Let me set a scene for you. I am an English major completing my freshmen year of college. All I really need to finish my major is five English elective credits and I have six semesters of college left. I have time. I’m an Honors student who’s allowed to take up to 21 credits with no extra charge. I also really like sleeping in until 6 p.m. most days. Keep all of these facts in your mind. I’m starting to build up my schedule for the Fall 2015 semester. I’m not going to just take five English electives, so I look into what other classes I could take and I form an idea. It’s a bold idea. It’s a beautiful idea. And it’s a ridiculously stupid idea.
I finish building my schedule and announce to my friends that I’m going to take seven classes for 21 credits, take those classes only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and declare a triple minor because I have the time to do so and enjoy a four-day weekend. As you might imagine, there were some colorful reactions. “Michael, you are literally an idiot.” “Michael, there is no way that you could possibly be this stupid.” “Michael, if you attempt to do this, and I’m only saying this because I’m looking out for your best interests, you will die.” “What the hell.” None of these responses swayed me, and I proceeded to sign up for six Tuesday/Thursday classes and one three-hour Wednesday class, while continuing with the English major and taking classes to support minors in French, international business and women’s studies.
The first week of school I literally died.
Well not literally, because I’m writing this article for you. But by gosh was it such a doozy. You can think you’ve got everything figured out one second and then the next the world is falling apart around you. I had more work to keep up with than I knew what to do with, and those magical four-day weekends I dreamed of would be worth nothing to me if I continued to squander them by sitting in a miserable squalor playing Super Smash Bros. for hours at a time in my room. Believe it or not, it gets worse—I signed up for approximately every club on campus, I now have three on-campus jobs and I’m considering a fourth minor in accounting. All of the expected work I had coming in to this semester was magnified more than I anticipated, and to top it all off I was studying on the campus of one of those California forest fires. That’s a clever metaphor to say that I was genuinely screwed and I continued to keep screwing myself with new obligations.
Sitting in one of my seven classes, Earth Science, which just so happens to be a class that offers literally nothing to me and there’s no justifiable reason for why I’m taking it other than following up on the opportunity to take seven classes, I realized that if I continued to move forward with my self-destructing plans for the future, I was going to self-destruct. That was not a very clever sentence but I’m going to stick with it. Anyways, I knew that I had to put out the fires I was surrounding myself with if I didn’t want to drown. Believe it or not, I’m still breathing. By changing some things around I was able to get my work under control and now I’m managing my time efficiently. If you’re struggling under the weight of a busy schedule or a heavy workload, let a guy who continually makes decisions that ruin his life give you tips on how you can turn your self-destruction into self-production.
Take something, be it a calendar, piece of notebook paper or a Microsoft Word document like I use and keep track of every important date or event you’re going to need to remember. I cleverly saved a document on my desktop under the file name “Plans” and whenever I get informed of the meeting time for a club or a deadline for this article, I make sure to type it out there. If that doesn’t work for you, something more visual like a big calendar or a piece of paper taped to your dorm room wall serves the same function. Writing or typing it out will, for starters, help you remember it, and having something to serve as a constant reminder of your obligations never hurts.
If there’s something that you usually do instead of your work, cut it out of your life for a day. When I need to start my work, I make sure that Super Smash Bros. is as far away from me as possible. Whatever your vice is—your phone, your TV or a nice stroll in the park with your good friend Mary Jane—separate yourself from it. In the case of something handheld like your phone, put it all the way across the room from you. Once you start working, you’ll be less motivated to check your phone if you need to get up and get it. For something like a TV or other remote electronic, unplug it. Just like your phone, you’re less motivated to use it if you’ve got to go over and plug it in first. If your vice is something that you wouldn’t want your parents to find out about, ask a friend to hold on to it until you’ve done your work. If your distractions are no longer easily accessible, it’s a lot easier to focus on the work you need to do.
