How do you have time to juggle with schoolwork and...

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...and all the other extra stuff people do in college/university like hanging out with friends, going to the gym to workout, facebooking, GOING ON WP , watching movies on the computer, etc...?

I realized that in the past (1st year university plus a bit of 2nd year) I have been trying to fit in "entertainment time" (like facebook and watching videos) to my studies. That hasn't worked out well. My plan is when I go back to school in May, I will concentrate on my schoolwork. Seriously, one reason why I couldn't concentrate was because I didn't get enough sleep during the night because of all the stuff I did on the Internet that weren't school work.

So if you see me rarely posting here at WP starting in May, this may be the reason.

Man, I failed a phyiscs course and linear algebra and I also previously failed a chem lab but retook it and passed it.

I've been having similar problems... could potentially get kicked out of school.

Well.. There is only one person I really spend time with, so there aren't many school/social scheduling conflicts. I don't sleep for very long, so I use that time for my special interests I spend perhaps less than half an hour at home after school doing work.. I am in several Advanced Placement classes...It should be a challenging schedule, but I find myself with quite a bit of time to spare for reading and...you know... goofing around... licking 9V batteries...

What I ended up doing in graduate school (I was a single parent and had to work a job along with going full time to school) was that I got a sheet of graph paper for each week. I blocked off my weeks (all 7 days) in 1/2 hour increments. I color coded my time, with the priorities I put on various tasks. Then I followed the grid to the minute. When I could multi-task, I did. Doing laundry at the laundromat allowed me study time - if my kiddo was in daycare. Otherwise it was "interact with child" time as well as laundry time.

There was a 2 hour block on Sunday nights when I got to do what ~I~ wanted, which usually was a bath after the kiddo was asleep and watching some BBC shows on the local PBS station.

You do what you have to do.

Why am I seeing Rimmer with his revision schedules suddenly?

Actually, once a chart was made for a particular semester it pretty much was the same for every week in the semester.

I was once worried if I could fit everything in. Then I realized that I can do a lot, and still have free time. I didn't start with time-management skills, but I learned them as I went along.

One thing I learned is that I always need to do something. I feel lonely if I do nothing.

Steps to save time:

1) Identify your time wasters (whether it is TV, movies, video games, internet, deep thinking, etc.) A time journal would suffice.

2) Eliminate a few of those time wasters.

3) Most importantly, replace those time wasters with productive things such as school or activities, and make sure not to replace them with different time wasters.

4) You have time for anything, but not everything. Make sure you are able to say the word "NO!" a lot. Say that especially when someone asks you to engage in a commitment which is time consuming and unproductive.

My lack of a social life helps, as does the fact that I study my obsession.

If it's one thing everyone must learn in college is how to manage your time.

I typically got 5-6 research papers a semester. First week would overwhelm me. The teachers were useful in setting deadlines for when certain steps of the paper were due for submission. I'd sit down and organize all the papers based on relevant deadlines and tacked them in that order. It worked very well, and by focusing only on the sub-task at hand, I didn't get fixated on the big picture of so many papers at one time.

As far as daily activities, distractions weren't that hard. I didn't like TV, but gaming, surfing the Internet (only had dial-up and no forums at the time), and other stuff could be an issue, but frankly, my bigger problem was not distraction but not being able to stay focused on the task at hand.

Sometimes going out to do something fun helped because instead of stressing out because I couldn't focus, I put it out of my mind, and later I'd be able to focus better and make some progress. With each semester, the whole deal got easier, because each time I managed to get the job done I realized I was capable of doing it and became less prone to panic over it.

It's all about prioritizing. I have to start on papers in the beginning of a semester, for instance, because I know my schedule will get even crazier the closer I get to the end of the semester. My goal is to have research done or mostly done by the time mid-terms come around, so that all I have to do is organize and type the papers. When it comes to tests, I start studying at least a week before the test, but sometimes up to two weeks before a test depending on how hard the class is and how many chapters there are to cover.

As for other stuff, such as working out, you need to decide how long you need to devote to that task. Take exercising, for example: I know that my workout routine should take me approximately one hour to complete if I'm doing it properly. I also have to factor in a 1-2 minute rest in between going from my cardio routine to weightlifting, appropriate time between sets, etc. So overall, I allocate 1 1/2 hours to working out everyday, and decide before the semester starts when I can schedule going to the gym; sometimes this means that I have to wake up early enough to make it to the gym at 6:00 AM when they open or go by 9:30 PM so that I can finish by the time they close at 11:00.

It's not easy to find a balance, but you gotta do it, otherwise you're going to go nuts.