By Danielle Sheally

One of the most despised books at Floyd Central by far is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I can understand why students feel this way, but if they actually read in detail I feel like the response would be different.

The career information class in which we read this book is required for every FC student. The 7 Habits book is actually stemmed from a book the author’s father wrote called The 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Adult. I don’t know about the adult version but, in the teen version it covers things from being the best person we can be, to what we can do if we’ve been in an abusive relationship. The books passages aren’t very long but if we get bored with that there’s always pictures or quotes from people on every page. What makes this book so effective, is that it gives personal accounts from people who are going through a certain situation in each section. This helps us feel like we’re not the only ones going through a certain problem.

Even though this book is required at Floyd Central in taking this class, students learn how to take a rough situation and turn it into a positive experience. Also, this books helps teach time management and gives us tools towards managing out time successfully throughout life. The book gives us suggestions like making charts so we can see how much time we’re spending on things throughout the day. He suggests to us to get the important stuff out of the way first so we can do the things we want to do later in the day. With this book I’ve been able to implement several of the tools he teaches into my life.

The 7 Habits have taught me to get over things I can’t control in my life. When I am in control I need to find something like my reaction to problems or how I do in school to focus on. Something that really affected me was when he talked about the differences between proactive and reactive people. I learned that a proactive person thinks through problems and goes after what they want. A reactive person never thinks ahead and waits for things to happen to them (I’m about 80 percent proactive and 20 percent reactive).

So, after you hear the mixture of negative and positive about this book, I challenge you to see what side you’re on.