# data[].attributes.body
During my past two years of college, I have finally figured out how I study the best. Some people can study all day with little to no breaks, but I found that if I do a good few hours of studying, take a break to either workout or eat, then go back to studying, and then take another break to do another activity, and then go back, I study so much better and learn so much more.
It was found by Baddeley and Longman that learning is better if it is spread out. Similar results were found in many other studies as well. Distributed practice allows for a decent amount of rest between practice (or learning) trials.
When I study for a mass amount of time, I get tired, which makes it harder to learn. When I take breaks, my mind gets a rest from learning and when I go back into studying, I am fresh and ready to learn more.

This gif shows what happens if I study for too long without taking a break. It is way more beneficial to me if I break up my studying so that I don't get burnt out. It helps my mind reset and think about what I just learned instead of putting my mind on overdrive.

# data[].attributes.body
Freshman year of college, I was on the lightweight rowing team. I didn’t have much experience rowing, but it was something I really wanted to do. To complete one full stroke, there are a few motions you go through. There is the catch, the drive, the release, and the finish.
Each practice we would change what we focused on that day. This technique has to do with part practice. Part practice reduces how complex the movement is. It involves completing each part correctly before moving onto the next and ultimately completing the entire movement. Part practice is helpful because it avoids repetition of the simple parts of the task or the parts that you already know.
When completing one whole rowing motion, you have to know how to start correctly at the catch. If you don’t perform this first part correctly, then you will mess up the entire motion and lose speed and strength. Part practice helped me to learn each separate motion before putting it all together. This helped me execute the movement correctly and helped me gain speed and strength.

In this gif, you can see the girl executing each part of the rowing motion. Her back is up straight at the catch and her arms are fully extended in front of her. During the drive, her legs are straight out in front of her and her hands are fully back placed on her chest. These motions of rowing were so much easier to learn when broken down. During the completion of one full rowing motion, it is hard to see everything you need to do in order to perform the motion correctly. By breaking it down, I was able to focus on my weaknesses and build those up.

# data[].attributes.body
I have been a dancer for basically my entire life. I started when I was two years old and I am still continuing to do it. Whenever I practice, whether it be with my coaches, my mom, or my friends, feedback is always important. It helps me correct my mistakes and lets me know what I am doing poorly or what doesn’t look good.
The guidance hypothesis says that if augmented feedback is presented too much, then the performer can become dependent on it and perform poorly when it is not given. With this in mind, my coach always made a point for me to have the chance to correct my own mistakes. When running one of my dances for a competition, she would make me do it and as I performed, she would give feedback. Then she would make me do it again, but she wouldn’t say anything in order for me to remember my corrections and apply them.
This technique really helped me to remember the feedback she gave. If I forgot some of the corrections she gave me, we would go over them again separately to really nail it into my head. When it came time for me to perform, it would be so much easier to remember each correction because I had them in my head already.

This gif shows a ballerina executing a pirouette. When performing a pirouette, there are many things you need to focus on. After years of practicing them and being told how to make them better, I can easily explain it to anyone. In the preparation, you need to have both feet turned out, chin up, eyes forward, and back straight. When executing the turn, you need to spot the front, spin your head around really fast, keep your shoulders down, and rise to the tip of your toe.

# data[].attributes.body
In high school, I was on the track and field team. My events were the 100 hurdles, high jump, and triple jump. Every day after school, we would head down to the track to practice for about 2 hours. Practice consisted of many different workouts, training, and activities.

For the triple jump, my coach would make me practice each phase of the triple jump separately. We would spend one day practicing the first part of the jump, the next day practicing the second part, etc. Then we would put it all together and I would remember each phase of the jump as I was performing it.
This technique has to do with random practice. The elaboration hypothesis says that people who engage in several different strategies to achieve a task, will remember what they learned more than someone who only practices using the blocked strategy. Random practice helped me to focus on different parts of the task, which ultimately made me better.
Along with practicing the separate phases of the triple jump, my coach would also implement many different ways to practice these phases. He would make me jump over things, jump to things, or even jump onto boxes. These different strategies helped me to remember what exactly I needed to do in order to achieve my best performance.
Switching up our training was something that also helped. One day we would practice sprinting and then the next day we would lift. Each of these different training exercises would help with the performance of the triple jump because I was building my strength.

This video explains each phase of the triple jump and shows how it can be broken down. In the video you can see the different types of practicing they are doing by adding hurdles to jump over.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Triple Jump - Step phase Development Vlog

# data[].attributes.body
During the summer months, I am a café server/ bartender at an outdoor terrace in the old home of the publisher Edith Wharton. Every Friday evening we have live jazz music. This event brings in over 300 people and with only about 4 workers a night, I can get very busy.
My main job is to serve drinks, but a lot of the time, I end up having to bus tables, serve food, run to the back to grab more supplies, or help customers. With all of these other tasks in mind, attention becomes key. The resource theory of attention says that we have limited attention resources and we can perform many tasks at the same time, as long as we don't exceed our resource capacity. With this in mind, some of the tasks I end up doing, aren't completed to the best of their ability.
For example, if I am serving a drink and then end up running out of glasses, straws, and napkins, all while talking to a customer, when I run to the back to get the supplies, I usually forget what I am going back there for because my attention capacity has been reached.
It becomes very difficult to focus on all of these different tasks, especially when there is loud music in the background.

I chose this gif because this is what it feels like when there are a ton of people waiting to get their drinks. It is very stressful and it feels like all of the people are upset with you. Many customers are thoughtful and realize how stressful the situation must be, but there can be other customers that think they are the only ones there and that they should be getting their drink right away. They don't understand that I have a lot of other things on my mind. Their attention is just directed toward me and their drink, while my attention is directed toward many other things, not just them.