Find a nice isolated place for you to do your work. For me, it’s so difficult to work in my room. For one, dorm chairs are hella uncomfortable, and for two, I’m too susceptible to peer pressure. On my campus, doing work in the William E. and Ann L. Swan Business Center is great. The classrooms and several study rooms are open to public use once classes are done, so I’ll take one of the lecture rooms for myself, hook up some nice study music to play in the state-of-the-art sound system (the Kingdom Hearts soundtracks are my favorite) and just crank it out. Something about doing free work in an actual classroom really energizes me. The best thing about this building, though, is how unpopulated is—most students are at the library while I’m chilling in a high-tech, expensive building able to blare some good vibes throughout an entire classroom. If you live on my campus, don’t come to Swan. It’s mine and I don’t want to share it. If you don’t live on my campus, wherever you’re at, just find that one place where you can be the most productive. If it’s in your room, the library, an academic building or on a field of grass, as long as you can do work there, you should do work there.
Make a to-do list of the immediate objectives you need to accomplish. Similar to your calendar of plans, having a concrete, visible checklist of what needs to be done makes things easier to do. The moment your projects become more visible is the moment your projects become infinitely more feasible. Put your tasks in order from highest to lowest importance; start up, complete it, cross it off and work your way done. It’s one little thing but it’s one of the best tips to keep you on your game.
Make sure you get enough sleep. If you start to get overworked, use some of the above tips to get yourself back on track. Once you get back on that track, it is imperative that you keep a stable sleep cycle. Going one day without enough sleep will mess you up more than you will ever know—trust me. I stayed up late three weeks ago for some extra homework time and I’m still feeling the consequences today. Waking up early Monday through Friday to fulfill my obligations mixed with three exhausting Saturdays in a row (one with my family, one in New York City and one at Darien Lake) have left me tired more than one Sunday a week can fix. Once you fall out of a real sleeping schedule it takes some serious struggles to get back to a healthy spot, and the longer it takes you to regain your sleep the more you’ll struggle with academic aspects. This is the most important advice I can give anyone, especially a college student.
Don’t fall behind in your work. If getting enough sleep is the golden rule, consider this the silver rule. Never skip out on a homework assignment, never skip a night of reading, and never think you can get away with handling something as a joke. Trust me, the outside-of-class work seems boring, tedious and pointless, especially if it’s not graded, but keeping up with it not only keeps your mind refreshed on the work you’ve been doing in class but it better prepares you for what else to expect in the course. If your professor is giving you homework, you can bet your bottom dollar part of that assignment is popping up on a quiz or test. Skipping one night of work makes you feel out of the loop, and just like sleep it’s not an easy loop to fall back into. As a side-note, don’t be afraid to ask for tutoring. I’m not just saying this because I have two separate tutoring jobs and want to get paid more. If you’re struggling to catch up to your class or if you’ve fallen behind, the best thing you can do is ask for help. It doesn’t make you weak, it doesn’t make you a loser and it might not be the coolest thing to have a fellow student tell you have to do things, but if you need help and don’t get it, the only thing you’re doing is creating more problems for yourself in the future.
Here’s the bronze rule, boys and girls: Don’t bite off more than you can chew. That’s definitely going to come off as irony from a guy in seven classes and around twenty clubs, but seriously, if you don’t think you can handle all of your classes, drop one. If you signed up for too many clubs, quit one. That’s the beauty of college— you’ve got the freedom to pick and choose what you want to do and don’t want to do. This sounds like a really simple solution but it’s a completely viable simple solution. If something sounds like it’ll be too challenging to work into your schedule, you don’t have to sign up for it, and if you do, it’s never too late to jump ship. (Unless the add/drop period is over. If it is, you might be in a bit of trouble. Find out from your registrar what your options are and if you’re stuck refer to the above guide to keep you from falling short.)
And there it is, folks: a guide to dealing with a shitty schedule from a shitty student. I used these tips to focus on my responsibilities because honestly, I was flailing around. Right now I’m at a pretty good place but it’s hard work to get to a good place once you’ve dug yourself into a hole. Follow my tips and I’m sure you’ll be able to stay golden.
(IF THESE TIPS DO NOT WORK FOR YOU, THE AUTHOR RECOMMENDS YOU SEEK THE GUIDANCE OF “NED’S DECLASSIFIED SCHOOL SURVIVAL GUIDE.” NED WAS NOT A GOOD STUDENT BUT HE GRADUATED MIDDLE SCHOOL AND ENDED UP DATING MOZE. THAT’S A GUY WHOSE GUIDEBOOK I WOULD TRUST 100%.)