One Tip for Success

David R.

October 2, 2009 - 12:19 PM

One thing I learned shortly after arriving at the University of Oregon is that the development of time management skills is crucial to one's success in college. As young freshman arrive to the U of O they are presented with all kinds of opportunities. Greek life, all the university offered clubs, sports, division one and club, are all calling their names. Because of this it is very easy for them to become too focused on these aspects, and not allocate adequate time to their academic obligations. This became very apparent to me during the fall term of my freshman year, when I was trying to balance being a pledge at the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity, a new member on the U of O's club baseball team, and school, all at the same time. With these two organizations requiring a great deal of time, I quickly realized that I was going to have to create some sort of schedule to mange my time in the best way possible, so that I would have time to participate in these extra curricular activities, and perform well academically as well. During that term I had class at noon everyday, so for the first few weeks, I was admiring how luxurious it was to be able to sleep until eleven everyday. As soon as I became involved in my outside activities, I realized that I would no longer be able to do this. Multiple nights a week during the fall term I would have a two hour baseball practice, followed by a brisk walk/jog up to the fraternity to attend some activity or meeting mandatory of all pledges. This left me little time at night to complete my homework. I began waking up at 9 on most mornings, sometimes earlier, so that I could do the homework that I wouldn't be able to do that night. This system seemed to work quite well, and I was able to achieve a 3.3 GPA during the fall, which I thought was pretty good considering how busy I was.

The spring term has always been the busiest for me, because the spring term is when the baseball season is in full swing. It was even more crucial for me to manage my time during this period. When we went on road trips, which was often, we always drove. We would typically leave Eugene on Friday at about four in the afternoon, and we wouldn't return home until about ten at night on Sunday. And, as you can imagine, It was extremely difficult to do homework while being surrounded by 16 other guys. Because of this, I made sure that I had almost all of my homework completed by friday when we left, so that I wouldn't have to try to do it on sunday night at ten after we had been driving all day. During my sophomore year I took a class for Journalism nick named "info hell." This class requires a 100 page research paper. Long story short, the 100 page project was due on a tuesday, and from the Wednesday to Sunday prior, I was in Las Vegas with the Club Team. I was able to conclude that I probably wasn't going to be doing too much work during that time, given our geographic location. Because of this I made sure that my project was almost entirely done before we left, so that I wasn't swamped with work when I returned. You can be involved in anything and everything at the U of O, as long as you can manage your time. If you can do this, the sky is the limit during your time as a college student.