Time management has always been weird challenge for me. In a macro sense, I always get my assignments done and effectively do well on my assignments. While I may leave with satisfactory grades or participation, my time management on a micro sense is very bad. I’ll more often than not sacrifice a consistent sleep schedule in order to procrastinate more. I’ll make sure to go to the classes and events that matter to me, but I might pass out afterwards, living mainly in the night time while everyone else is sleeping during a normal time. I think this comes from the fact that I was never really taught time management and that I kind of figured out everything by myself. While unconventional I figured that as long as everything got finished eventually, then nothing else really matters. Now I realize that while this may be true, it is better for my health, another form of success, to be more consistent. I shouldn’t give myself more anxiety by procrastinating tasks and I shouldn’t do my tasks alone at 3am. I need to try and do my tasks early and ensure that I’m doing not only accurate work but meaningful work. My old manner of doing tasks can make me easily view everything assigned to me as a drag or really boring. I stop viewing school positively and I change my goal to finishing tasks instead of effectively learning from them. Coming into my sophomore autumn semester, I know that I won’t just suddenly adhere to a strict schedule but I need to put an emphasis on doing tasks as soon as I get them. I need to put in a really strong initial effort and keep editing or studying with tasks so that I can really keep getting better and better with the things I do over time. For new students, I really advise checking yourself on what you really want from college. If you want to just receive a good grade, then do whatever works for you as long as you can get your responsibilities done accurately and effectively; However, if you want to make the best time of your experience, develop the ability to be savvy with your time. It’ll help in doing tasks that don’t excite you initially, possibly finding more good with tasks if you give them a solid early chance and seek help through others in order to do it effectively, not adding other pressures or difficulties onto yourself.

Throughout my first year of college, I believe that my time management skills weren’t the best. I would prioritize the assignments that I had the most personal interest in, making assignments that weren’t aligning with my major or interests at the time, way more difficult to go through. They would be more difficult because I would procrastinate them and wouldn’t want to spend my best effort to try and complete them. Toward the end of the second semester I learned that I really need to make short, temporary sacrifices in order to complete my meaningful goals. I learned that constantly having motivation through clear goals is crucial for me in doing my best in every assignment I do. To help this, I became more vulnerable and tried to rely on friends or other sources of inspiration to keep me going. I need to constantly see every task I do as paths toward my final rewarding destination. This makes everything feel much more meaningful for me and helps to ensure that I can learn the most from whatever assignment that I do. Next semester I really need to make sure that I cut out a chunk of my day to really self-evaluate and prioritize my tasks. After that, I need to set time aside to really put in a good effort for these tasks. For me, the time of the day that I do assignments or studying doesn’t matter but I just need to make sure that I don’t feel too pressured for either time or distractions. I need to have time to make sure that I am doing the things I am doing effectively. I need to be satisfied with the work I’m doing and genuinely feel a sense of pride from learning the material in my classes and not just from doing well in the classes themselves.