Managing Your Time Mid-Semester
We are finally in October — halfway through the semester. The days are getting shorter and colder, our lives revolving around seasonal foods, time with family, crisp weekends in the city. With all of the excitement autumn brings, it’s easy to start falling behind in your courses. As midterms approach, it’s going to be difficult having any fun with work looming over your head. Here are a few tips to manage your time better and avoid a mid-semester crash.
Keep a full schedule. This may seem counter intuitive, but the more you have to do, the more you’ll get done. It might seem better to keep a weekend wide open for homework, but in many cases, it’s not. Having large chunks of free time makes it easier to procrastinate and underestimate the amount of time something will take you. When Saturday arrives, you’ll want to sleep in later, watch hours of Netflix, and you’ll end up going out, rationalizing that you have the entire next day. Before you know it, you’re scrambling to finish everything Sunday night. Planning activities during the weekend will encourage you to get your work out of the way when you can, because there will be less certainty about other times it will get done.
Don’t limit yourself to completing an assignment in one sitting. This is an enormous amount of pressure depending on the assignment or reading and more often than not, you will be too overwhelmed to start. Working on assignments and studying only during large blocks of time undermines the small pockets of free time you have throughout the day. It’s much more effective to work on things little by little, taking just minutes here and there. If you work as a student assistant, take advantage of down-time at work. Use 15 minutes before a class starts to get through anything you can, whether it’s freewriting for an upcoming paper or reading just a few pages of a book. The effort will add up over the course of a week.
Prioritize your assignments in a way that you will make you productive. Maybe it’s easier for you to finish a large assignment and save smaller, monotonous ones for last. Or maybe you prefer checking things off on your to-do list. Feeling accomplished may help you build momentum, encouraging you to get more and more done. Play around with different methods to find which helps you manage your time best.
Use large blocks of free time to your advantage. If one of your classes gets cancelled or you find you do have an open weekend, use the time to get ahead on your readings, jump-start an essay, or complete assignments due late in the week. You’ll really thank yourself when events come up unexpectedly, or when you get home and you’re exhausted. Staying ahead in your courses positively affects the way your week plays out. It will be less urgent and you’ll feel much more calm and composed. It frees up more time to eat properly, get enough sleep, and keep your space organized.
If you’ve scheduled time for academic work, have the willpower to commit to it. As difficult as it may be, it’s important to prioritize school. Going out with assignments looming over you is zero fun and you will beat yourself up over it later. Don’t reallot time for work by assuring yourself that you can pull all-nighters. It’s also helpful to keep your phone out of sight when you’re hitting the books. Using it might not seem like a big deal, but it breaks your concentration and can end up tacking on a lot of unnecessary time.
Staying on top of courses and managing your time will help you lead a better life in and out of school, making your fall and the upcoming holidays so much more enjoyable.
