Life can be hard as a college student. Trying to balance school work, friends, extracurriculars, and most importantly sleep. But you'd be surprised and how much easier it gets when you have a solid schedule to make sure that you are getting everything you need to get done, done.
My favorite way of doing this is using a bullet journal but any sort of planner or something you see every day will do. I am a very visual person, so I used a grid to block out times a days and used colors to denote all of my obligations (class, work, exercise, etc).
This way when I need to know if I had free time, I could just easily look down and see. You can use this technique to your advantage. I am a morning person and I'm least productive on Saturdays. I tried to schedule most of what I need to do during the mornings and I have nothing scheduled for Saturdays (not even studying!). I also have this same schedule on my phone with reminders so I never fall behind on what needs to get done.
One of the most helpful things for me is not just scheduling but color coding. This way not only do I see when, I can also easily see what is going on. In my schedule gold is my work hours, they may change here and there but overall these are the time periods I'm usually busy. Dark green are my times specifically for studying, nothing else. Having set times to study that are the same every week has helped me really use my time to the fullest.
Other colors coincide with classes. I use these to mark what I have to do for each classes' homework. I'm jealous of those whose can remember things without writing them down. I write everything down, I constantly have posted notes and notes on my phone of little tidbits of things that I need to remember. Doing to-do lists like this is a tip I took from bullet journaling. Three lines mean the task is done, one means it's in progress, and and arrow means the task has been moved to a different day.
The empty spaces of time can be used for whatever I need. A lot of the time, it goes towards naps because getting in those 7-8 hours is very important. I also use that extra times for studying, hanging out with friends, and Netflix.
It may seem a bit extreme, and scheduling this fully is not for everyone, but if you try it and you find that your days are a little less stressful it was worth it. Even just writing down the things can help you have a more successful semester. Now the only thing left to do is to actually stick to the schedule.
