Teachers all want their students to succeed and time management is an obvious factor. Still, as an academic drop-in facilitator for international and domestic students, I hear students regularly requesting advice on that very issue. They have no problem understanding entrepreneur Jim Rohn’s shrewd comment: “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” But they are far from always good at doing it! How can we help?
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A typical conversation that I have with students near the beginning of a semester goes like this:
Me: How are things going? What would you like to do today?
Student: Ugh I have so many assignments you know, and I have to study a lot and write so many papers. It took me a long time to write this essay… like 6, 7 days. That’s too much. Please teach me how to write faster.
Me: Writing essays takes me a long time, too.
Student: No. It can’t take you this long… you are a professional and English is your first language. I want to write essays in maybe 4 hours total.
For many students, this request is a very logical one. How do they juggle the multitude of assignments in a 14 or 15 week semester? Writing faster is more efficient and beneficial to them than not writing at all. After all these years, I still don’t have a clear answer because I can’t even write a 10 page paper in 4 hours. Once we get through the initial conversation, here are some strategies I do provide: Continue reading