For 38 years, Advising and Counseling’s Millie Blessing has offered sound advice to CCRI students. Recently, she offered to share some advice on time management with Currents staff.

“Many times, students come in to my office and they are not doing well academically. They think they don’t have what it takes to be a college student, and their first inclination is to say, ‘I can’t do this.’

“When I start talking to them, they tell me that they are working full-time, or that they have children to care for…. After they start sharing their stories with me, I try to tell them that maybe they do have what it takes, but they are just trying to do it all. They don’t stop to think that just sitting in the classroom is not enough to pass courses in classes.

“They need to plan for homework, for lab hours, the study groups, whatever it takes. That’s all part of being academically successful. It’s not just showing up for class. If they plan their academic studies, set priorities, then register for as many courses as they can handle, then they discover that they do have what it takes, and that they were just spread too thin.”

“When we run time management workshops with students, we hand them pieces of paper with 168 blocks, because there are only 168 hours in the week…. Then, we deduct eight hours a day, or 56 hours, for sleep. That leaves them with only 112 hours a week.

“Now, many of them are working 40 hours a week, so that leaves 72 hours. If they commute five hours a week, that leaves them with 67 hours a week. I always say schedule one hour a day for personal hygiene. So now we are at 60 hours a week in which to accomplish all they have to do. The students start seeing that their hours are dwindling.

“Now we get to class work. Just say that they have 12 hours of class—that leaves 48 hours. For every credit a student signs up for, we say that he or she should expect at least two hours of homework a week. That means 24 hours of homework. So, they begin to see that it’s not the difficulty of the course content that has them stymied. They just need to manage their time better and adequately commit to their studies.

“They also begin to see that there are not enough hours in the week for them to do what they need to do. What I do is, I have them go around for a whole week and write down everything that they do—every week is different, but it gives them an idea. Then I have them take every task they do and try to fit it into the 168 blocks. I also ask them to write down the things they needed to do but couldn’t get to. And they say to me, ‘This is stupid. It doesn’t all fit in here.’ And I say, ‘Exactly.’”

Time savers

“Okay, what do we do about it? We figure out what we can eliminate and what we can delegate. There are loads of time savers we talk about…. For example, recognize your peak time and use it to your advantage. Everyone has times during the day that they have high energy and low energy. You can save a lot of time when you’re a peak performer.

"For example, I know I’m a morning person, so I am not going to take on a big task at night, because I know it will take me forever and ever to do it.

“Another time saving strategy is taking advantage of your waiting time. Whenever you are going on a trip someplace, ask someone else to drive, and take your book. Use your waiting time, the hours spent in the doctor’s office or at the registry—bring your books with you!

“On the weekends, instead of just cooking one meal of meatballs, cook for the whole week and freeze it in plastic bags. This cuts down on the preparation time for meals during the school week. Return your phone calls in batches at the beginning or the end of the day. If you group them, you can bang them out one after another.

“If you’re a parent, lay out your kids' clothes the night before. Engage small children in helping do the chores; even a three-year-old can help you throw the towels in the washing machine. That way you are spending time with your children and you’re getting your work done. When it comes to housework, the main thing is to close your eyes to the dust in your house, because you are not going to be in school forever. Get by one semester at a time.”

Ask for help

“I tell students that it’s important to have your instructors’ email addresses and office hours handy, because if you are really stuck on something, rather than labor over it for hours, you can ask your professor. Email is great, because many times the professors are up late on their computers, and you can get an immediate response to your question. The most successful students are those students that go to see their instructors on a regular basis or that communicate with their instructors on a regular basis….

“I also tell students that you don’t have to tough it out alone. You have a whole student success center at your beck and call. Use the services that are here for you. The biggest reason people don’t use the services CCRI provides is because they believe they don’t have time. Our staff runs a time-management workshop and we walk into an empty room. That’s the irony.”

Just say “No”

“One of the biggest things we learn in time management workshops is how to say ‘No.’ I get students to practice it. For example, if people ask you to be the Girl Scout cookie chairman for the troop, you have to learn to say, ‘I can’t do it this time because I am in school.’ People who are poor time managers just can’t say 'No'….

“Community college students are very task-oriented. They want it all. They are working. They are raising children. They want a better job. They are highly motivated, and goal oriented. These are great attributes, but only to a point. But some times they can be so task oriented that it can become a fault. They take on too much and they suffer stress.

“I tell students that a way to reduce your stress is to avoid perfectionism. There is a difference between perfectionism and excellence. Strive for excellence and not perfectionism, or you’ll waste a lot of valuable time you could be putting into other course work. Perfectionism means totally without error. Excellence means the best you can do within reason. You need to get to a point where you can say, ‘I am satisfied with the finished product.’ Don’t obsess over it.

“And lick procrastination. Sometimes students are faced with an assignment that is so overwhelming, it leads to self-paralysis. They throw their hands up and they are overwhelmed. What happens then is they don’t do anything. They put it off and put it off. It becomes this huge project they dread….

“These strategies are not just for students’ academic careers. Time management is a lifestyle change that they will practice for their entire lifespan.”

Plan for action

“In Advising and Counseling, we tell students to break the project down into manageable components that they feel are attainable. Because if it’s so big, they may think it’s unattainable. Say you have a 20-page paper and you have 15 weeks to do it. We say okay, for the first week, just gather your research. Come up with four or five resources that you can use. On the second week, read them. For the third week, write your introduction, and so on.

“We also tell students to keep a semester-at-a-glance assignment sheet. They put all their courses on the top. Each course has its own column, like General Psychology in column one and Composition I in column two. Along the side of the sheet, the semester is broken down into week one, week two, week three, all the way to week 15. We ask students to post their assignments as they get them on this one page, so they can realize, ‘I have three tests and a paper next week!’ and then they can plan for it, so they are not cramming.

"If they are cramming, they are only going to remember the information long enough to take the test. I tell them that if they cram, when they graduate, their degrees may be relatively worthless, because cramming does not put knowledge into long-term memory. It will only go into short-term memory. A student might get an A on the test, but the knowledge fades. To put it into their long-term memory, that takes time and repetition. So that way, when students have to sit for something like the nursing boards, they remember that information.”

Remember to take time for you

“Take care of yourself. I encourage people no matter how busy they are to take a half hour a day to do whatever it is that they like to do. It could be walking, it could be putting on a silly TV show, it could be gardening, it could be reading People magazine or something non-academic. I ask students, if you had all the time in the world, what is something you would really like to do? And then I try to find a way to fit a piece of it into their schedule. Time for yourself keeps you mentally healthy so that you don’t burn out. We need to protect our students from burnout, because many of them will have very lengthy academic careers. We want them to be impassioned about learning, not to dread it.

“A balanced life is not one of a hundred percent sacrifice.”