Course Work

[PurpleMoon]

I’m having a lot of difficulty getting back in to the routine of college I have been out of the educational loop for about a year now and I having a hard time making sure I have done my course work and stuff. Its not that I have trouble completing it I always complete it, its just that I want to get it done before the deadline and not just the night before. If that makes sense….

What would you say is the best way go about this?

[Adam the Fish]

Have a really big push to get it all cleared, and then - with a clear intray - keep on top of it, trying to do as much as you can as soon as you get it, and planning well.

[Kate*]

It depends when the deadlines are and what the assignment is. For what I refer to as the 3 P's (Papers, projects, and presentations), take the amount of time between the day you get the assignment and the due date (or the day you want to get it done) and divide the work as evenly as possible among the days in between, that way you're not rushing to get it all done at once. A reward system may also work, tell yourself that when you finish a certain amount of work you get to do something you want to do. For example, when I had 2 papers to write in one weekend, I said when I finished them both I got to watch 2 episodes of my favorite 1 hour show. The trick is that if you don't finish the work, you don't get the reward.

Sometimes though, even division of work isn't possible because you get short notice or it just can't be done. I had 2 papers due one week and only 2 weeks to do both of them and there was nothing I could do about it. Reading assignments and short things are often like this. The best thing you can do is take short breaks every so often to maintain your sanity, but don't do anything that could easily distract you for hours or you'll never go back to it!

The one down side to breaking up long assignments into smaller pieces is that it can feel like you'll never finish. For example, I have to do at least one page of my paper a week for the next 2 MONTHS!, but that's still better than trying to do half of it in one night.