Time and Self Management

I am teaching a first-year experience course to incoming freshmen, so the topic of this next blog is something that I can totally relate to.  The author speaks about presentations during orientation week about good planning.  She said that the key to succeeding at college is effort and good planning.  I agree that good planning is one of the tools that can make one successful in school as well as in life.  Every workshop she attended, the presenter recommended a planner to record appointments, classes, study time, test days and times, and due dates.  I just finished up my first lesson with my first year students and I touched on this subject briefly (I wanted to talk more about it) because we have a lesson that’s coming up on this subject.  In my opinion, it’s never too early to start stressing good time management.  As a student, the author realizes that in a large state university, none of the instructors coordinated assignments or schedules with one another—not even a master university schedule.  At the school where I work, we coordinate and deconflict exam schedules so the students have an optimal exam schedule in order for them to be successful.  I would imagine that this would be a crazy thing to do at a large school.  The author found out that she needed a large, erasable calendar and after speaking to upper classmen—shaping schedules, taming professors and limiting workload were key to being prepared.  Let’s examine this.

Shaping Schedules – The Perfect Schedule

·         Scheduling is an art form—perhaps even a science

·         However convenient the schedule—it must still have the required courses or courses that are applicable

·         Schedule courses within the same geographic location (schedule courses where the buildings are close if time is of a concern).

·         Choosing the “right” professor

·         Be the first to register for classes to get the best schedule and offering times (this may require an otherwise late riser to rise early to be an early bird that gets the worm).

·         Be prepared—know what courses are desired and their offering times

·         Is there a class that fills a Tuesday/Thursday 11:15 timeframe?  Now the author knows why there are students in her class that don’t have a clue or care what anthropology is.  It was likely the last piece in the scheduling puzzle.

·         On-line classes fit into just about any schedule—turn in assignments online at 3 a.m., etc.

Care and Handling of Professors

·         Get to know the professors (Talk to the professors—professors give hints in conversations).

·         Sit in front so the professors can see you and get to know you.

·         Instructors think the world arrives around their subject, so they want you to get it.  Give them what they want and you may get what you want.

Doing what’s Necessary

·         Go to class—equals success.

·         Don’t cut class if attendance is taken.

The author found out that on the average, 56 percent of students came to class over the course of the semester.  She notes that according to the 2003 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a survey of 437 colleges and universities in the United States, “only about 13 percent of full-time students spend more than 25 hours a week preparing for class, the approximate number that faculty members say is needed to do well in college--more than two fifths (41%) spend 10 or fewer hours per week preparing for class.  She also found out over the course of the semester that while in the beginning, she did all of her readings when they were assigned and found out by the end of the semester, she picked and chose which readings to complete.  This is what she called good students learning a kind of Spartan efficiency.  She found this to be a common practice among the students. 

I’m going to wrap up this session.  Next time, we’ll see if the students did this out of necessity or laziness.