Student Life Management

Why Should I Care?

College students have a lot to think about and a lot to do. Organizing and managing your life goes a long way to improving your success as a student.

This lesson has 3 parts

• Setting Priorities
• Sleep & Nutrition
• Scheduling
  

What is Student Life Management?

Time management is about using your time wisely, so that your body and mind are in balance, and you can do the best that you can in anything you choose to do. The first step in managing your time is not to make a schedule.

• Setting Priorities

The first step is to identify your priorities, and quantity how much time you want to have for them. Everyone is different, so there is no ultimate answer to this question of priorities. As a college student, no one should tell you what your personal priorities are. You have to figure that out for yourself, and live with them!

The following video is about the Big Rocks First story, which is a well-known story many university professors tell their students on the first of day of school. The story was made very popular by best-selling author Stephen Covey. The point of the story is to identify the big rocks in your life and make them a priority. You won't run out of time for most of the other stuff, because, like sand an water, the less important things can find their way almost anywhere.

Big Rocks First

What are your big rocks?

Let's say your family situation is complicated. You might have responsibilities towards your siblings, an elder, or any other family member. You have to decide what your priorities are. If family comes first in your life, that's your call.

Let's say you are in a romantic relationship. You might learn that "Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder". You've got to be present for this relationship to work! That takes time!

Let's say you need money. This is a very legitimate concern. You will need to decide on the value of things, and how much resources you can assign to earning income. If you need money for food and lodging, it would be absolutely understandable that taking care of this would supersede time for school. It's your decision.

There is one thing that you should consider to be a top priority: sleep. Everyone needs at least six hours of sleep each night, and young adults may need as much as 10 hours per night. More on this later.

What about everything else? Can I have time to play sports, hang out with my friends, go clubbing, watch TV or play video games? Aren't these things important for my personal well-being?

We can't answer these questions for you. Hopefully, your life is going to be fulfilling, rewarding, fun and exciting. However, these choices about using your time are yours to make. Welcome to adulting!

Whatever your priorities, the important thing is that you clearly state them, and quantify the time you need to fulfill them. You will have to make choices, because there may not be enough hours during the week to do everything!

Activity - It's your life!

Here is a list of activities you might have in your life.
Assign a Rock size to each (Big Rock, Pebble, Sand). 
Assign number of Hours per week you would need for each item.
Count the total hours.
If it exceeds 168, you will have to reduce some activities.
If it is below 168, you've got some free time.

Item	Rock size	Hours per week
Going to class
Commute
Sleep
Homework - assignments
Studying for tests
Socializing with friends
Taking care of someone
Self-care - spirituality
Sports and physical activity
Paid work
TV / Reading / Gaming
Eating meals
Total hours		/ 168 hours

• Sleep & Nutrition

School is about learning and performing in assessments such as tests. This is a physical performance that involves your brain. Your head needs sleep and proper nutrition to recharge, sort out all of the information you are taking in everyday, and perform. A student living without sleep is like an athlete performing with no training, and poor nutrition.

How much sleep do you need?

The National Sleep Foundation's most updated recommendations for sleep duration in your age groups is as follows:

Group	Age range (years)	Sleep duration (hours)
Adolescents	13-17	8-10
Adults	18 and up	7 or more

(Source: Max Hirshkowitz et al., 2015, Paruthi et al., 2016)

These recommendations indicate that there are individual differences in terms of sleep needs. If you want to know how much sleep YOU need, you can ask yourself the following questions (Suni & Singh, 2023):

 

	Yes	No
Do you find that you need more than seven hours of sleep to reach your peak productivity, health, and happiness?
Do you spend a lot of energy during the day (play sports, physically-demanding work)?
Are your everyday tasks such that you need to be alert to execute them safely, and if so do you sometimes feel sleep when doing these tasks?
Do you or a close family member have a history of a sleep disorder?
Do you rely on caffeine to get you through the day(coffee, energy drinks, etc.)?
When you have a flexible schedule, do you tend to sleep in more?
Do you have a health condition that requires you to rest more ?

You can use your answers to these questions to figure out whether or not you need more sleep. Many "yesses" indicate  you may need than the minimum of seven hours recommended for adults. Source:  www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

 Sleep professionals offer the following tips:

1. Have a regular pattern of sleep
   You body likes regular patterns. Try to get to bed every night at the same time, and get up every morning at the same time. Too much variation will throw your body out of balance.
2. The darker and quieter the better
   If you live in the city, the lights and sounds at night can hinder your quality of sleep. You can try a few things to improve the environment. Try really dark blinds to cover your windows, try a sleep mask over your eyes, or try a white-noise machine to cancel other sounds.
3. Sleep enough hours
   You can monitor your sleep patterns with an application on your phone to have precise measurements of your personal habits.

What kinds of foods should I eat?

Your diet is your choice and we are not here to tell you what to eat. Nutrition is a complex issue. Nutrition has to do with personal tastes, cultural backgrounds, family traditions, religion, your preferences, recent trends, the cost of groceries, and your interest for cooking. This is a book about student success, not a cookbook!

