Time Management

Time management can be harder to obtain coming into your first year. You have a lot more freedom and a lot more choices to make regarding your time. In high school, my schedule looked similar to this: school from 7:45-3, practice from 3:15-5:00, work from 5:30-9. In college, my schedule is much different. I have classes at different times every day, club meetings and club related events at different times every week, office hours to keep track of, sporting events, etc. My biggest piece of advice regarding time management is make google calendar your best friend. Each semester the way I manage my time adjusts slightly. I’ll share with you how I find a routine and schedule that makes the most efficient use of my time at the beginning of each semester.

Steps to organizing your calendar:

• Enter each different category of activity in a different color as a way of prioritizing (and making my calendar look nice).  
• Start by putting all of your classes in google calendar. 
• Then, use a different color to put on all of my professors office hours. I ignore the office hours that are during one of my other classes since I won’t be able to attend them. Keep in mind that you most likely won’t be going to all of your professors’ office hours every week but I like to put them on my calendar so I don’t have to keep going back to the syllabus to find the hours. A lot of professors will also offer extra credit for attending LA/TA (learning assistant/teaching assistant) help sessions. For these classes there will most likely be a lot of options each week so I recommend finding one that works with your schedule and going to the same one each week to help you keep a steady routine. 
• Add all of the exams that have already been scheduled. 
• Add in weekly deadlines for assignments and quizzes.  
• Next, look up the schedules for the sporting events you plan on attending. For example, in the fall I enter all of the home football games and in the spring all of the home lacrosse games. 
• If you join a club that has a meeting at the same time on the same day, enter that in. Some clubs have events going on each week that are going to change based on the week. These events will most likely be sent out to you in a weekly email. A lot of clubs also have a google calendar that you can import into your personal calendar if you don’t want to input all of the events manually. 
• Finally, use the ‘all day’ button to add events that take place over multiple days. By doing this, it doesn’t clutter up your calendar but it adds a small bar at the top of each day to remind you that the event is occurring. For example, I do this for parents weekend to remind myself that I will probably have less time to do homework that weekend. I also do it for homecoming week since there are a lot of extra events that occur that week.
  
  Below is an example of what my google calendar looks like for any given week. 

Now that you have all of your scheduled events in your calendar, you can see where you have gaps of time to do homework, go to the gym, grab lunch with friends, etc. I highly recommend not going back to your dorm between classes. Instead, find a spot where you can focus and get some homework done. There is most likely a good work place within a five minute walk of all of your classes. You would be surprised how much more you can get done with the extra 20 minutes that you save by not walking all the way back to your dorm (this is especially true if you live in East Halls since it is farther from most classes). Keep in mind that everybody manages time differently. Don’t compare your schedule to others because what is working for them may not work for you. For example, I know some people that work out at 7 am and others that work out at 9pm. I also know some people that sleep from 11pm-7am and others that sleep from 4am-8am and then take a nap in the afternoon. What is great about making your schedule in college is that it is centered around you. You don’t have siblings to worry about or having to get up at 6am for school or having to eat dinner at a certain time. You can adjust it to whatever works best for you. If you plan on attending a lot of events for clubs throughout the week, I recommend finding a block of time on the weekends where you can get a head start on a lot of your assignments. My friends and I personally had a routine where we would have brunch on Sunday mornings then head to the library where we got a lot of work done for the upcoming week. On occasion this time would be filled with other things but we did our best to keep our schedules open for at least a few hours. 

Finally, time management is a skill that doesn’t always come easy. Don’t worry if it takes you a little while to get into a routine that works for you. Don’t worry if the girl next door can do 100 things in a week while you can only manage to do 25. We are all in different situations so find what works best for you. 

Sarah Kohr
Team D Envoy