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Learning Strategies |
Time Management Tips
Here are some suggestions for preparing and using LC schedule sheets and for confronting the realities of college time management.
- You may want to choose four colored pencils or pens, a color to represent each of your classes.
- Using your class syllabi and the Semester at a Glance calendar (found on the Materials page) indicate the deadlines for each class in the colors chosen for that class. Some students find it useful to outline deadline days in color; for example you may outline a particular Tuesday in red to indicate a Spanish test and the next day in purple to signal an English paper. The colored outlines enable you to see clearly and quickly how many major deadlines you have in a particular week. Should two deadlines fall on the same day, outline that day in both colors, one inside the other.
- Don't clutter the Semester at a Glance with daily assignments; save it for the big stuff.
- Don't forget, as the semester proceeds, to record additional deadlines your instructor may add or to record other big deadline changes.
- Prepare for the demanding weeks in the semester by wisely planning how you will maintain daily assignments while devoting time to the upcoming deadlines. One technique is to get ahead on daily reading during the lighter weeks--a relatively easy way to help yourself get ready for the "crunches." Another technique for dealing with multiple deadlines in a week is to "bump up" a paper or report, that is, to make your personal deadline one week earlier. It is important to avoid coping with crowded weeks by finishing assignments late because most professors penalize late work and some refuse to accept it.
Semester at a Glance also helps you plan weekends--which ones are needed for work, which are relatively free for guests, travel, or other special occasions.
- On the Weekly Schedule, outline each class meeting in the color you have chosen for that class. Then outline other regular commitments -- meals, practice, labs, exercise time, jobs. Outline worship, meetings, games or other regular weekend activities. Then outline relaxation and other recreational times such as the hour after dinner or a mid-evening study break. Some people like to label these times "play" or "free time" while others like to specify relaxing activities. These R&R hours are an important part of your week and should be honored in your time planning. (Of course, as you know or may discover, some free time activities leave you with less energy and effectiveness rather than more.)
- In choosing study times for your courses, consider your personal biorhythms. When do you read and think best? When can you best concentrate on details or memorization? If you tend to fall asleep over your reading at 11:00 pm, do another kind of assignment at that time, and read when you are wide awake. Ask your roommate if he or she is willing to make out a schedule and then compare. Look for conflicts and agreements in the timing of study and quiet and play and sleep. If you study in your room, you may want to post a version of your schedule prominently on your door so that your friends can know when not to disturb you.
- The Weekly Schedule is a useful tool for finding hidden treasures--blocks of time within your day which can become regular study hours. Look for two-hour chunks throughout the week and weekend. In two hours you can accommodate several refreshing study breaks and still have a solid hour and a half of work. Learn how much you are able to accomplish in a particular subject in one and one half hours; it is a good unit of time to gauge your increasing effectiveness as a student. And remember the importance of short breaks. If you don't give yourself breaks, your body/mind will steal them in daydreaming and inefficiency, so it is important to the quality of your study time that you discover your appropriate rhythm for short breaks. Discover ways to rest the eyes and mind at your desk. Practice short periods of silence and inner stillness. Learn the effect on your work of quiet breaks, conversational breaks, exercise breaks, snack breaks, etc.
- As you discover work and play rhythms at Guilford, you may need to adjust your weekly schedule; actually, it is very likely that you will need to, especially at first. Be realistic. Listen to your mind/body. If you need extra schedule sheets, pick them up at the LC. One of the most revealing and educational parts of this scheduling process comes after you have made what you think is a good schedule and have begun using it. Then you need to be very honest with yourself in observing what parts of it work well and what parts you find yourself breaking or, perhaps more accurately, choosing to break. An effective schedule requires self-discipline, but it also requires self-knowledge--insightful and generous self-knowledge. The question is not "Have I succeeded or failed to bend my mind/body into the shape of a schedule I have imagined for it?" The question is "What have I learned, given what I thought about my needs and abilities when I made this schedule? How can I revise my schedule to serve me better?" Seeing and honoring yourself in the process of making more and more effective schedules may be one of the more important parts of your Guilford education. If one of your classes requires a journal, that may be an appropriate place to observe some of this process.
- As you find study times and places that work, another kind of self-knowledge becomes possible. For example, if there is a time when you have found you work well but today you can't concentrate (in fact, five minutes after you begin reading you realize that you are staring ineffectively at the same two sentences), you may discover that some kind of mental static or emotional queasiness or physical restlessness or all three are intruding on your efforts to work. Perhaps there is some piece of unattended business, something you said or did not say, some response or combination of feelings of which you are vaguely aware. Sometimes you only need to give this a moment's recognition to be able to get back to work. Sometimes you may need to "straighten something out." Study requires stillness and concentration; if we do not give the other parts of our lives stillness and attention, they will often jump in the middle of the first still place there is! So the schedule can be a tool for finding how the many parts of life fit together. Frequently people find that talking over their schedule-making process is helpful. The LC is a good place to do that.
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