One of the most common problems that college students have is time management. At any school, especially Case, there are several million opportunities that one can get involved in, such as clubs, varsity athletics, performance groups, friends, working on campus, and generally exploring Cleveland. Although there is less class time in college (the average Case student takes about 15-17 hours of class per week), this unfortunately means that several students fall into the trap of poor time management.

Although you will only be in class for roughly 15 hours a week, professors in college expect that, for every hour you spend in class, you spend about an hour outside of class studying. This is hard to do at the beginning of the semester – after all, with all of these opportunities available to us, it’s sometimes hard to focus. Then, on top of that, it is a given that a student at Case will get involved in multiple extracurricular activities. This is a great way to meet people, to get involved in something you are passionate about, and to really make a connection to the school. But, additionally, this just compounds the workload – all of a sudden, you’ve got 5 more hours of activities a week, and more scheduling conflicts to arrange. That’s why time management is an extremely important skill to have in college.

This isn’t meant to scare the potential student – after all, most of what I do each day scheduled is extremely fun. I love practicing, and varsity softball is one of the activities that I committed to giving my time towards. Additionally, meetings and working are something I enjoy, and classes at Case are pretty amazing as well. Here at CWRU, we have amazing resources that help with time management. At the beginning of the semester, I visited ESS, Educational Services for Students, who helped me with a way to manage my time. They helped me make a day-to-day schedule so that I have time for relaxing activities, hanging out with friends, and time to accomplish my school work – all in one week. Having such a resource was an amazing way to learn more about the ways I work best (for example, I make lists of things I need to accomplish by the end of the week, and then break it down by what I need to finish each day), ways that I succeed (by taking notes in class, from my book, and from online resources), and study skills that I sometimes have trouble practicing (like taking breaks at appropriate times, instead of every 15 seconds). ESS is also the way for the Case student to get tutoring. We get 5 free hours a week on campus, which is a lot of tutoring! That means that, as a proactive student, I can schedule in my tutoring for the entire week at the beginning of the week and then add it to my calendar and hopefully succeed!

There are so many resources at Case that will help anyone get the grade they want, learn how to study better, or make sense of their goals and to-do lists – and the best way to find this out is to just take advantage of them.