Student Support

Managing Time and Study

It’s this time of the year for exams, assignments and a “will I get this all done?” feeling. It’s a normal feeling that we all have, even as adults, as we work towards the end of the year.

Here’s some ideas that can help with managing time.

• Print out a yearly planner. Use colour, public holidays could be green, school holidays yellow etc. Then add into the planner when your assignments are due, and when exams are scheduled. Have a different colour for each subject. The great thing about a paper copy, is that you can update this as the year goes on.

If you aren’t able to print one out, please see me (Pip Rose) in the staff room on Mondays and Tuesdays and I’ll have printed copies available for you.

• The next method to help with focus on study, is setting out a timetable for each block of study.

Did you notice something? That’s right Friday and Saturday nights are free – having a break from study is just as important as studying, because we need to give our minds time to think and process what we’ve learnt.

Did you notice something else? Exactly! There’s a 15min break between each session – that’s a time to get up and move, do something else.  Get a glass of water, have something to eat, listen to some music.  Again this is so your mind can process, think about what you’ve been studying.

You could also use a colour coded system for this schedule.  By each subject having it’s own colour, it’s like a key – when you look at your planner and you have a Maths assignment due, you can see the colour for Maths and straight away that tells you when your Maths assignments are due.

By having this timetable printed out in colour in front of you, you’ll find that when your mind thinks “Oh, I need to do that Science assignment or homework”, you can look up at your timetable and remind yourself – “No, this is my dedicated Maths or English or whatever subject time”, and stay focused on what you are doing now.

Effective study and time management isn’t about using one way to do something, it’s about using a variety of tools to get the job done, after all we can’t fix a broken motor with just a spanner.