2. Manage Your Time

School is a full-time job. And managing your time is important.

If you have a "real" job after school that you do just for fun (or for some extra spending money), or if you participate in extra-curricular activities (whether school-related or not), keep your priorities in mind: Your education should come first!

If you must work (in order to make ends meet), you should realize the limitations that this imposes on your study time.





©Jorge Cham

How much time should you devote to studying? A recent survey in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggested that students are not studying enough. So, how much is enough? If you assume that your education is a full-time job, then you should spend about 40 hours/week on it. Figure that 1 academic credit equals about 1 hour. So, if you're taking 15 credits, then you're spending about 15 hours in class. Subtracting that from 40 gives you 25 hours that you should be spending studying at home (or in the library).

You should spread that out over the week. Suppose you decide to study Sunday through Thursday evenings, taking Fridays and Saturdays off (from studying, that is). Dividing that 25 hours by those 5 days gives you 5 hours of studying per night. If you think that's too much, then plan on studying in the afternoons, too, or some of Saturday.

The above are just rules of thumb. If you're taking a 3-credit independent-study course, but you meet with your instructor only 1 hour/week, then you should add the extra 2 hours to your at-home study time. If you're working to earn some money, you should subtract your work hours from your free time, not from your study time! (If you don't want to do that, then you should consider quitting your job or reducing your course load.)

So, for instance, if you are a part-time student taking (say) 3 courses worth a total of 9 credits and working (say) 20 hours per week, then you have 20 hours per week for your coursework (40 hours in a typical work-week minus 20 hours at your job). The 9 credits amount to approximately 9 hours in class. So, 20 – 9 = 11 hours to spend at home studying. That works out to about 2.2 hours (2 hours and 12 minutes, to be overly precise) per day (in a 5-day week, using the assumption about no studying on Fridays or Saturdays), or about 0.7 hours (42 minutes) per course for 3 courses.

If that still seems like a lot, consider the difference between high-school courses and college courses. The typical high-school course meets every day, for about 5 hours/week. But the typical college course meets only about 3 hours/week, yet is supposed to be more intensive than its high-school counterpart. That's because in college you're expected to put more of your own time into studying.



©Lynn Johnston Productions Inc.

Set yourself a grade goal. If you don't meet it, cut down on non-school activities. (If you can't, because you're working for a living, then consider dropping down to part-time schooling.)

For some tips on managing your time during exams, see below.

For some tips on managing your time when doing projects, see below.