One of my earliest school-day memories was going shopping for supplies. It was one of the few bright spots in the late summer when my friends and I saw vacation days counting down. If I’m entirely honest, I still love shopping for school supplies. Weird though it may be, wandering the aisles or scrolling through the neon highlighters, colored pens, mechanical pencils, and planners of every imaginable sort, still gives me a bit of a creative rush.
Whether or not you share my unhealthy addiction to school supplies, one of the most important steps in succeeding with your reading and studying in college is to set up your schedule. Even if you feel like you’ve got a pretty well-organized routine, it’s worth your time to stand back and think about how your school-work will fit into the rest of your life. In this blog we’ll take a look at how much time you should plan on spending studying and some practical steps to organize your life.
- How much time will you study?
Before getting into some organizational details, how much time should you plan to read and study in college? First, let’s talk about the ideal. College classes are set up based on “hours.” So if you take a three-hour College Writing class, you’ll be spending three hours in class every week for the length of the term or semester. It might be one hour a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or it might be for a three hour block on Tuesday afternoon. The meeting times might be different, but a three-hour class will usually meet three hours a week.
Schools typically say that students should succeed in their classes if they study three hours outside of class for every 1 hour in class. So if you’re taking one 3-hour class, you’ll be in the classroom for three hours and expected to study for another nine hours that week outside of class. That’s a total of 12 hours a week for a three-hour class. You can multiply this on out if you are taking more than one class at a time. You get the idea.
So that’s the plan in theory. Now let’s talk reality. Research regularly reveals that students rarely put in as many hours studying as colleges and professors expect. On average, full time US students taking 12 hours of college classes report that they typically spend about 27 hours a week toward class and studying. So check the math here. If students are going to class 12 hours a week, and then spending 15 hours a week studying, that’s just over 1 hour a week studying outside of class for every hour in class. Far less than the three-for-one in that we just talked about.
So how much time should you plan on spending studying for class? I’d recommend beginning with two hours for every one hour in class and then assess this as you go. Bombing tests? You’ll need to add time. Studying something you already know well, maybe dial back the time a bit. Everyone’s experience is a bit different, which is why it’s important to monitor yourself and make adjustments based on what suits your goals and life.
- Your Own Personal Reality
If we’re not honest with ourselves, great plans fall apart the minute they touch our own personal reality. It is essential that you be honest with yourself when it comes to going to college. This starts with asking yourself what you can realistically accomplish. You might admire those folks who tell stories about being a single-parent, raising three kids while working a full time job and going to medical school, but there’s usually more to those stories than you hear about.
Be honest. What is going to move around in your schedule if you’re going to take a college class or two. Will you need to give up your evenings binging on Netflix to read more or will you need to take a book with you to the kids’ athletics practice? Will you need to talk with your employer about shifting your work-schedule around a bit so that you can get to class in the afternoon? Maybe you can flex-time your Fridays, work a bit more Monday through Thursday so that you can go to class and read on Fridays? Reclaiming even a little bit of this time can give you the space you need to add that reading to your schedule. The important point is, take some time to think through your schedule.
Even if you’re an 18-year old full-time college student without kids and other big bills to pay, you still need to think about this. I remember tutoring some student athletes whose daily calendars ran from 5am to 10pm every day. No matter where you’re at in life, when you’re taking college classes, it pays to look closely at your routine.
- Selecting a Planner
A class planner with a calendar is one of the most helpful tools you’ll learn to use in college. If you’ve never used a planner, no problem. We’re going to take a quick walk through. If you’ve already got a system you like, that’s great. This is the time to ask yourself how well it’s working and if there are changes you need to make.
Whether or not you share my unhealthy addiction to school supplies, one of the most important steps in succeeding with your reading and studying in college is to set up your schedule.
So what is a planner? It is a paper-based or digital application that you enter dates and events into and use to keep track of all the assignments that will come at you during college. The best planners are one that also allow you to enter family and personal events and over time allow you to worry less about missing things. Good planners, like automatic payments to and from your checking account, are tools to make your life easier.
What sort of a planner should you use? This is pretty personal. Some folks like paper and notebooks because they’re more tangible and just feel good to lay open on your desk. Others like applications because, if you’re carrying around a phone, tablet, or computer, you don’t need to carry something more around. Lots of apps allow you to set recurring dates (nice for entering those classes that meet three times a week every week) and reminders for upcoming due dates.
