Three ways to manage your time as a student
It’s hard to believe that we’re almost halfway through the semester already! With midterms coming up at TalTech, it might feel like you’ve forgotten how to study after so many semesters of online exams (I know I personally have!) When I started this semester, I wanted to make a commitment to learn from my mistakes made with studying in the past and put all my effort into doing my best despite my busy schedule.
One thing I’ve struggled with a lot, ever since elementary school, is managing my time and priorities when it comes to schoolwork. Recently, I feel like I’ve made progress towards having more control over my studies, so I wanted to share a few tips I’ve been using to achieve this — hopefully they’ll be useful for you as well!
Unplugging
One habit I’m trying to get into this semester is turning off any devices (phone, laptop, etc.) one hour before sleep and keeping them turned off until one hour after waking up.
After spending a year and a half learning online, I felt burned out from sitting at my computer 24/7 and wanted to try and find ways to reduce the amount of technology in my life. The difference I feel in my mental health and attention span (when I actually manage to stick to this schedule) is enormous, and consciously reducing distractions in this way helps me get more work done.
If you have occasional readings for class, investing a bit of money to print them off — you can do this at TalTech through Print In City — is also something I can recommend. I find that being able to read and highlight things on paper helps me process the material better and feel more confident during discussions in class.
Speaking of class, the final method I use to unplug is just throwing my phone in my bag during lectures. The urge to start scrolling through social media if I start feeling bored is still there, but it’s an extra barrier that forces me to put more effort into paying attention, or even better, use the time I’m not paying attention in class to at least get some extra work done.
Mapping out your time for the week
As someone with terrible time management skills, I’ve noticed how easy it is for me to see an assignment due in a week and start thinking it’s so far away, I have enough time to finish it, it will only take an hour at most… and then I’m staying up late the night before the deadline, stressed and trying to get everything done in time to have at least a few hours of sleep.
If this situation sounds familiar to you, this next tip might help you out — I try to go over my schedule each week and write down each block of free time (anything more than half an hour) where I could have a chance to get some work done.
Delegating each assignment to a specific time slot throughout the week helps prevent me from feeling overwhelmed because I have a prioritized sequence for working on everything — and if I finish everything early I can start on the next day’s tasks.
Setting aside time to unwind
The final way I try to ensure I stay strict with myself about my time management during the week is to set aside at least one or two days, usually during the weekend, where I don’t work on anything and can focus on other things that are important to me instead — like friends, hobbies, or just lying in bed all day and relaxing.
This is the best method I’ve found to avoid burnout when I feel overwhelmed with assignments, and it helps motivate me to stick to the schedule I’ve set for myself because I have something to look forward to. Remember that, at the end of the day, a good grade is only a number — you need to treat yourself well in all other areas of your life to be able to enjoy it!
Of course, there are many days where I don’t apply these principles to my life. I still find myself losing sleep and rushing to finish homework just a few hours before it’s due, but overall I’ve noticed I feel less stressed about classes and more excited to learn new things.
One of the best pieces of advice I read over the summer was to think about building a habit not as something where you need to stay on track 100% of the time, but as something that you do for a certain percentage of time during the year — so even if I can’t make myself stay off social media before bed or remember to study seven days in a row, those few days where I did still count as progress!
