SPRING SESSION COUNTDOWN

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Last week I promised to talk about getting a lot done in a short time, which is, after all, the definition of spring and summer sessions. Six weeks from start to finals–and one of those weeks is gone! 

The First Week–Check!

Check the first week’s tasks:

  • Complete documentation, including accommodation and funding paperwork, if any.
  • First classes attended.
  • Syllabus read and important points noted.
  • Deadlines marked on calendar.
  • Texts and materials accessed.

You have a flavour of the course after this first week. Now it’s a matter of how to get everything done. What are the key strategies students engage in to make the sprint courses?

Prioritizing Within the Course

The key for success in spring and summer sessions, more than any other session, is prioritizing your time. Prioritizing within the course means that you will

  • Set your goal for the course and subgoals for each assignment.
  • Examine what is most important for your targeted grade. 
  • Examine what will take the most time in terms of work and accessing materials.
  • Identify what is most challenging–research? Writing a paper? Preparing a presentation?
  • Connect with group members immediately–group work is especially challenging in spring sessions because of the short timeline and the need to coordinate everyone’s schedules.
  • Chunk the work into weekly segments.
  • Schedule (in pencil) deadlines, your time estimates for each task, and contingencies that may arrive.

Prioritizing Around the Course

This is the time to look at your life outside the course, and optimize the balance between the extracurricular you and the academic you. You will maintain food and sleep and family and fun but for most of us . . . something’s got to give during sprint sessions!

Again, prioritize–and see where you can gain efficiencies or where you can realistically defer for five weeks.

  • Any health requirements–and that includes some elements of healthy nutrition and exercise–need to be maintained, but maybe in more efficient forms. Run or bike short sprints instead of doing a marathon workup. Bulk cook to reduce meal prep time.
  • Wherever possible, schedule social events for after finals.
  • Let family and roommates know you’re going to need their understanding and maybe their help in terms of chores and errands.
  • At the same time, family is a priority. If you’re a parent, call on other caregivers as special treats for the kids. Let the kids know you have a special school session, and enlist their help in keeping you on track. And plan special treat time with them–maybe walking the dog together.
  • Maintain sources of fun and joy–and plan for fun time to be truly fulfilling–a half hour outdoors with your camera on the weekend may bring more satisfaction than three hours binge-watching a favourite show.
  • Then schedule (in pencil) your extracurricular life and commitments, allowing for contingencies.

Deal with Your Time Management Achilles’ Heels

You know your own time traps. Plan to identify them, plan to endorse for spotting them, and plan for dealing with them.

The two most common traps that are best at bringing you down during six-week terms are procrastination and perfectionism. I’ve dealt with both of these in earlier blogs; here I’m going to say, use five strategies that give you more than a fighting chance against both procrastination and perfectionism:

  • Set a regular schedule for rising, eating, and going to bed.
  • Endorse for every motion toward each task you have scheduled.
  • Use the Pomodoro technique to get you going, to keep you efficient, and to limit the total time on task. Pomodoro keeps you pretty intensely focussed.
  • Review each night to see if you need to adjust your time estimates and reschedule.
  • Commend yourself at the end of the day for following these steps.

That’s it! This approach provides context for balancing and optimizing your studies and your life. It’s the kind of approach you will take in other crunch periods in your life, where you have to plan a wedding, make a cross-country move, open an office, start a practice, build a playground . . . all within a short period of time without throwing all other aspects of your life under the bus!

Connect with me for strategizing your spring session or for looking ahead to maximize results-for-effort ahead during summer session: [email protected] 

The information in this blog cannot take the place of support from your own mental health professional or community health resources. Reach out to them. And IF YOU ARE IN CRISIS PLEASE DIAL 911.