourselves. It also lists 5 benefits of doing so, including happiness, self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-forgiveness. 

What do these 5 benefits of practicing self-love have to do with staying on track with goals?
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  • Happiness - While delayed gratification can be challenging for neurodiverse learners, seeing your progress can bring a lot of satisfaction. Our brains like little accomplishments. You can make the process of getting things done as pleasant as possible by rewarding incremental steps and small achievements. 
 
  • Self-Acceptance - Make academics relevant to you by exploring what captures your imagination. You are wired the way you are wired, and you find certain topics more interesting than others for a reason. You are designed to be a specialist in areas other people may never know much about. This is something to celebrate! Owning your brand of brilliance will boost your confidence. Get to know your secret sauce. Learn how to make this work for your teenage career exploration, as well as high school, college and postgraduate studies. If you want college to be a part of your education, highlighting your unique gifts will differentiate your candidacy from that of other applicants. 
 
  • Self-Esteem - Getting things done makes everyone feel better better about themselves. To make real progress toward your vision, you have to learn how to become consistent. Even if you struggle with organization, time management, and accountability, getting support can help you stick to your goals.
 
  • Self-Awareness - Which pursuits could brighten your day and make you feel more alive? Learning what motivates you can be one of your greatest strengths. Take the time to slow down and explore your passions, because you can transform them into academic “superpowers.” Go off the beaten path, and do something just for you. If you are unsure of how to pursue an independent interest, a skilled mentor can help. 
 
  • Self-Forgiveness - If you have ADD, ADHD, or a learning difference that can derail your attention, let go of self-judgment each time you fall off track. Recognize that everyone has imperfections, and focus on the progress you ARE making. They key is to get back on the horse as soon as you can so you can enjoy greater momentum. Resilience is your friend. 

You may have a vague sense of your academic and professional aspirations, but have a hard time visualizing the roadmap of how to get there, and the specific guardrails that can guide your success. 

Start goal setting by tapping into who you really are, what you care about, and what drives you. You can create greater traction by slowing down, listening to your inner purpose, and connecting your planning to your deepest needs. You may get your best ideas in the shower, when you are half asleep, or when you are in the middle of a routine task. Capture that inspiration by recognizing when it resonates for you. Write it down, keep it in a note on a device, or say it out loud to yourself. These are your “aha!” moments.   

Greater clarity can yield the insight that leads to next steps. It is the fuel that can propel you in a direction that feels like the right thing for you. This inner awareness can keep you motivated on that path.

Whether you prefer mind mapping, vision boards, journaling, or some other tool of inner exploration, the intention is to make a dedicated practice of uncovering more about yourself and your priorities. 

Commit to making your life goals a reality by spending more time with your authentic self. Once you identify what you value, and what you feel motivated to achieve, you are then in a position to map out the steps that will support your vision. If you have a hard time organizing a game plan for large projects, you can enlist a mentor or coach to guide you in its execution. 

Looking for support in living your authentic life and moving forward on your goals? Schedule a complimentary information session. 
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​As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.
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Setting Goals and Resolutions? Try This Instead

1/2/2023

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Change Your Habits and Create Your Best Year Yet

Happy New Year!

If you are like most people, you are probably thinking about goals and resolutions. As the months progress, people who struggle with executive functioning may find themselves scratching their heads while their peers are busy checking off academic and professional bucket list items.
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Focusing on goals and resolutions without effective habits to achieve them may lead to finding yourself in February wondering where your momentum went. 


This Washington Post article on building habits comes with a number of familiar, yet powerful strategies:

1. Set goals
2. Identify your motivation
3. Let go of perfectionism and just get things done
4. Reward positive actions
5. Be patient
6. Be kind to yourself

Why do these steps work? 

They address the fact that setting goals is no guarantee of achieving them. For individuals with learning differences, life passages are mired in vagueness, a lack of clarity that reduces learners' motivation, consistency, and resilience.

Progress is not a steady line for neurodiverse individuals. We stop and start, have good days and bad, and may experience entire weeks where forward movement appears invisible. At times like these, we seem to lack traction. We may even question whether we have set the right goals in the first place. 


People who struggle with executive functioning experience the world through a lens of vagueness. For progress to be achievable, we must find ways to concretize the steps that help us get where we need to go. 

The secret sauce isn't setting better goals, but developing better habits to achieve them. Steady on! If you fall off track, get back on as soon as you can. And let go of judgement - it's dead weight.

While you may not be especially interested in developing a new exercise routine or dieting regimen in the new year, baby steps and traction are also indispensable when executing tasks related to academic, professional, or personal goals.


Looking for support in creating your best year yet? Schedule a complimentary information session. 

​As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.
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2 Ways Struggling Students Can Make Motivation More Concrete

8/24/2022

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Struggling students can become more motivated when concepts are made tangible.