First things first, we don't recommend starting a restrictive diet in the middle of the semester, especially during your exam week. Your body needs fuel. Athletes who seem very slender actually eat enormous amounts of food. Food is fuel. Your brain needs fuel.

This said, there are foods that you will crave when you are studying alot. Some people find they eat more starchy foods during their exam week, such as pasta, mashed potatoes, and bread. The best advice here is to eat moderately and diversify what is in your plate. Experts, such as the Harvard Medical School recommend very specific foods to improve your cognitive abilities.

Harvard Brain Foods

1. Green, leafy vegetables
   Such as lettuce, cabbage and spinach. Vitamin K, lutein, folate, and beta carotene.
2. Fatty fish
   Salmon, cod, canned light tuna, and pollack. Omega-3 fatty acids.
3. Berries
   Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Flavonoids.
   
4. Tea and coffee
   Caffeine is good for memory, and concentration.
   
5. Walnuts
   Nuts are generally good, but walnuts were shown to help memory.
   

As you can see, the emphasis here is not on protein, but on specific vitamins, nutrients and acids that help the brain. This does not mean you should avoid regular meals, but rather make adjustments to your diet so that you have the physical energy, and the brain power, to study as best you can.

• Scheduling

Once you have set your priorities and filled your pantry with healthy foods, you can sit down and plan your daily, weekly, and monthly schedules. Here are some tips to do this right. Whatever planning tool you choose, make sure you enter the important Big Rocks first, so that everything else can also find some room in there. Also, it doesn't matter which type of planner you choose, if you don't check it every day.

Activity - Weekly Scheduler

Use the grid below to draw in your activities and events.
Place the Big Rocks first, then use the remaining space to fill in with other activities.

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning 6 am
Day start 8 am
Midmorning 10 am
Noon 12 pm
Afternoon 1 pm
Midday 3 pm
End of day 5 pm
Evening 6 pm
Late evening 8 pm
End of day 10 pm

Does everything fit?

Technology and Scheduling

Your school provides a calendar of important dates. It may also sell (or provide) an agenda for the school year with a weekly planner prepared for you. Whatever the situation, make sure you are aware of the important dates such as:

School calendar
First day of class, Course change date, Course drop date, Holidays, Last day of class, Exam period 

Class calendar
Lecture periods, Professor office hours, Lab Periods, Assignment deadlines, Test dates, Final exam dates

Schedules need a method. Do you prefer a booklet sized planner or an app on your phone? We will discuss these options here.

Personal Planner

Bookstores usually stock personal planners which are booklets that you can customize. They usually cost anywhere between 10$ and 100$, and are very popular with busy people such as managers and executives. These planners allow one to keep track of events, projects and usually include a mix of daily, weekly, and monthly schedules.

Make your own Planner

You can make your own planner, using any kind of software on your computer, such as Word, or Excel. Create a table, format the hours and the number of days. You can print the table on a sheet of paper, and stick to your fridge with a magnet, so that you are reminded of your schedule, even when you haven't had your first cup of coffee of the day!

To make a calendar in Excel, open a new file, and search for 'calendar'. Pick the template you prefer, select the year you want, and Excel will format each day, week, or month, as you wish. We made one a semester-long calendar to help you keep track of important dates. Feel free ton modify or add your own due dates and important events. 

In excel format:

semester_schedule_example.xlsx

There are also lots of templates you can use with these software or from the internet. Another example is from Wepik: https://wepik.com/templates/schedules.

Smartphone applications

There are many applications that run on your phone or computer to help you keep track of your routine and engagements. You can use the standard apps, such as 'Calendar' on iPhone, or 'Google Calendar' on Android. Many professionals are bound to use the app from the office software suite they use at work, such as Microsoft Outlook, which is available on smartphones for free. Other apps may have ads, or involve a fee for premium services.

Want the right app for your needs? Read this comparison article in PC Mag.
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-pick-the-right-calendar-app-to-improve-your-productivity

Smartphone calendars have many advantages, especially for people who have trouble remembering what they should do.

1. Program recurring events
   Easily repeat events that reoccur every week, such as class time or your work schedule.
2. Colour codes for types of activities
   Use different colours for types of activities, so that you can easily track them by level of priority
3. Reminders
   You can program alerts, so that the phone beeps the day before, and 30 minutes, before your class or meeting.
4. Share with classmates
   You can easily share group study periods with classmates
5. Search
   All of your events are in the phone, so you can search for them in the future or the past

Once you have picked the right tool, make sure to use it every day!

References and Further Reading

Covey, S. R., Merrill, A. R. & Merrill, R. R. (1996). First Things First. Free Press.

Duffy, J. (2020). How to Pick the Right Calendar App to Improve Your Productivity. PC Mag. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-pick-the-right-calendar-app-to-improve-your-productivity

McCue, D. (2019). Lack of sleep is 'epidemic' among Canadian teens. Here's why it has doctors worried. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/national-sleep-deprivation-teenagers-youth-learning-1.4929842