Hello everyone,
The end of the semester is almost here, so hang on for just a few more days! I hope you all got something out of this course, I know I did. In this post, I’ll be looking back to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned about different types of web tools, study habits and myself.
The most important things I learned in this course were the things about myself. After tracking my time and taking the self-assessments assigned I was able to take an objective look at how I use my time and determine how much time I was not using responsibly. Sometimes it feels like the hours in a day fly by and there’s not enough time to go to class and finish assignments while still finding enough time to sleep and de-stress. After tracking how I actually spend my time, and realizing that I wasn’t spending as much time being studious as I thought, I knew that something needed to change.
The self-assessment(http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_88.htm) gave further insight into what needed to be addressed. Coming from the military, I was used to following a very regimented schedule with clearly defined priorities. Without a rigid structure to lean on, I quickly fell out of any sense of time management. I needed to create my own schedule and priority levels. Since I had all morning classes, it was easy to create a schedule that resembled a typical “workday” where I went to class in the morning, took a lunch break, and stayed on campus in the afternoon to study and work on assignments.
Going forward into next semester and beyond, I will keep this idea and improve upon it. I have scheduled my classes from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm with breaks between classes. This gives my schedule built-in study blocks. This is enough time to get a good amount of work done, but not long enough to go home or find any other excuse to slack off.
With the definite limits on time, I will be forced to prioritize work and assign appropriate amounts of work for the time. If I determine that an assignment warrants 2 hours of work, it will have 2 hours of time devoted to it. What I have done in the past is just sit down and worked on something with no timeline in mind. This often leads to a smaller assignment getting more time than required and cuts into time allowed for larger assignments. For example, an extra hour spent on a small assignment might earn a few percentage points, but that same hour could have been better spent gathering better sources for a major essay.
Something that surprised me in this course was the discussion boards with other students. Looking at how other students viewed the same material and what they found valuable highlighted things that I might have skimmed over otherwise. Sometimes college courses seem so professor-centric its easy to forget that other students are going through the same thing you are. In future classes, I will make a greater effort to reach out to other students. Maybe they will see connections that I don’t, or maybe I will have the chance to increase my own knowledge by explaining things to others.
My final advice for my fellow students is to keep the lessons you learned in this course. Its easy to data-dump material after a final and focus on the next semester’s courses, but this course is designed to help us in other classes. Much of this course relies on self-reflection, so what you gain from this course may very well be different than what I gained.
Good luck on finals and your future courses!
~Taylor