Who has good time management skills?

[Tofurkey]

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Hello,

Who has good time management skills out there? I am a post-bacc English major who is taking almost a full looad (10 credits) of science this semester and next, and I'm having a hard time making time to study for each class all at once.

Who has taken a full load of science and can share their tips? I am keeping a log of how I spend my time and I find that I can only study a maximum of 6 hour per day for all three classes. This seems like not enough to me, but I can't seem to fit in more time in between commuting to school, etc.

How many hours per day is a good amount of time to spend per class, on average?

Thanks!

Tofurkey

 

[shellbell]

The only tip I have would be to read aloud what you can into a tape recorder and play it during your driving time. I usually did this for test preparation. But as for reading for that many units, I would read in short periods throughout the day. I have 3 children and have to study 20-30 here and there throughout the day, it seems to help my memory for tests.

Good luck
Michelle

 

[Sophie]

6 hours per day seems more than adequate, imo! The last time I had 12+ units of science, stats, and math I found that studying around 3 hours per day total was plenty. I think the key is making sure you are effectively using your study time. There have been so many times that I've studied for a couple hours but really only did about 20 minutes of usable studying. The rest of the time was spent taking breaks, thinking about other stuff, learning material I didn't need to know, doodling, flipping randomly through textbook pages, making pictures out of ceiling cracks, etc etc etc.

It differs per person, of course, but I would say if you can put in around 3-4 hours total each day of focused studying that should be more than enough.

 

[Cerberus]

i have had at least 12 hours of science pretty much every semester of college and I rarely spend more than an hour a day of each subject (most the time not that much). I have had no problems with it.

What I usually do I try to keep up in each subject then lay the smackdown right before an exam.

 

[Skaterbabe74]

I pretty much take all science classes all semesters at this point (had all but 2 gen ed classes when I started my degree). I'm pretty much at school from 8:00 or 9:30-5:30 5 days a week with only 2 (hour and a half) breaks built in the entire week. For me it works best if I do my reading (notecard making) over the weekend, do my lab write-ups between Mon and Wed evenings, and work problems on the 45 minute commute (I take the bus), on my two breaks, during the down time I have at my jobs (I work in the science stockroom 2 days a week, and work for one of the labs at my school 4 afternoons a week). I try to leave a couple nites a week to spend some time with my bf or just veg as well. The key is to get rid of the distractions. If I'm feeling crunched I move myself away from the computer, put on music, and just concentrate. If I'm not feeling super crunched I'll have the tv on or take breaks on the computer. If I were to time it all out I'd probably be spending about 6-7 hours a day studying for basically 6 science classes (2 are labs). So far it's working pretty well but the majority of my time is spent on 3 of those classes (orgo, physics, and cell bio). I think shellbell's suggestion of tape recording stuff to listen to on the commute is a great idea tho! Typically if you're managing 2 hrs/subject/day you should be fine. That's what is always suggested by advisors. Simply blocking out time for everything helps too...ie I'm going to study such and such from 7-9, such and such from 9-11, watch tv/eat dinner from 5-7, etc. That's the other thing I do when I'm crunched on time. I allow myself to watch/listen to football and figure skating on Sat and Sun and then watch tv from when I get home til 7:30 or 8(Thurs only for Survivor) and then turn the darn thing off and concentrate lol.

Good luck!
--Jessica, UCCS

 

[KirsteenB]

Hi there,

Up until last year (before I started my M.Sc.) I had a full-time career (a day job of 40+ hours per week not including international travel for meetings, audits, etc.) during both, undergrad (B.Sc. Human Bio) and my MBA. Needless to say, the daytimes were a write-off, so it was important to make the evenings count.

A couple of little strategies really came in handy during this period: 1) to keep me honest, as opposed to pretending to study by sitting in front of the computer but surfing, playing Starcraft or replying to e-mails instead, I bought a little digital stopwatch and pinned it to the board above my computer. I aimed to do at least 2 hours of pure schoolwork each night. When I sat down to start, I'd start the stopwatch. If I got up to go to the loo, grab a Starbucks or do the laundry (the laundry always gets efficiently done when studying 😉 ), I'd stop the stopwatch and resume it only when I sat down to study again. Another tip: right after lectures, I'd come home, transcribe my notes into MSWord and make a page of questions for each lecture, at the end of the lecture document. This helped keep the knowledge fresh and it was tons easier to study for midterms and exams, I found.

Anyway, good luck with it all, and hopefully you'll find some approaches that work well for you.

Cheers,
Kirsteen

 

[Paul's Boutique]

How about this for time management skills: stop spending so much friggin time on SDN, asking inane questions!!!!

 

[topherius]

It's people like P's Boutique who make this forum such a warm, caring community...

I was a history major and picked up pre-med in my senior year, so I can relate. My only advice is to eliminate all excess activities from your schedule. I don't mean stop volunteering or exercising or whatever else you do outside of school (if you're like me, you don't consider those things excess). What I do mean is stuff like TV, video games, surfing the internet (though PB's spirit stunk, the words ring true). Save things like that as rewards for all the hard work you put in.

I also found that any little bit of studying I could get in was helpful. If I knew I was going to have an hour to kill, I took along something to read. I also only took one book with me at a time-- that way there was no temptation to skip around between subjects and wind up wasting my time. I concentrated on getting high quality study time in--I sought out the quietest places I could find (out of my house--my roommates were all slacker liberal arts majors and couldn't relate).

I could go on and on, but most of this you probably already know. If you're serious about squeezing all your pre-med reqs into a year, you can do it--you just have to be prepared to make some sacrifices (I usually took either friday or saturday night to work as well...tough to give up fun nights out, but it wound up being worth it). Good luck!