Making Academics Relevant

When a neurotypical student faces an academic task, the anticipation of meeting the challenge alone can provide them with a sense of motivation. They automatically see how it is to their advantage to satisfy external requirements in school, social settings, and the professional arena. This helps them maintain commitment to a variety of goals, even those outside their sphere of interest.

It doesn’t work this way for students with learning differences. 

Struggling learners find it difficult to uncover academic purpose, especially when a task seems remote or irrelevant to them. Without sensing an innate connection to outside expectations, students with learning differences have a hard time making themselves complete, or even begin, required assignments and projects. 

In order to feel committed to completing a particular academic task, struggling students need to understand how doing so will further their personal goals. 

Fortunately, these 2 support options can motivate neurodiverse students, breathing life into otherwise tedious academic pursuits:

1. Mentorship can help students feel more engaged in academic tasks: The right coach understands what it means to be neurodiverse in an academic or professional setting, and has the curiosity and patience to listen and respond to the inner world of a struggling learner. They also help neurodiverse students understand how they benefit from learning to navigate academic, personal, and professional.

Struggling students often experience themselves on the outside of things. In group learning contexts, their attempts to contribute may go unnoticed, reinforcing a self-perception of invisibility. Their participation in academic settings may at times be trivialized by well-meaning learning communities that are not optimized to promote that student’s potential. Over time, a learner may internalize an inner narrative that they are just not cut out for school. 

Students may first need to trust that the world is understanding them, before they are willing to understand and learn from a world outside themselves. 

They may need to, for the first time, discover how playing by “the rules” can work to their advantage. 

Academic coaches offer critical mentoring during pivotal moments in a young person’s life, helping them see how their values and perspectives have a place in school environments, professional arenas, and society at large. 

2. Independent projects give neurodiverse learners something to care about: Struggling students can garner purpose and momentum from developing research projects that are personally relevant, hands-on, mentored, self driven, and based on a topic of their choosing. 

Students with learning differences often avoid tasks they consider boring, especially when those tasks are components of complex projects that need to be executed in phases. However, many class assignments demand that students identify, organize, and navigate a detailed sequence of actions. Struggling learners can overcome their avoidance of projects that involve multiple steps by successfully following through on a major pursuit that genuinely interests them. 

When they do this outside the constraints of an academic setting, with the support of a coach, they can customize their research and problem solving methods to learning methods that work best for them. This helps them harness cognitive skill building opportunities that may fall through the cracks in traditional learning environments. 

Why is this important? Neurodiverse students may not always shine in a classroom, even where their innovative ideas contribute to the learning discourse. Operating on their own timeframe, with a guide, struggling students can tailor their exploration process, pairing their growth edges with an independent intellectual or creative pursuit.

Researching and building something substantial that they already consider to be relevant allows neurodiverse learners to practice problem solving, innovation, and communication skills in the context of an area of passion. They will already have the benefit of increased focus, and can leverage that to strengthen analytical skills they would normally find cognitively taxing. 

Click here to learn how struggling students can discover increased motivation by creating a unique project.

Learn more about how mentorship and support exploring an independent project can help your child develop more solid motivation. Book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.
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Will Your Student Lose Their Best Chance to Address Learning Gaps?

7/6/2022

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Struggling students can take advantage of the summer to move forward on academic goals and independent projects.
Summer is upon us. Many students with learning differences risk losing academic momentum during this time. To complicate things, students are still facing the task of overcoming learning losses from the pandemic. 

According to studies conducted by McKinsey & Company, Harvard University, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Government Accountability Office, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, National Bureau of Economic Research and The World Bank, to name just a few organizations, learning interruptions via school closures have taken a significant toll on academic skill development for a generation of learners. 

If your child is falling behind or in danger of doing so, they may develop ongoing challenges. For example, they may:

  • Fall further behind.
  • Leave poor study habits unchecked.
  • Doubt their academic abilities and potential.
  • Reinforce routines that lack planning or organization.
  • Struggle to stay engaged in classes that do not seem relevant.
  • Lack a vision for how to remain competitive with other college applicants.

Fortunately, struggling students of any age can use summer to dramatically improve academic capabilities. With support, they can:

  • Close skill gaps and begin the fall term on more solid ground. 
  • Become a stronger writer, or complete college essays early.
  • Research an area of interest while in middle school or high school, bolstering multidisciplinary problem solving skills.
  • Build a unique college portfolio that will distinguish them from other applicants.
  • Develop stronger independence and academic life skills to support an easier transition to college.

Read more about how your struggling student can ace their summer.

Don’t let your struggling student lose momentum over the summer! Learn more, or book a free consultation now.
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Five Ways to Ace Your Summer

6/20/2022

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PictureSummer is a great time for struggling students to get caught up, plan ahead, or try something new!
Summer is a great time to relax, but students with learning differences can use the break to make progress in a variety of learning areas. 

