First Year Experience & Students in Transition

Time Management Issues

Although you may only have two or three classes in one day, the amount of actual free time you have is deceiving. The rule of thumb is that for every hour you spend in class, at least 2 hours should be spent in review and preparation for the next class. So if you are taking 5 classes and are in class for 15 hours per week, this makes a 45-hour week! You can therefore see that taking a full schedule in college is equivalent to a full-time job.

Students tend to make the mistake of putting off assignments and then later realize they don't have sufficient time to complete them. Procrastination is the main hurdle that first year students need to overcome. Make sure that you use your time wisely and plan, plan, plan.

Gerow & Gerow remind us that distributed or spaced studying is better than massed or crammed studying. You should schedule study periods with study breaks spaced in between. An optimum study schedule would be to study for 45-60 minutes and then take a 10-15 minute break. You may repeat this cycle throughout the day.

Gerow & Gerow also point out that you should minimize interference in order to increase your amount of retrieval. You want to minimize the interference within your study sessions. By interference, we mean internal interference such as distractions from cell phones, online social networking sites, instant messaging, television or other distractions.

Another way to combat interference is to try to study subjects which are different from one another. For example, for a first study session, study psychology and then for the second study session do some math problems. Psychology and math are very different from one another, so this should minimize the amount of interference in your memory. You wouldn't want to study psychology and then start studying sociology because these two fields are very similar and this would create much interference in your memory.

Also, remember to keep the following tips in mind:

Montgomery, et. al, point out that as you concentrate on managing and organizing your time and using it wisely, remember that you are not learning to manage your time just so you can accomplish more work. The real reward of time management is that it allows opportunities to have more fun .

Stress Issues

In order to deal with or cope with the stress in your life, it will be beneficial to discover the source of the stress you are experiencing. Gerow & Gerow point out that to find the source you need to ask yourself some questions. Have there been any significant change in your life recently? Have you scheduled too much for yourself to handle? Do small problems seem to aggravate and irritate you? By answering these questions, you should be able to poinpoint where some of the stress is coming from.

Throughout your college career you will encounter some specific stressful events. To help you through these anticipated tough times, please explore these links to help you prepare for such an event in your college life.

These items listed above are examples of some of the STRESSORS in a college student's life. While some stress can be good for us and even increase performance levels, too much stress can be unhealthy. It is important to discover ways to deal with too much stress in our lives.