College Living 101

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

Well, Monmouth College class of 2010, you have made it through your first two weeks of college. Is it what you expected? Do you feel overwhelmed yet?

College is probably among the top three most dramatic life-changes a person experiences in his or her lifetime. You suddenly go from living at home with your parents who make sure you get to places on time to the world of college where you have to rely on an alarm (or lack thereof) to get you to class. And you leave the insulated environment of high school where teachers keep constant tabs on whether or not you turn in assignments to college, where you must remember to read and write essays and complete labs, all while trying to have some form of a social life.

It can be very difficult to balance the work with all the activities, especially when there are so many things happening, and whatever else is going on is always more interesting than reading about photosynthesis or writing an essay about a poem that you just plain do not understand. You could be sitting in your room on a typical Wednesday night, trying desperately to sort through the piles of work that you must get done by the end of the week, and a friend instant messages you, telling you of plans to go to Steak n’ Shake in Galesburg, and then a trip to the 24-hour Wal-Mart.

You think, “I’ve been working for pretty much my entire life on this homework. I deserve a break.” Then, a moment later, the fact that you have a HUGE paper due in two days, and you haven’t even started it hits you. You can’t go.

What could you have done to prevent this mess? How could you have already gotten a good head-start on your paper, finished most of your other work and still had time to go out with your friends?

The keys to success are organization and time management. In all reality, these two skills are what separate the successful students from those who struggle and, ultimately, fail. It’s not a matter, necessarily, of who is smarter than whom, just who is better at the skills of organization and time management.

It does take practice to get good at these skills. You have to remember to record your duties, and you have to remember to keep up with checking on them. You have to develop a system which works for you, and continue using it even when it seems as if you don’t need it.

How do you go about creating your own system?

Buy a planner. Use it daily. Write down all appointments, club meetings, assignment due dates religiously. Check it every day, several times a day. As you get more used to the idea, you can even get more advanced by using different colors of pen for each type of assignment (reading, essay, test, etc.), or different colors of highlighter.

Create a daily schedule for yourself. This can be done in a computer program such as Microsoft Excel, or it can simply be written out on a piece of notebook paper. Be sure to schedule in study time–stick to one-hour blocks with short, fifteen-minute breaks–and mealtimes.

It’s a general rule to spend three hours outside of class for every hour in class. This number can be tweaked to allow for an easier course load, but scheduling more study time is better than scheduling less.

Also, keep a separate notebook or folder for each class. Do not try to take notes for all your classes in one notebook, as you are more likely to get classes mixed up, and that only causes more problems. Make sure the syllabus for each particular class is kept in the front of the notebook or folder at all times so you can double-check due dates easily.

If you start with these tips, you can start to work on what system works best for you. These are extremely generalized, open suggestions, but they are a running theme through most people’s organizational plans. Using them may help you to get your work done in a more efficient manner so you can go the next time a friend suggests Steak n’ Shake on a Wednesday night.