It is the beginning of a new period in a person’s life: the college experience. It is an exciting time, full of new ventures. There are parties to go to and new friends to make. Another new aspect that comes with college is that a student has more control over his or her own class schedule. Students have to take more responsibility for turning in their course work – their teachers will be reminding and prompting them less. Excellent! a student might think. It certainly can be a good thing, but only if a student can manage his or her time well. To manage time well in college and become a successful college student, a student must make slight changes in his or her life to maximize the twenty-four hours that are available. Stephen R. Covey makes an insightful statement in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change: “As a long time student of this fascinating field, I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in this area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities,” (149). There are three top priorities for a college student, and organizing around each priority calls for several changes: sleep, school, and personal time.
Sleep – many people say it is over-rated. Duncan Donuts uses the catchy phrase “America Runs on Duncan” as their marketing pitch. Many people live their lives as adherents to these two “philosophies,” especially college students. Late night study hours, late night parties, pulling all-nighters at the lab or studio or at home, and then downing coffee to compensate for it. A student can get by on this schedule for a while. Some students can make it through college this way. After a while, though, he or she will inevitably crash. In the meantime, before the crash, grades and moods will suffer. It is much better to get six to eight hours of sleep each night, and it is even better to start getting that solid chunk of six to eight hours of sleep between ten PM and midnight. Even just a small change such as getting a “normal” night’s sleep four or five days out of the week at least can make a big difference in the quality and success of your college life.
Covey goes on to say in his section on time management that, “many people have become turned off by time management programs and planners that make them feel too scheduled, too restricted,” (150). He contains by explaining that everyone needs some spontaneity in their lives, no matter how busy they are – everyone needs recreation, play time, fun. It certainly is possible to plan fun time, but that takes a bit of the pleasure out of it. Instead, just like with a fiscal budget, it is good to budget some “flex capital” or, in this instance, flex time. A few hours out of the day that the student can take at any time and do whatever he or she wants is a good idea. Some fun can be planned, such as scheduling parties, a night out, weekends away, movie night, and the list can go on, but it is important to have a bit of time for spontaneity.
One of the greatest challenges on the road to becoming a successful college student is managing that seemingly untamable beast: time. A little bit of time management, such as setting aside time to get enough sleep to prevent wearing out and setting aside chunks of time for the very important activity of studying will help a lot in excelling in college. Every student should implement some time management. However, it is good to not get carried away – most things, when they are done too intensely, can become tiring easily. So, students must make sure to leave time for spontaneous fun. The important thing to do, along with scheduling sleep and studying in addition to class time, is to specifically set aside those few hours for fun.
Works Cited
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Print.
