Exams, work, and doctor’s appointments—oh my! Every semester, college students stress out because they cannot achieve an understandable, yet difficult-to-do task: managing time.

There is no doubt that time management is the evil monster any college student tackles before graduation and perhaps, throughout their adult years too. When multiple goals, like completing a research paper and planning club activities, stacks up throughout a single week or so, you can feel exhausted even before starting them!

For some, jotting down those goals on a planner or on your calendar doesn’t seem to work anymore. Each task from our to-do lists takes our dedication, effort, and of course, our full commitment. This is my last semester of college and unfortunately, I still struggle putting my time into everything—even when I plan out my goals. It sucks.

At times, planning becomes a “catch-22” problem. The trouble with over-planning ahead is that things can get in the way whether it's catching a cold or getting your car fixed—the trouble with not planning at all is that you risk committing to something you are not prepared for. No matter what, we put our energy in our goals, and finding the “right time” (not too late or early) to plan things would be the best thing to do. Opportunities like summer internships or scholarships are offered to us in college, but when we have other priorities then it’ll be harder for us to take those opportunities. Worse, some of us might also feel a pang of regret if we miss out on an opportunity that really suits our interests.

I argue that time management is one of if not the toughest task everyone deals with during college. Throughout the four or so undergrad years, there are so many accomplishments we have to fulfill to be a step closer to our future career. In those four years, we have to make enough time to balance our academic life, jobs, social life/relationships and our home/family life. Although it’s easy to come up with goals for each of those, we might not get to all of them. For a lot of us, it seems impossible—we just have to do what we can. We even make sacrifices with the time that we have, and one common situation of this is rescheduling an advising appointment to go to jury duty. If we keep ourselves busy with school, work, friends and everything else at once, we’d have limited time for ourselves. I believe that a lack of time management is one of the reasons why many college students don’t get ample sleep or exercise in a day. We can only do so much.

When I started college, I was completely aware that managing time is crucial, but I never thought it would be this difficult—it’s just easier in theory than in practice. I wish we actually do have our own personal robots to do everything for us. Making enough time for everything is also harder if you’re a commuter student like me. We have to figure out how long we’d have to travel from place to place, and in a busy city like Long Beach, this means avoiding traffic as much as possible. If you live in or work on campus, I applaud you, because commuting takes precious time, too, regardless of our proximity.

If you are a freshman or will start/return to college soon, I advise you to not just manage your time well, but to focus closely on what you need to do first. Procrastination and distraction will pull us away from our goals and we can’t let those get to us even if they seem inevitable. If planning ahead won’t work, at least think about what you want to accomplish in your classes, job, relationships, etc.—no need to jump into it. Set realistic priorities for yourself, and devise a strategy that’ll motivate you to do them. It’s best to pace yourself by taking things one at a time. No matter how busy you are or will be, remember to take care of yourself too. Ultimately, it’s our choice to start our to-do lists now or later—but time is still ticking.