- Using a planner
I hopes of making the best use of your planner, I recommend you do four things:
First, add all of the times for classes, work, basketball practice, dinner with the family, holiday breaks, kid’s birthday parties, etc. that you can think of. Create a color-scheme for these (Yay colored markers!). Family in one color, gym workouts in another color, maybe each class you’re taking gets it’s own color? The idea here is to create a solid skeleton of your schedule that you will fill out in a bit.
Second, add all of the due-dates for your class projects. This is where you make really good use of the class syllabus. It is your google-map for each of your classes. Most professors follow it very closely. Note all the papers, exams, online postings, group presentations, and other dates found here. As you do this you will begin to get a feel for pinch-points (aka places in your life where things might start to look pretty busy). That’s okay. In a bit we’ll see how to use your planner to contend with these.
Third, take a look at your major assignments and projects and break them down into smaller pieces and Backward Plan them. This strategy is called backward planning because you’re going to set the goal that is in the future and then work backwards to today with small steps to accomplish it without cramming.
For example, you have a paper due on Monday the 25th. It’s a comparison of how two different historians explained the beginning of the US Civil War. The paper is required to be 5 pages long, and needs to include 3 academic sources (i.e. not Wikipedia or People magazine). Because today is the 4th, you have about three weeks before it’s due. So in your planner, you’re going to write down that this week you will find your three resources, read and take notes on them and create a very rough outline. Next week write down that you’re going to develop the outline and complete a draft of the paper. The final week you’ll revise the paper, add your conclusion and introduction, and turn it in. No all-nighters required!
Finally, this is the time to use your planner not to cram, but to anticipate. For instance, if you know you’ve got a birthday party coming up this weekend and a midterm on Monday, this is the week to put in a bit more time on Thursday and Friday knowing the weekend is going to be pretty booked. Likewise, as you fill in your planner, you will discover times in the year where projects and exams pile-up (often toward the middle and end of a term or semester). Since you can control when you finish a paper but cannot change the date of a test, you can make your life easier by using a planner to recognize this, finish projects early, and create space for you to prepare for exams.
- Studying and the Rest of Life
Something to keep in mind here is the connection between rest and reading. Believe it or not, reading is hard work. Studying hard for a day can leave you as mentally exhausted as your muscles can be after after a day of hard physical labor. Taking regular breaks from your reading, getting some fresh-air, and aiming for a consistent 7-9 hrs. of sleep and working some other self-care routines into your schedule will make a big difference in your ability to read. Do not trade rest for more reading time. Find a way to do both.
Remember that there is a social dimension to school too. You need to talk with your family and friends about this. It’s important to be aware that your friends and family have a huge impact on your success in school and it is worth taking the time to talk about your schedule and how you need to organize your life to accomplish this exciting goal.
- Revisit, Review, Revamp
When you get to the end of the term, revisit your calendar. First, celebrate your victories. Your calendar is probably piled high with due dates, and accomplishments! Congratulations!
Now it’s time to ask, what worked and didn’t work here? Not just studying and reading, but the rest of life. You thought you were a night-owl, but you noticed that after 10pm your brain sort of shuts down. Or you noticed that you thought you could get some reading in while watching your daughter’s swim practice, but discovered that you really ended up talking with all the other parents. You might have noticed that when you’re in a regular walking or work-out routine, everything feels a bit better.
After some review, I’d recommend taking the top 2 or 3 things you’ve thought about and doing some genuine re-designing. Don’t try to change everything. Talk with your family about redividing up the chores. Talk with your friends about better times of day for you to study. Work in a trip to the gym 3 or 4 times a week. And then implement them for next time. If you do this a few times, you will not only create a system that will get you through school, but may well have created a tool that you can use to help maintain some balance for the rest of your life.
Reading in college is hard. Hundreds of pages coming at you from textbooks and academic articles to literary classics and lab reports.
Dr. Matt’s Gutsy Guide to Reading in College takes you step-by-step, through how to succeed with your college reading. The guide is packed with strategies for creating your perfect reading spot, setting up your tech, managing your routine, learning what to watch for in your reading, discovering your favorite note-taking style, and much more! Hop over to www.gutsycollege.com to check out the book and Gutsy online classes.
Dr. Matt Friesen received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Oregon and has spent most of life as a student, professor, researcher and advisor. Check out www.gutsycollege.com for the free Workbook for Reading in College and Note Taking Template. Watch for his upcoming book Dr. Matt’s Gutsy Guide to Reading in College coming in spring 2024.
Noah Friesen’s artwork is featured in these blog posts. Noah has been drawing since 2003 and specializes in caricature and comic art. Connect with Noah, check out his gallery or commission him for your project at www.ko-fi.com/idekdraws.
