Photo by Nick Frongillo
My rugby coach, Christopher Bouere, talked about some of his experiences and how he figured out a good way to manage his time when it came to his academics. One of the first things he said was that he was not the best with this when he was in college but had a good system with his friends. He and his friends liked to go out, but they had a system where one friend in the group wouldn’t go out on one of the nights so they could do their homework without having any distractions of his friends around. Having your friends there to hold you accountable for your work makes the process of getting it done much easier. One of his biggest pieces of advice was to sit down at the start of the semester and go through your syllabus and try to plan time out when the work needs to be done. By doing this you will get that rough idea of when you have free time. He also said, “If you have a paper due in a week, then start it now because it is easier to find 20 to 30 minutes each day than it is to find 4 to 8 hours on the day before it is due.” Chris mentioned that one of the easiest ways to to start finding your group of friends in a new place was to just go to a few different doors in your dorm and knock to see if anyone is there. If they are there then you can ask if anyone is hungry and wants to go get some food. He says this will work because everyone is nervous and in the same boat as you and he also said, “No one likes to eat alone.”
