A Guide to Creating a Study Schedule
One of the best ways to stay on track at university is to create a study schedule for the week ahead. This will ensure you make progress on your most pressing assignments, help you distribute your time appropriately, and prevent procrastination. Creating a study schedule may seem intimidating, but when you’ve done it once, you’ll find it easy to repeat the exercise every week.
1. Block Your Time
Start by splitting each day into blocks. You can immediately fill in the times when you’ll be in class. Follow this with other commitments, such as appointments, office hours, labs, study groups, and extracurriculars. Next, decide what other activities you have other than studying, such as cooking, eating, chores, exercising, and socializing. Once you have all this time blocked, you can add time for studying.
2. Decide You’ll Use Your Study Time
For every hour you spend in class, you should dedicate two or three hours to studying in your own time (the exact amount you need will depend on your workload and the difficulty of the class). Assign blocks of time to a particular class and decide how you’ll specifically use the time. Choose activities according to when you’re most productive and when you prefer to do a certain type of task. For instance, you may be able to concentrate best on writing papers early in the day and like to use your evenings for reading. Right after a class is the ideal time to review your notes.
3. Start with Difficult Tasks
The most important tasks are often also the most difficult, which can lead you to put them off until later. However, leaving challenging tasks until late in the day or week will mean you have less energy to complete them. Plus, you’ll be more stressed knowing you’re pressed for time. For this reason, it’s best to schedule difficult tasks as early in your schedule as possible.
4. Schedule Breaks
Be realistic about how much time you need to study — make sure your schedule includes plenty of other activities, such as time with friends. If possible, avoid back-to-back study sessions. Adding even short breaks can make a big difference to your ability to concentrate.
5. Start Big Projects Early
Big projects have a tendency to take longer than you expect. Avoid needing to pull an all-nighter to finish on time by starting sooner than you think is necessary. Think about how you can divide the project into smaller tasks to help it feel manageable.
6. Designate Time to Create Your Weekly Schedule
Remember to include time in your schedule to create a new schedule for the following week. Sunday evenings tend to be ideal, as you should know what commitments, events, and due dates you’ll have for the upcoming week.
You’ll be able to make the most of your study schedule if you have a quiet place to study at home. This is almost never the case when you’re living on campus. Luckily, there’s a great alternative to Ontario Tech University residence at 17Hundred. You’ll have your own room in an apartment with upgraded furniture and blazing-fast WiFi. Plus, there are multiple study lounges on site for you to use whenever you want a change of scenery. Book a video tour to check out where you could be living.