University comes with a heavy workload, and if you’re a procrastinator like I was, effective time management is the only way to prepare for this new normal.
High school was no easy feat, but as you read the syllabi for your courses in the first week of class, you may be overwhelmed by the sudden increase in work. Many courses will have weekly seminars, labs or other such classes. Additionally, they may sport weekly assignments for those classes, several large assignments such as essays or reports, regular tests and possibly two exams. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you’re a full-time student you’ll have three or more courses, all of which have similar requirements in terms of work.
All these assignments tend to get away from you rather quickly, especially amidst the excitement of your first year at university. Many students have crammed for an exam the night before or attempted to write a 4000-word paper in its entirety a few hours before the clock strikes 12. Luckily, there are a few strategies you can use to get ahead of assignment sprinting, and they’re pretty easy.
Firstly, read your courses’ syllabi. It may seem obvious, but the syllabus is an underused tool when it comes to course management. It includes every ounce of information you might need about due dates, late policies, readings and more. Take the time to read it in your first week. You will not see a lot of work at the start of the term, but this can change in an instant.
Another easy thing you can do in your first week is make a few schedules. I usually make two: a weekly schedule with all my classes and their room numbers to avoid opening the nightmarish student portal on my phone while I’m wandering through hallways already five-minutes late, as well as list of every single assignment and task I must do for all 12 weeks of the term.
Creating a list of assignments organized weekly instead of monthly helps you to stay ahead of upcoming deadlines and gives you a crystal-clear image of how much time you have left. Monthly calendars are helpful, but they can be deceiving. The last thing you want is to coast through September only focusing on weekly assignments, only for the calendar to flip, leaving you to realize you have three big assignments due in the first week of October. I’ve been there, and I’m telling you—you don’t want that.
I tend to use paper for my weekly schedules, but you could also create a spreadsheet or find another strategy that works best for you. Reading the syllabus and scheduling your upcoming assignments will make the term transparent so projects don’t sneak up on you. Just be sure to make a special note if there is any assignment that seems abnormally large.
The most important thing you can do — and you’re going to roll your eyes — is get started on assignments early. This is a simple strategy, but arguably the most important. A 4000-word essay may not seem like a lot of work, but when you only have a few days or hours to finish it, this task becomes monumental, if not impossible. Do yourself a favour and get started at least a week in advance, but preferably earlier—especially if you have multiple assignments due in the same week.
Even just coming up with an idea can give you a jumping-off point when it’s time to write, but consider this: 4000 words is a lot to write in a night or two, but if you gave yourself two weeks in advance, or ten days if you don’t count weekends, that’s only 400 words a day. Start an extra week earlier? 267 words a day. And this doesn’t even account for the days when you’re feeling good and you’re able to bang out a thousand words or more. When you give yourself time, you allow yourself to think about your ideas. Sometimes your first idea isn’t the best one, but it gives you a clear path to a better one with a bit of editing. Doing a project last minute means you must stick to your guns even if the original idea is flawed.
Don’t get caught in the trap of little assignments. It can feel incredibly rewarding to get them out of the way, but they eat up a lot of time and it’s easier to rush a page of seminar participation notes than an entire lab report. In the worst-case scenario, failing a weekly assignment may yield two percent off your final grade, while a big one could cost you upwards of 40 percent or more.
Treat asynchronous courses the same way: some will have hard due dates and others won’t, but the only thing worse than cramming a final project in a few days is cramming an entire course worth of projects in a few days.
Finally, if you need help, all you have to do is ask for it. Brock holds workshops, but it can be as easy as emailing your professor or TA to run a concept by them or visiting their office hours to get some pointers. Sometimes projects are going to get away from you, and odds are you’re going to misjudge your time at some point or another, even with these strategies in place.
If you have a big project due in a week or several due on the same day, you can always ask for an extension. Many professors are accommodating when it comes to extensions, particularly when you ask well in advance of the due date, if only a few days before. You should not expect to find mercy if you’ve left it to the very last minute or the day of the deadline. Give yourself time and be realistic about how much you think you can accomplish under intense pressure. After all, no marks can be deducted for an assignment that’s finished early.
By using these strategies, and coming up with ones that work for you, you may find that the university workload is significantly more manageable than you originally thought. The amount of work itself will never change, but by scheduling your time and keeping track of deadlines, you will keep yourself from procrastinating and stressing to finish work last minute, as I used to do.