1. Ace Your Learning Gap: Academic Coaching and Tutoring

Is your student scholastically disoriented due to the pandemic, or prone to the summer slide? Summer break is an ideal time for struggling students to get the help they need to bolster lagging academic skills, get a jump on fall semester concepts, or make summer school a success. 

2. Ace Your Mindset: Experiential Research - for Middle and High School Students 

A coach or mentor can guide a learner to use hands-on methods to pursue a research idea or project that highlights the student’s interests, encourages experimentation, celebrates innovation, and provides structure needed for completion. This can be the “secret sauce” that allows a student to view themselves as someone who can succeed in an academic environment. Click here to learn how your struggling student can use their summer to develop independent projects as a way of engaging experiential learning. 

3. Supercharge Your College Application: Experiential Research & Portfolio - for Rising Seniors

Students with learning differences may struggle with standardized testing, or lack a competitive GPA. College applicants must position themselves to stand out from other candidates. An online portfolio that chronicles independent research is a unique compliment to a college application. Documenting an original project in a portfolio differentiates students from other college applicants.

4. Ace Your Essay: Writing Coaching for All Ages & College Essay Coaching

  • Does your middle or high school student always lose points on essays? Help them learn what teachers expect, make friends with the outline, and articulate ideas with confidence. 
  • Does your rising senior plan to wait until fall to write college essays? Summer is a stress free moment to begin the college search and write unforgettable personal statements.
  • College and graduate students who struggle with organization can learn to write essays and dissertations with clear and structured arguments. 

5. Ace Your College Transition: Independence and Life Skills Development 

Does your teenage or adult student rely on adults to wake them for class, locate their homework, or track their medication schedule? Do they need reminders to do laundry, eat balanced nutrition, or remember appointments? Help a rising senior or high school graduate learn greater independence, organization and planning before heading off to college.

Help your student take advantage of the summer to move forward on their academic goals. Learn more, or book a free consultation now.

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Secret Sauce to Improve a Struggling Student's Confidence

6/20/2022

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Make learning relevant for a struggling student by helping them research and explore a topic of interest.
Does your struggling middle or high school student find school boring, fail to see academics as relevant, glaze over during lectures, tune out theoretical and abstract info, or complain that none of their assignments feel possible?

Students with learning differences may get frustrated when learning is packaged in formats that are a mismatch for that student. Scholastic achievement may go undetected and unrecognized, giving the student an incorrect, repeating message that they are not cut out for academic settings. 

Traditional approaches to academic coaching have mixed results when students don’t formulate a connection between tools they are given and how they can apply them in new learning scenarios. Fortunately, experiential learning via a topic of interest can revitalize a learner’s engagement.

​With support, students can leverage their passion for a favorite topic to fuel exploration of a research project of their choosing. Solving hands-on problems using a variety of analytical, creative, and communication skills helps students strengthen academic capabilities, which can later translate to improved focus and performance in school setting. Experiencing mastery bolsters a student’s image of themselves as a learner who is able to achieve something concrete, original, and systematically organized. 


Help your student take advantage of the summer to move forward on their academic goals. Learn more, or book a free consultation now.
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Are You the Missing Link in Helping Your Student Achieve Academic Success?

5/27/2022

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Independent, hands on research projects make academic exploration relevant to struggling students.

This One Thing Can Transform a Student’s Future

Do you have children with learning differences who are struggling to stay motivated in school? This may sound familiar. Your child is bright and capable, yet teachers tell you that they are not engaged during class. Their attention wanders and they struggle to complete assignments, or even pay attention.

You’ve done everything you know how to do. You’ve tried tutoring, reasoning, nagging, bribes, family rules, consequences, time outs, and nothing seems to work. You wonder when your child is going to start pulling in the grades you know they are capable of. Meanwhile, the end of the term is looming, along with a disappointing GPA, and you wonder if your child is going to consistently fall behind their peers. Will they have the same college and career options you hope for them?


You Do Not Have to Live in Fear of This Outcome. 

The good news is that a more hopeful scenario is available. If this has slipped through your radar of possibilities, you are probably like most parents and don’t know what has been missing. Here’s the truth: students don’t automatically encounter real world applications of their personal interests in a school context. Because of this, young people with learning differences are often not able to draw a connection between the academic skills they are learning in school, and how they will matter later. They don’t foresee how they will need some of these problem solving tools when looking to advance academically and professionally.

Yes, this gap in perspective matters even at the middle school level. Why?
Because young people need to visualize themselves interacting in a real world context, ideally with people who are doing things they find interesting. 


How Can You Help Your Child Do This? 

