Roz Wills and Eli Cohen

So yeah…Eli’s been much better about this than me, so it’s my turn to regale you with my little nuggets of wisdom and avoid writing an English paper.

I guess with that leadup, a good thing to discuss might be time management. One of the things that is fantastic about college life is that for most of your classes, you are given total responsibility for getting your work done on time. In some cases (language classes, for example) you have pretty regular assignments; for others, you’re given a syllabus with the plan laid out for you and the words, “Here’s when your papers are due. See you in December.” And the rest of class is just lecture or discussion or whatever and they don’t really remind you again until they tell you to hand them in.

This can be both a blessing and a curse. On the good side, you get to pretty much choose when you do your work, you have a lot more time in which to do it, and you have total responsibility for whether or not your stuff gets turned in on time. On the bad side, you have no reminders, no one will be holding your hand, and you have total responsibility for whether or not your stuff gets turned in on time.

The biggest problem is the temptation to slack off and do everything the night before it’s due, and I won’t deny that a lot of the time that’s what people end up doing. The point is that it’s a choice — you have the option of being really on the ball, being a complete slacker, or finding your own balance in between, and I think it’s one of my favorite parts of college that your schedule is so open that you have the optino to make that choice at all.

I obviously don’t *recommend* being a complete slacker, and you should definitely do your best to keep hold of your schedule and make sure you keep track of everything that’s going on at once. But one of the points of this blog was to talk about some of the things that you are going to find changing during your college experience and this was definitely one for me. There’s a lot more freedom to do whatever you want, and it’s an important thing to keep in mind, as it will change how you look at getting your work done and planning your life and activities.