Balancing between work and study

[Special At Specialist]

I have really bad time management skills. I'm trying to balance between working about 45 hours per week (plus 10 hours per week travel time) and doing VCE English, but I've been neglecting my studies a lot recently and have been doing practically no homework at all.

I'm always so tired during the week that all I want to do is sit down, eat food, check Facebook, surf the internet and waste time until it's time for bed and work the next day. During weekends, I usually go out way too much, since it's my only real opportunity to see friends (I miss seeing my friends 5 days a week in year 12), and then on Sunday night I really regret it because I have my English class on Mondays (not this Monday because of school holidays but every other Monday) and I'm always unprepared for it.

I know that there are people who managed to work and study during year 12 quite successfully so I am asking you for your advice please. How did you cope? Did you ever feel like you had no time to study because you were too busy working and going to school? Did you ever come home from school or work too tired to do anything? How did you counteract this? Did you study more on weekdays or weekends?

[alondouek]

If you're getting really distracted by stimuli, try to remove them. It pays to be proactive about these sorts of things. If you have a laptop/mobile/other notorious source of distraction, ask your parents to withhold them from you until you complete an amount of study that you will have previously allocated per a period of time. Then, treat these distractions as rewards! This sort of thing requires consistency though, so if you do this make sure you follow through with it.

If you're one of those list-minded people (like yours truly), consider making a checklist of what you want to do in a study session. I find that it really helps to quantify workload, and it makes me more productive by proxy (as I otherwise tend to jump from task to task).

How are you finding English?

[Special At Specialist]

Thanks for your reply, alondouek.

If you're one of those list-minded people (like yours truly), consider making a checklist of what you want to do in a study session. I find that it really helps to quantify workload, and it makes me more productive by proxy (as I otherwise tend to jump from task to task).

I try to do this but I hardly ever follow through with the list. I will often set really long and difficult goals for myself then give up one day and end up doing nothing for weeks.

How are you finding English?

It's not too bad, I'm doing reasonably well (not brilliant, but better than I was doing in literature last year). I think if I keep this up, I'll be heading for around the 30 study score mark. But I want to try to do the best I can just incase. Plus it will increase my ATAR score if I get a really good English score.

The subject isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm finding World War 1 poetry pretty interesting, but I am just so tired and time flies so quickly that I never get a chance to read it or answer any of the questions. Actually, that's a lie: I do get a chance, I just never make the most of that opportunity because I love procrastinating and making excuses 

[appianway]

I'm probably not as much help as other people, but I usually work 15 hours a week during semester on top of a 60-70 hour courseload. Last semester, I did this on top of some major extracurricular activities (president of an organization, board member of one of Yale's biggest organizations) and I found that I was very busy indeed and frequently exhausted.

I'd agree with the posters who's spoken about making a checklist. I'd also make sure that you allocate time to do your work on weekends and in those times, do not arrange to go out. For instance, you could decide that Friday nights from 8pm-12am are study times, and that saturday from 9am-5pm is time to study. That would give you a decent amount of time to study. You could also make an additional schedule for weekdays and say that you will work from 7.30pm-9pm each weekday, which isn't much time at all. Doing those study times would give you 18 hours of study time a week, which is definitely enough. Work in an environment without a computer or phone. Leave them somewhere else.

Also, is there any work that you could take to do during your lunch break at work? I generally study while I eat lunch or I go to the library to sort out logistics over email.

This following paragraph is going to sound really harsh, but I really don't think that working 45 hours a week and taking one class is very strenuous - you can definitely accomplish it. Sometimes you've just got to do what you've got to do in order to obtain your final outcome. Even though I often get back to my room exhausted, if I have an assignment due the next day, I stay up until when it's done - be it 1am, 2am, 4am. And there have been many times that I've given up spending time with my boyfriend or friends in order to spend the time studying on weekends. Even if you just dedicate one weekend day entirely to studying, that gives you about 15 hours of studying, which is the bulk of what you'd need. I find that I need weekends to get ahead - without them, I get three hours of sleep per night during the week, which is counterproductive and makes me slower.

For me, a big part of time management isn't finding extra techniques. It's about knowing that I need to get certain things done, and making sure that I get them done. You do need to make sacrifices. You will be exhausted. But you have a goal at the end of all of this, so you need to work to obtain the goal. There aren't really any shortcuts. I'm sorry if this sounds really harsh, but if you do need to work that much, the only other option is for you to persevere when you feel tired and to cut down on the social activities.

Remember that it's just for a year. The sacrifices that you make in the meantime will pay off.

[Lasercookie]

Well I guess keep in mind that VCE English is your ticket into the course you want to do, and you really only have 4 months of it left. That time will fly before you know it, so give those last few months your best. You can choose to procrastinate if you want, but you'd be losing the opportunity you have here.

I'm guessing your working obligations are fixed? I think a lot of people do end up taking a break from work (or at least decreasing their hours) in the weeks leading up to exams. VCE English exam is on 30th October, so you'll have November to February to work and earn money too.

There's all those various ways you can go about trying to actually get work done, going to a library at a designated time etc. which you're probably familiar with, is it just a matter of just forcing yourself to do that? Trying to get enough sleep, eating properly are stuff you'd want to keep up too.

I guess with catching up with friends, that's probably not something you want to skip on either, but maybe organise it so you can get your study done say Saturday morning or afternoon and then go out with friends. If you're tired the day after going out, could you still make the effort to do some reading? Or if you're not going out at night, maybe catch up with friends for lunch, then go home and do your study.