Whether your child is obsessed with designing skateboards, raising birds, weaving tapestries, tinkering with machinery, or sketching, hands-on career exploration gives a student concrete exposure to passions that can later grow into real world occupations in unexpected ways. A sketcher may end up designing computer games, a weekend gardener may end up majoring in environmental biology, and a jazz drummer may earn tuition money playing gigs in Vegas in between semesters of college.

A young explorer may ultimately go in a completely different professional direction, but the skills they hone while engaged in these activities - networking, creating, collaborating, testing, troubleshooting, refining, etc. - may translate into academic or professional capabilities they will need later on. They will practice applying a variety of cognitive tasks in a joyful context, and may later call up these abilities when tackling assignments.

The act of doing something engaging in itself can motivate a student by surfacing ways in which their school work might prove to be relevant in the long run.
Hands-on career experience helps a student's focus and motivation by providing a much-needed reality check: they can finally visualize themselves years from now, and begin to understand how the skills they are developing while mastering academic challenges may in fact be a key that allows them to achieve personal and professional goals. 


What Can Hands-On Career Exploration Look Like? 

Perhaps your child would like to attend a performing arts camp, sign up for an outdoor adventure for students their age, or design and build a treehouse? Or, would they prefer a work experience that would allow them to delve into a special interest, such as a part time job at a game store, a bike shop, an art gallery, or a plant nursery?

If they are not quite ready to plunge headlong into an experience, fear not. Students can conduct career research by interviewing family contacts who work in an industry they are interested in, by browsing job postings to see what kinds of tasks, education and experience are associated with a desired role, or by searching for videos that show a day in the life in a work environment they are considering.

Specifics may vary student to student, but hands-on career exploration can consist of internships, guided internet searches, volunteer stints, interviews with professionals in their desired field, shadowing a potential mentor, visits to work environments they are interested in, classes, independent projects, online portfolios that showcase their talents, etc. There are a variety of ways a student can investigate whatever makes them curious!


When Is My Child Going to Find the Time for More Activities?

If you are concerned that your child is already busy with a variety of activities, consider that they can integrate hands-on career exploration into their schedule after school, on weekends, or during school breaks. Many teen programs are available during breaks, and this is also an ideal time for students to pursue an independent project. Most students are eager to carve out time during the week to do something inspiring.

The idea is for them to find ways to manageably enhance their school routine and round out their life experiences, without taking on anything overwhelming. While academics come first, and your child may also be active in sports and other activities that demand much of their time, it is often possible to fill slower times of the year with an enriching experience that will usher in a new perspective.


Why Does Hands-On Career Exploration Work?

Many students are peer driven and benefit from being surrounded by people who share similar passions. They also need like minded mentors who think the way they do, who care about the kinds of things they also find interesting, and who can help the student envision a successful future path. They thrive from interactions with professional role models and advisors who know the lay of the land and ideal training programs in a particular industry.

How Does Hands-On Career Exploration Work?

Concrete interaction with their passions can provide a welcome contrast to theoretical and abstract content young people are constantly bombarded with in a school environment. For a learner who struggles with attention challenges, applied learning opportunities are especially vital.

When students have fun, challenge themselves by tapping different parts of their brain, and apply concepts in practical ways, they are more easily engaged. They have opportunities to practice connecting a wide variety of cognitive dots.
This translates into better concentration and focus.

Being creative, solving problems, and engaging with others who share their interests boosts their brain chemistry in beneficial ways. They will be absorbed and make associations between what they are being asked to do in school, and how they might need to use these skills later on. 


What Makes YOUR Child Happy?

Playing board games, writing songs, raising dogs? It makes no difference. You may not personally enjoy these pastimes, but it is important to allow your child to find their own way.

​If your child is encouraged to have in depth exploration of something that gives them joy, and become truly engrossed and inquisitive,
this will exercise the parts of their brain that know how to stay focused on a challenge or task. It will also help them understand why what they are being asked to learn in school might become relevant when it comes time to translate their goals into academic and professional activities. 


Want help creating hands-on career exploration opportunities for your child? Book a free no-obligation session now!
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    Who Am I?
    Why Do I Care?

    I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. As a young person, I could have used someone like me to get help navigating academics and life transitions. While I didn't have the benefit of a coach who understood learning differences, this blog allows me to ideally put my hard won insights to good use helping others.
    - Eve Chosak, MFA

    Year Round Offerings:
    As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, independence, and career direction.

    - Ace Your Learning Gap: Academic Coaching and Tutoring

    - Ace Your Mindset: Experiential Research - for Middle and High School Students 

    - Supercharge Your College Application: Experiential Research & Portfolio - for Juniors & Seniors

    - Ace Your Essay: Writing Coaching for All Ages & College Essay Coaching

    - Ace Your College Transition: Independence and Life Skills Development

    Book a Free Session
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