General college study tips: Student Schedules

Today I am starting a weekly series on general college study tips.  I find that many students lack basic college study strategies when I start working with them as a tutor.  I’ve come to the conclusion that providing a ‘basic’ set of college study tips will allow many of you to learn the fundamentals so you can begin to engage with the more advanced college study tips throughout the rest of my site.

So to begin this series, we should tackle the very first thing any student should do when the semester starts.  Namely, choosing courses and preparing an effective schedule.  In my book Study 30 Minutes A Day And Get A 4.0 GPA I speak at length about this subject and have an entire chapter devoted to this subject.  However, for this post I’ll simply give you the basic tips to get you started.

Choose a schedule that works for you

I’m amazed how many students don’t do this.  Many of my students will come to me stressed out with their schedule.  When I ask them why they made those class choices they give me excuses such as “they had no choice” or that they were pressured by their academic advisors to take that schedule.  Due to this, students always seem to take early morning classes.  Let me make this crystal clear because I can’t stress this enough, if you are a morning person don’t take night courses.  If you can’t get up in the morning, don’t take morning classes!

My personal choices for college student schedules

I’m a late riser; I wouldn’t wish an 8am class on my worst enemy.  With that said, I have a few main tenants I abide by to build my schedule.

1: Under no circumstances should I have to get up before 9am.  This is a rule that is sometimes difficult to follow as I’ve had to teach some classes early in the morning.  However, in the one situation this happened, I had only 20 students in the class and decided to reschedule the class in the afternoon.  Getting up later in my opinion makes you more productive, keeps you happy and allows you the capability to get a good breakfast which is central to a healthy and productive school day.

2: Classes should be after 11am:  If you get up at 9-10am you will need to prepare a proper breakfast (central) and exercise (a really good idea).  The breakfast should be protein rich and contain most of the vitamins and minerals you need for the day, check out my superman breakfast for an example.  As for exercise, dependent upon your goals, heavy weights or yoga are both excellent examples.  I do heavy weights twice a week and yoga and/or biking almost every day.  Exercise helps release endorphins and has also proven to assist in recall, see my john ratey article for data supporting this finding.

3: Try to stack your classes on one day:  If you can try to get multiple classes on one day.  This will sometimes free up 1 or 2 days a week where you won’t even have to venture on to campus.  For me I love this time as it allows me to work on non school related projects.

4: Have 2-3 hour breaks between classes:  A few hours break between classes is an excellent opportunity to get work finished.  A course that finishes at 2 and another that starts at 4 gives me a solid hour and a half for study time.  I can usually get most of my work finished within one of these study sessions as I’m in a positive study space and in a good study mode.  Each person may be different so give this a try and see if you’re productive during these periods, if you aren’t I encourage you to try something else.

A couple more tips on student schedules

Under no circumstances should your academic advisor, parents, friends, professors or anyone else for that matter dictate your schedule.  If it is a required class, check to see if it is offered next semester or next year. If your class isn’t offered next semester, ask your academic advisor if you can take another class instead.  I usually use the work schedule excuse (this seems to be the most successful excuse in my experience).  Remember, you are paying THEM for this degree, YOU are the customer and as the old adage says, the customer is always right.