4B- Can you change?

http://chrisnothling.com/2013/05/14/the-marshmallow-in-the-room/

Many questions arose in my mind while reading this weeks assigned articles.  The study that we read about seemed to be very incomplete and did not seem like it was as accurate as people made it out to be.  Sitting there, I asked myself some questions.  If you were not a kid who had self-control when you were young, how can you change the fact that you still are lacking this skill now? I also wondered how accurate this study really was.

When I was younger, I would have liked to say that I would have passed the marshmallow test, but chances are I would not have. I have self- control but I rarely used to think about the long term effects of what I was doing.  When applying for colleges, I realized that I should have tried harder in all of my subjects in high school.  I wish I had realized how much easier the transition would have been if I had changed my academic strategies back then.  I would not have as much difficulty in doing homework, and studying for tests.

I wish I had realized this earlier in life, but I didn't.  So what do I do to fix it now? I am trying very hard to keep up good habits this year, but I realize that if I had tried harder, this transition would not have been as hard.  As I look back, I would take back my slacking in earlier years, to have more of a break now.  I can only now push myself harder now than I have ever pushed myself before.

What if the test was not accurate though? Maybe the kids consciously chose to eat the marshmallow to save themselves the fifteen minutes of waiting.  The children who ate the marshmallow immediately, could have been very proactive children who did not want to waste time.  They realized that they could either of gained one marshmallow, or 15 minutes. Maybe one was more important than the other.  Some children may have known that wasting time was just taking away the time that they needed to do other things.  The marshmallow was not enough of an award to waste their time for.  Has anyone asked this before?

What kind of kid would you have been? Do you think you've changed since then?