Nishant Baxi
© Nishant Baxi, 2020
ISBN 978-5-4498-5838-2
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
TIME MANAGEMENT FOR
COLLEGE STUDENTS
How to Manage School, Work, and Fun!
Nishant Baxi
Table of Contents
Pg. 7 Time is On Your Side
(Tracking Your Time)
Pg. 10 Your Planner is Your Friend (Using a Daily Planner)
Pg. 16 Time Management 101
Pg. 22 Now Where Did I Put That?
(Organization Skills)
Pg. 26 I’ll Stop Procrastinating Tomorrow Pg. 31 AAAAHHHH!
(Stress Management)
Pg. 41 Stop The Cramming!
(Study Tips)
Pg. 46 Workin 9 to 5
(Managing Work and Studies)
Pg. 50 Just Because There’s Checks In The
Book
(Money Management)
Pg. 54 Party Responsibly
Pg. 57 But I’m Not 18 Anymore!
(Non-traditional Students)
Pg. 59 You Can Do It!!!
WELCOME TO COLLEGE!
You’ve walked across the stage, collected your diploma and spent a summer dreaming of the freedom you’ll enjoy in college! Congratulations! You’re embarking on a journey sure to be filled with fun, new friends, new experiences, and knowledge beyond your dreams.
Some questions you might be asking yourself include:
– How do I get everything done I need to get done?
– How do I fit all MY stuff in the room with ALL my roommate’s stuff?
– Where’s the cafeteria?
– Where’s the party?
While all of these questions are of extreme importance, the one you need to focus on the most is the first one.
At first, you will have more time available to you now than you will know what to do with. Even if you take a huge class load, run a marathon a day, start a quilting bee, and even sleep, I guarantee that you are going to have more time than you can really believe. It’s maximizing that time that makes all the difference in succeeding in college or struggling.
For many college freshmen, this experience can be a difficult transition. Your parents aren’t around anymore to make sure you get up for school. You go from being a “big” senior to a “greenie” freshman again. College is more than just an excuse to party. It’s a beginning for your adult life. You will be learning what you need to know to succeed in the real world. That, alone, can be overwhelming!
But it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is learn time management skills along with ways to cope with stress and maximize your college experience. How do you do that? It’s not always easy, but it can be easier – with the help of this valuable guide.
Inside these pages are valuable tips to learn how to schedule your time effectively, how to stop procrastinating, how to shut out distractions, and how to manage your studies and work with your personal life. A huge part of this experience is stress management, and we’ve provided many valuable tips and tricks to minimize stress and enjoy the whole college experience.
We all probably wish that there were more hours in a day, but since that is impossible, we must make the best use of the hours that we do have. By utilizing the tips in this book, you will be on your way to achieving better time management skills and becoming an all-around better college student.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an 18 year old freshman right out of high school, a senior almost ready to graduate, or a 40 year old returning to classes for the first time in 20 years, these tips can apply to everyone. And, they will apply to your life after college as well! Learning effective time management skills makes life much easier and allows you more and more time for yourself, which is as equally important.
You deserve to enjoy everything about college life – the parties, the camaraderie, the fun. You can accomplish this and not sacrifice the real reason why you’re here – for an education. We can show you how!
Goal Setting
What are your goals? Really, what are your goals? Do you want to lose 10 pounds, have shinier hair, land that cute guy in your Algebra class, or get an “A” in basket weaving? Goals are important for everyone and identifying them up front helps you keep your eye on the prize.
Why set goals? Life is tremendously varied. At any given moment, there are thousands of things you could do. When you’re driving, you could turn left, turn right, speed up, slam on the brakes, stop for lunch, stop for gas, decide to drive to Alaska to see what Kodiak bears look like, and on and on. But what is it that keeps you from ending up in Alaska every time you get into your car? Why don’t you end up at random locations all the time? The answer is that you got into your car with a clear idea of where you wanted to go. You knew at the beginning.
Life is the same way. If you know at the beginning where you want to go, you’ll probably get there. Even if detours and delays arise, eventually you’ll get there. But if you don’t know where you’re going, you probably won’t get there.
It might help to divide your goals into time frames (immediate goals, short-mid-term goals, and long-range goals). You don’t have to have firm answers to those gripping questions about what you want to be or do when you’re done at college to make this work; your goals are likely to shift and change over time anyway. All you need to do right now is think of a handful of goals to get started. Write down a list of goals now before reading further.
Take a look at your list of goals. How many of the tasks you intend to do today contribute to accomplishing the goals you have set for yourself? Are you actively working on these
goals? Are you putting any of them off for a later time? What would you have to change in your life to make it possible to work on these goals?
Sub-dividing those goals into manageable pieces can help. Once you have a set of goals, it is useful to decompose the goals into manageable steps or sub-goals. Decomposing your goals makes it possible to tackle them one small step at a time and to reduce procrastination.
Consider for instance the goal of obtaining your degree. This goal can be broken down into four sub-goals. Each sub-goal is the successful completion of one year of your program. These sub-goals can be further broken down into individual courses within each year. The courses can be broken down into tests, exams, term papers and such within the course or into the 13 weeks of classes in each term. Each week can be further subdivided into days, and each day can be thought of in terms of the hours and minutes you’ll spend in your classes and doing homework for today.
While it may seem challenging to take in the whole scope of that convergent goal, thinking of your goals in this way helps to reinforce the idea that there is a connected path linking what actions you take today and the successful completion of your goals. Seeing these connections can help you monitor your own progress and detect whether you are on track or not. Take some time now to think through the goals you’ve set and to break them down into their smaller constituent parts.
Now