Staying ahead of your classes

Originally Posted on The Triangle via UWIRE

           It’s already week two of spring quarter and your classes are probably about to kick it into high gear if they haven’t already. That said, now is the time when large amounts of homework start to build up from all our classes and it can be easy to get overwhelmed without even realizing it. It’s important to have some kind of plan in place to make sure that you get all of your studies done in a reasonable time so that you avoid falling too far behind in class.

        For me, one general rule of thumb is to always plan out your week from start to finish. For most classes, you’ll at least know what’s expected of you at the start of each week, such as what readings you need to complete, online discussion boards and other things that most classes have students doing on a weekly basis.

        Planning out your week from the beginning keeps you from getting caught up in having to make decisions on the fly. For example, it’s a Thursday night and you have two readings that you need to have done for Friday morning. You then look at the readings and see that each one is about thirty pages; you guess that it will take about four hours to read it all thoroughly. Trust me, I’ve been there many times and it’s never fun.

        However, situations like these can be completely avoided if you take a few minutes out of your Sunday to figure out what your plan of study is going to be for the upcoming week. Iron out everything. Leaving even the smallest of assignments unchecked can potentially screw you over in the long run. And I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to actually look at what your homework is as soon as it’s given to you.

        I’m guilty just like most students of not looking at what is due for class until the night before. And despite it never being a good experience, I still continue to do it every now and again for some reason.

        It’s actually rather difficult to plan an entire week out in advance and then actually stick to what you planned. Assignments can change, classes can get canceled or your friends may want to hang out during a time you had already set aside for studying. When there’s potential for things to not go in your favor, having good flexibility can really save you. If you scheduled your classes for the quarter in such a way that you have a lot of free time between classes, then that will make it a lot easier to pick out days and times to get work done for classes.

        Most of the scheduling won’t be very difficult; it’s just a matter of figuring out what works best for you, and then trying to be consistent and stick to whatever schedule you set for yourself. That’s the challenge, but if you can overcome it. The reward is almost never getting overwhelmed with homework ever again.

Read more here: https://www.thetriangle.org/opinion/staying-ahead-of-your-classes/
Copyright 2024 The Triangle