PART 1

Make an effort to be as realistic as possible. This exercise is meant to tell you, and only you, if you are planning and budgeting your time effectively.
 

Check off all the boxes corresponding to the hours you devote to:

1. Sleep

2. Commute (work or school)

3. Classtime (lectures, labs)

4. Meals

5. Personal time (fun, rest, movies, golf, spacing out)

The empty boxes, presumably, indicate the time left for school work.

(To visualize your days better , you may also fill in the boxes using different colors for each activity.)

PART 2

1. Make sure you ask your instructors how many hours of out-of-classroom work are expected for each course.

2. In each of the empty boxes, using a different color per each course, write the name of the course you will be working on at that given time.

3. Evaluate realistically if you have enough free time to do the work required for your classes. If you don't, chances are you will have to drop a class during the semester or; worse, you will fail one or more classes; or your GPA will suffer across the board.

Seek advice from the Academic Advisement center and your instructors on the best course of action BEFORE you find out you underestimated the amount of work required to succeed.

© Brooklyn College - Roberta S. Matthews Center for Teaching, 2007