If college was a challenge, graduate school will prove to be more so. With more advanced courses and heightened expectations, time seems to become a rarer commodity by the minute. Now that you have survived college and are in graduate school, you are expected to have much better time management skills. So, you know that more work will be piling up at this stage.
It’s all a matter of organization
Because graduate school is less structured than college and you have more freedom to do what you want, you have to extend extra effort to discipline yourself. You have to keep a time table or a calendar, however tentative, of study periods, classes, and other activities. If you are planning to take a break some time next week, make sure that you are through with necessary school work before declaring yourself free and indulging in these social events. Divide complicated goals into manageable parts so that you can tackle them better. Doing so prevents you from being intimidated by the volume of school work to be done.
Prioritize
There will be tons of work to do at graduate school, especially if you are also working part-time. So, better come up with your things-to-do list and list the items in decreasing priority. Priority depends on the work’s deadline and weight on your GPA. Spending too much time on a requirement that’s only a fraction of your grade may seem impractical in the long run especially if you have many other requirements to complete.
Learn to strike a balance
While mediocrity is never promoted in any field, perfectionism can also weigh you down in graduate school. It is an excellent characteristic to be meticulous, but being too perfect can also be a problem especially if it’s not too realistic. If you cannot figure out how to write a research paper perfectly that you end up missing the deadline, then that is a problem. So, if you know that an assignment will require extra time and attention, start doing work on it as soon as you get it.
Have room for flexibility
Again, graduate school is working with less structure than college; it has an open or loose schedule depending on your field. So, even if you have a calendar, things can still happen between schedules. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, make sure that you do you work as soon as you get the assignment. This way, no surprise arrangement can make you feel lost.
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Believe it or not, you can still excel in graduate school even if you have a job on the side. Of course, you need to practice proper time management to be able to finish everything at its right time. First off, you need to know if you really want to go through graduate school. Then, take a part-time course only if it is absolute necessary, such as in cases when nobody else will pay for your tuition other than yourself.
Get organized
If both your priorities and your time are in order, life in graduate school for a part-time employee like you will go much more smoothly. For your stuff, make sure that you do not have a messy study area where you still have to hunt for a handout or a textbook. For time, you need to keep an updated calendar or date book, where you can write all your schedules. Make sure that you have properly marked the things to do and things that have already been done. Also, it would help if you identify the things that need to be prioritized so that you do them first.
Do not procrastinate
If you wait for the last minute to do your work, you will end up swamped with things to do. So, better perform on schedule. The time you have wasted in doing nothing substantial further removes time from your already cramped schedule.
Be flexible
If schedule changes cannot be helped, do not panic. Anticipate possible emergencies, distractions, and even illness. So, it is really important to avoid procrastination; you never know what may happen tomorrow, so do what you can today. If you work part-time, you may want to put in extra hours in your job so that you’ll have fewer working hours on those critical school days.
Know your limitations
Even though time management helps, work overload can make you sick or so stressed out that you can no longer function. So, learn how to refuse activities that will not really benefit your studies or your job. Though those activities may sound fun, or maybe even noble, you have to think about your health as well. Refusing some of these activities allows you to have valuable free time for rest and recreation.
Photo Credit : FABIOLA MEDEIROS
