No matter where you are in your college journey, we all know that time management can be a serious problem. Everyone has heard every professor say “please manage your time well” and even though we brush it off right when we leave the classroom, it is still really important. We all have busy schedules, with our classes, sports, and other extracurricular activities. That is why it is so important for us to be able to organize our time so that we can live relatively stress-free lives.

But doing that is easier said than done. Whenever a huge load of work is dropped on us it can be easy to immediately feel overwhelmed. When that happens we respond in a couple of different ways. Some of us will try to avoid the problem for as long as possible, which results in us scrambling at the last second to complete our work. Which is not a good method, because if we are rushing, the quality will not be very good. Because it could result in ending up with less than stellar grades. Then there is just doing everything at once, which, while better than procrastinating, can still leave our brains feeling fried.

What we as college students must work on is planning things out across the week so that we can divide our work up into manageable bits, leaving us with less stress. Doing this should have plenty of positive results.

For one, when we are working on essays or big projects, doing it over time will allow us to think more about what we are doing and improve our work. Which will help out in the grade category.

The same idea applies to studying for exams. Cramming the night before can work but if we just spend a little time every now and then the week before, we have a better chance of retaining the information we need to know which results in better grades.

Time management is a skill that everyone can work on and while it is hard at first, it can really help out in the long run. Let’s face it, no one wants to go home or on vacation for spring break thinking about how bad their midterm grades are. That is no way to start a break, so help yourself out. Start putting in the work now, so you can have fun later.