One thing many students face when it comes to balancing social, work, and academic life is having effective time management skills. It becomes difficult to manage these three after a while. Sometimes if it's not one thing, it's the other. Many times we feel the need to feel productive and busy, however it's ok to just not do anything. Before this semester, I did not have the best time management skills mostly because I was not working or was too involved in extracurriculars. However, this semester taught me to really improve those skills. Towards the beginning of the semester things seemed well and I thought about how it was not going to be too bad. However, as September was approaching, I found myself having a difficult time balancing classes, work, and extracurriculars. I felt very stressed and thought I was not going to be able to work through everything. I realized I needed a plan to help get me through everything. That same night I decided to just organize everything as much as I could. I have a calendar, weekly calendar, planner, and whiteboard to help plan out everything in advance. It might seem excessive, but it's what has managed to help me plan out everything. All of us have dealt with the dreaded procrastination which affects our time management skills. I am by no means an expert in time management or dealing with procrastination, but I have managed to get significantly better through a couple of ways:
● Using google calendar: Writing down any events or assignments in google calendar helps especially since it sends reminders
● Write all assignment due dates and test dates during the first week of the semester.
● Having time to yourself: I have learned to incorporate a time during the week where I can do anything I want without feeling guilty whether it be watching a movie or playing video games.
- Christina Castillo-Mendez