This past year — my freshman year of college — I learned a lot about the different ways you can manage your time as a college student. Whether writing a 2,000-word essay the night before or two weeks ahead of time, I think I covered every base between procrastination and staying on top of my work during the course of the year. Here’s a summation of my experiences each term and what they taught me:
Fall semester.
Just entering college, I didn’t understand anything about what the workload would be like. When doing the reading for the second day of my freshman seminar, I decided reading Cicero’s long-winded treatise on friendship the night before would be a good idea. Well, I was horribly wrong. I didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. that night and I had to do all the reading by dim lamplight because my roommate was already asleep.
Throughout the semester, I put hanging out with friends in front of completing my homework in a timely manner. This meant that although I always got my homework done, it was too often the night before, leaving me with just a handful of hours to get some sleep. This semester taught me that I needed to learn to say no to certain activities or spontaneous trips to Chipotle because I was paying to get an education, not cram it in during the hours I should’ve been sleeping.
JanTerm.
Not all of you may know exactly what a JanTerm is. Essentially, I took a three-week-long course for three hours a day during the month of January. I chose a course on James Joyce’s "Ulysses," because as an English major, I figured it was something I needed to read sooner or later.
If you haven’t personally attempted to read this mammoth, I will let you know firsthand that it’s comparable to deciphering hieroglyphics at certain points. The stream-of-consciousness narrative naturally went all over the place, so I spent hours each weekday poring over the pages, trying to make sense of Joyce’s work so I could discuss it in class the next day. This term was probably the closest I got to finding a balance between homework and hanging out with friends, though I still ended up reading until midnight, give or take an hour, simply due to the book’s difficult nature.
Spring semester.
Already having a full semester of college under my belt, I figured I understood well enough how the semester would go. The thing is, I signed up for 20 credit hours, as opposed to the 16 credit hours I took for the fall semester. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught that came.
Within the first few weeks of the semester, I realized I needed to make a homework schedule to stay on top of things. I ended up being so precise with it that I calculated the exact page numbers I needed to read each day of a certain novel or textbook so that I wouldn’t have to do all of the work in one sitting. On average, I spent six to 10 hours a day doing homework during the semester. (I also learned never to take 20 credit hours again.) Though I survived the semester, I hardly ever had time to hang out with friends during the week without worrying about what other homework I needed to do for that week. The amount of homework I had kept me from enjoying my social life or having alone time to do things like read for fun.
Ultimately, I learned a lot that I can apply to all my subsequent years of college and that I can also give to you as advice. Don’t spend all your time with friends — recognize when you need to stay back and work on an essay or a reading. Don’t overload yourself with so many classes/credit hours that you are unable to find time to spend with others or simply yourself. Find the perfect balance between work and play, and I promise you, these years will be remembered as some of the best.
