Time Management

          Many students discover the need to develop or hone their time management skills when they arrive at college. Unlike high school where teachers frequently structured our assignments and classes filled our days, in college we have less in-class time, more outside of class work, and a great deal of freedom and flexibility.

Sadly not all of us are good at structuring our assignments let alone our lives. This is the issue that I was running into. I had a constant battle of figuring out what was important and what simply needed to be done. I needed to learn how to prioritize and see how much time everything would take me to do.

 I've been interning at Forward Step and shared my dilemma with Bibi Caspari, the Executive Director, since time management is one of the life skills taught in Forward Step’s COMPASS program. She coached me to journal about my thoughts and feelings about time. I began journaling in order to see just how I felt about time management and what my definition of it was. I came to see that the biggest issue was the amount of time it took me to do homework and how distracted I would get. The first major change I decided to take was to study in the library instead of my dorm. This change alone made a huge difference. Instead of it taking me 5 hours to finish homework, it took me 3. I started to see some improvement.

I decided to take it a step further by creating a priority list every week. I decided to include important projects, homework assignments, job tasks, and even dinner with friends. This helped me see how my week looked and when I could afford a break because I certainly felt like I had no social life for a while. I still haven’t perfected my time management skills but I believe I’m on the right track and will eventually master it!

Jassamy Freyre