Time Management

Now that the semester is ending I can look back at how I managed my classes and see what worked and what didn't. I struggled the most with writing midterm/final essays. In my head I could usually convince myself that I had more than enough time to write them if I started tomorrow. I'm not very good at writing essays when I have plenty of time, and when I have to write them in a few days or the night before I almost always fail. Most of my classes only had one essay for the semester that counted for a large part of my grade, so it was very important that I get them done on time. I found that I didn't really get anything done if I tried working on them at home; but if I made myself go to the library to work on it I was much more productive. Setting aside a specific allotment for each day that I wanted to work on the paper made it easeir for me to get it done on time. It made writing the paper like going to another class, and once I was there I got distracted less. It was the same with studying for tests. In high school I didn't really study all that hard for exams, and I could usually pass. I was worried this semester because my classes only had a midterm and a final. I couldn't afford to do poorly on either of them. If I planned to study at the library on Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 5 it made it a lot harder to blow off. If I try to start studying at a random time while in my room I didn't really get anything done. Looking back that was the most beneficial of the study habits I tried to develop.

I will use that strategy next semester. Also getting readings done in advance really helped often I would wait to do a specific reading and then have to do a write-up at the same time which lowered the quality of the paper.