by Lina Howard

(Editors' Note: Lina Howard is a busy student and an active member of the Minnesota Association of Blind Students, currently serving as secretary of the division. We appreciate that she found enough hours in her day to offer the following sage advice for students that can also help any of us.)

No matter what your grade or major, being a student is no joke, especially when it comes to the complicated balance between academia and personal life. As students we tend to have a lot going on simultaneously in both realms, which can make life just a little difficult to manage. It’s overwhelming instances such as these where a solid system for time management is very much in order. Here are my top tips to stay on track and still have time to breathe before, during, and after the daily grind.

The first time-saving tip for starting out your day right is, make sure you are waking up with enough time to complete your morning routine without rushing. As a morning person myself, waking up was easy, managing time was the hard part before I started paying attention to how much time it was taking me to complete my morning routine. Once I started timing out how long each task took and how much time was left before starting school, not only did I become more efficient with my time, but I also began to appreciate the small window of time I have before the craziness of the day commences. I now use the extra time to complete a small task that will make life easier later in the day.

Now we fast-forward to study time, where assignments are supposed to be getting done and comprehension of material should be taking place. But as we know, distractions can make both tasks more arduous than what they should be. A good tip to stay on track and improve information retention is to work in intervals with a short quiz at the end of your work time. As someone who finds it difficult to work for long periods of time and whose mind wanders easily, I find working for twenty minutes with five-minute breaks between intervals is the best for my success. This aids in my ability to set goals I know can be achieved throughout my studying, while preventing too much psychological exhaustion from overworking myself. Once you get the hang of this study technique, you will be surprised how much you can get accomplished in a small amount of time.

We have arrived at the end of the day. Preparations for tomorrow and settling down for some good sleep is the name of the game. I personally find this time of the day to be the most challenging because all I want to do is go to bed and leave everything for the next morning. To conquer the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion slowly sinking in, a to do list comes in to save the day, or rather night. For me, to do lists are the easiest way to keep myself going, working towards the goal of leaving no task to sit until sunrise. As I check off each chore one by one, I feel a small sense of accomplishment knowing that by the end of the night, everything I set out to do during the day will have been done. The time has finally come to get tucked into bed for a full eight-hour night's rest.

When we use our time wisely making sure not to rush, we are able to stay mindful of the goals we’ve set out to achieve. This in turn keeps us accountable, making it a game of sorts to win the prize of relaxation at the close of the day. As these almost two years have gone by, time management has proven to be even more essential to succeed in both maintaining a social life and a good GPA. I hope these tasks will bring you as much success as they have for me. Here’s to success and the satisfaction of knowing that there are in fact enough hours in the day.