As college begins, the battle against time ensues. The average student must prioritize time between many roles.
Time management is an essential skill for college survival. The challenge becomes balancing a social life, sleep, studies, family, extracurricular activities and more. These circumstances are common to all students at CBC.
For some students, the demands for time become even more strenuous. Junior Mary Anderson works two jobs and is a mother of two boys. While school is important to her, she says it is not her first priority.
“The challenge is pretty much getting quality time with my kids. When my kids beg for that, I pretty much have to drop everything and give them that time,” says Anderson.
Anderson realizes the importance of education and encourages her children to go to college. The role of mother, employee and student all compete for her attention and time.
Freshman Nathan Fish must divide his attention among many tasks. Fish works at Tacos for Life. As a student working off-campus, his work schedule tends to be sporadic.
“[Balancing school] will definitely become more difficult. Probably because I am going to ask for more hours at work,” Fish says.
Fish also is in worship choir and chamber choir which travel part of the year. He is also involved in activities outside of class. Fish says he values time to himself and wants to find a way to incorporate it into his busy schedule.
So far, Fish says he has managed to make time for homework and keep grades a priority.
Student athletes have different struggles related to time management. For junior Michael Cunningham, the demands of wrestling compete with the demands of school.
“I’m on a very tight schedule. I wake up at 5 in the morning, work out until 7, have classes until 12, work in the dining hall until 2 each day, from 3-5 I practice with the team at our facility, 5-6 is my own time to myself. After that, I work at the library until about 11:30. I average about five hours of sleep,” Cunningham says.
He explains that without a strict schedule, his life would be chaotic. There are many times when he finds that he must overlap studies with traveling with the team or with work at the library. However, Cunningham says he knows that education is essential to a brighter future.
Aaron New, chair of the behavioral science department, said that he knows students have busy lives. He especially recognized that athletes struggle with two main priorities: to keep their scholarships and to keep their coaches and teachers happy.
New says that one of the keys to managing all of the roles of a student is to be “deliberate and purposeful with your priorities.”
New explains that scheduling and prioritizing are vital to success.
“[Many of my students] use the discipline of their jobs to form discipline in coursework,” New says.
Freshmen Nathan Fish, Jarrett Maxwell and junior Jacob Pangle rehearse music during worship choir
Photo by Jessica Sawyer
