How To Manage Your Irregular Uni Schedule
If you're like me, your uni schedule is always changing.
One day you have no classes and nothing to study. The day next, you have 3 assignments, 2 tests and no space in your schedule for any of them.
Tomorrow I have uni from 8am-7pm, not by choice. There are just so many classes and so much coursework to fit into one day.
To manage this irregularly I like to set rules to follow. That way even if everything doesn’t go to plan I still have some control of my week. This is how I manage my irregular uni schedule.
Set a certain amount of hours for uni per week
Uni is not like work. There's no set amount of hours you have to turn up for in a week. Turning up for uni is your choice. But it can be hard to know how much studying to do in a week. You can turn up to all your classes but how much longer should you spend doing self study?
I like to set a certain amount of hours I have to spend on uni in a week. It doesn’t matter if it's Tuesday and I’ve completed everything or it's Friday night and I'm still studying, I just have to get those hours done.
The amount of study I do depends on the time of semester. In the middle of the semester I try to get 5 hours of self study done per course each week. This will vary depending how many lectures or labs I have in the week or if I have any big assignments. I find 5 hours easy to fit into the week but also enough time to make progress on learning.
Have two schedules
I used to feel guilty or annoyed at myself for not getting all my uni done in my week. Assignments took longer to complete or unexpected classes came up. My solution to this is to have two uni schedules.
The first schedule is your ideal plan for the week. I write out this schedule on Sunday or Monday. I put in all my classes for the week. I then fit all my study time and everything else around that. I use the schedule as a guide for the rest of the week and try to follow it as close as I can.
But ideal schedules don’t always go to plan.
That's where the second schedule comes in. This schedule is a record of what you did during the week. In this schedule you note down everything you did during the week as it happened. It's important to make note of the things that didn’t go to plan.
At the end of the week, compare the two schedules. I find it helpful to see where I went wrong during the week. Where I spent too long on one assignment or where I stayed up too late watching tv. In most cases I find that even though my week didn’t go to plan, I got most of my tasks completed and it was a great week. Comparing these two schedules allows me to feel good about my week and allows me to learn, and do better the next week.
Assign each course a day
Uni can be overwhelming. There are so many tasks to complete and no way to prioritise each one. I find assigning each of your courses one day of the week can help you prioritise. On a certain course’s day of the week, you focus on that course and that course only. On that day get all the studying and assignments done for that class.
I have assigned Tuesday as my organic chemistry day. On Tuesday I write up all my notes for that class and study all the new concepts I learned during the week. Then I work on my lab report and try to get most of it completed. I do attend my other lectures that day, but in my spare time I only work on organic chemistry.
If you have 4 uni courses, there will be one day of the week leftover. This day is your “everything day”. It's a time to catch up on everything that hasn’t got done on the course specific days or do any extra study for an important class.
Most of the time the content you learn in uni isn’t too hard. But having to learn so much in a short amount of time is hard. Learning the skills to manage and succeed at uni is the most important thing to learn. I hope this post has helped you to learn a bit about managing an irregular uni schedule.