To me, one of the worst things about high school was the lack of autonomy over your own schedule; you sat in class for 1/3rd of the day, then went to your practices afterward, then crammed in time for your homework at some point once you finally got home before going to bed and doing it all over again. That system (specifically, spending so much time in class every day) is designed in the most rigid way imaginable and doesn’t allow students to set their schedules up in a manner that fits their needs.
Thankfully, college introduces an incredible amount of freedom that changes this. You have almost complete control over your day/week, and it’s one of the biggest reasons I’ve enjoyed my time at college so far. But since you, as a high school student have never had the opportunity to make your own schedule before, how do you even go about it once college starts?
Before move-in, you’ll talk with your advisor to create a class schedule. Personally, I recommend going lighter on the courses for this first semester; you don’t want your first experience at college to be made up of countless deadlines, endless papers, and overbearing readings. Going light also gives you the chance to feel out what a college course is like and gives you some extra free time to dedicate towards homework/studying if you feel like you need that.
Also, when you make your class schedule, you get to choose (to an extent) what times your classes are at. This is really nice and allows you to choose what is most convenient for you, as opposed to the 7:30-2:30 schedule you were forced to follow in high school. Now, this is a controversial opinion, but I recommend taking an early class your first semester. Having an early class forces (or at least, encourages) you to get on a healthy sleep schedule, and it gets you used to waking up early and starting your day at a reasonable hour. You also don’t want to get used to sleeping in too much, because you’re guaranteed to have to take some early classes eventually in college. Getting used to it from the beginning makes the process much easier.
Finally, once your class schedule is set, you get to choose how you’ll spend all of your time that you’re not in class. It might be easy to put a ton of that time towards having fun, but you definitely want to pencil in some dedicated time that you’ll use to get your work done. A generally good tip is to do work or study for a class for an amount of time equal to twice the credits (or semester-hours) that class is worth per week. For example, if your Rhetoric course is worth 3 credits, you’ll want to spend 6 hours a week doing homework or studying for that class. From my experience so far, that rule is sort of flexible, and you’ll learn early on which classes require that level of dedication and which ones don’t.
On one final note, remember that with the pros that come with the increased freedom you get at college, you also take on an extra amount of responsibility. No matter how much time you spend creating a schedule, if you don’t keep yourself responsible and stick to it, you’ll have a hard time handling college courses. So break out your planners, hang up those neat whiteboard calendars that you get from Target, and get scheduling 🙂
