Halfway Reflection

1) Tenaciousness is a competency. What are the behaviors that you have used (or developed) to keep up with the requirements of this course? 

I believe that the most important behaviors you need to use to keep up with the requirements of this course are time management, consistency, and having an open mind towards problems and possible solutions. This entire class is structure around identifying problems and coming up with solutions to these problems. Without an open mind, it is easy to get trapped into thinking a certain way and feeling defeated when someone criticizes your proposal. With an open mind, you are able to take the comments of others to benefit your solution and allow yourself to view different perspectives of others in order to create the best solution. In order to effectively succeed in this class you also need to be consistent with your work and manage your time properly. It is easy to procrastinate, however, in order to come up with creative proposals you need time to think and develop your ideas. 

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude. Talk about a moment or two when you felt like "giving up." What pulled you through? Do you feel like you've developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months? What experience or experiences most contributed to this?

This class is definitely mentally stimulating and challenging at times. The assignments make you take different perspectives and often require you to think outside the box. During these last two months I have been able to appreciate these aspects that I found frustrating at the beginning of the course. One of the times I felt like giving up was when I was analyzing who would actually be in the market for my product. What I realized pretty quickly was that my market was a lot smaller than I had originally thought and this reality made me feel discouraged at first. Even though my market wasn't as large as I hoped, this exercise also made me realize new markets that I would be able to target and this ultimately gave me some inspiration to keep developing my product. 

3) Three tips. What are three tips you would offer next semester's student about (1) fostering the skills that support tenacity and (2) developing the 'tenacious mindset' ?

1. Try not to get discouraged if your original idea doesn't go exactly as planned. 

2. Don't get too caught up in the details, focus on the bigger picture in order to develop your idea from a higher perspective and then hone in on the smaller details. 

3. Start your assignments early so you have time to properly think about what is being asked of you and you have time to develop your ideas and do the proper research to support your idea.