Being in college is a situation that warrants steady nerves and good time management skills. Indeed, college students are dangerously prone to stress and pressure. What with attending classes, studying, working a part-time job, doing extracurricular activities and finding time for social functions and interactions with family and friends, you might find it hard to balance your time properly.
You cannot afford to concentrate on just one particular activity and lose track with the others. You must distribute your time well and avoid tipping over the precarious balance of activities once you have established them.
It is easy to say that you need to balance your act and find time for every responsibility you have engaged in. Still you need a supreme hold over your time management in order that you can balance your college schedule properly.
Here are several college student tips for time management. These will help you stay balanced and stress-free as you go about your everyday obligations as a college student.
1. You have to set up your goals. In Steven Covey’s "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, he shared a very good story of big rocks in a jar wherein the moral is that you need to set out your topmost priorities in life, or your big rocks, first. This way, you will clearly define your ultimate goal and not have to neglect it once other smaller goals or priorities (small rocks, sand and water, in Covey’s story) pile up to occupy your time.
Once you have put in your ultimate goal, then you can set out to determine particular goals. For example, define your academic goals, extracurricular goals and social activity goals. By doing so, you can determine what you want to accomplish in a day, a week, a whole semester and even a whole school year.
Setting goals will help you become more inclined to follow through with them and check them off one by one as you accomplish each.
2. Set your priorities straight. Once you determined what your ultimate and particular goals are, then you will know what to accomplish. Getting your priorities straight means figuring out which tasks you must accomplish foremost in order to achieve your set goals. You can set up a list everyday on what are the activities that warrant your most attention.
3. Get organized. This is a time management discipline and the key to completing your tasks in a timely manner. Identify each goal you have and determine the schedule when they need to be accomplished. A weekly calendar is called for.
Here, you must list your class schedule, set a few hours of review, mark social events, club meetings, exercise time, and any other necessary activity essential to achieving your ultimate goal. . For each activity, make sure you have included the inclusive period for them and deadlines or due dates of accomplishment.
Look up faithfully in this calendar for you to develop a regular routine while managing to balance your time on numerous tasks.
4. Remember that procrastination is a deficiency. When you allow procrastination to seep into your being, it will cause you to fail miserably in balancing your time. Once you have set out to accomplish a task or plan on doing an activity, by all means, do so. Do not ever neglect a schedule or forget a due date.
Beware of the habit of putting off for tomorrow what you can do today. This kind of attitude will result to stress and excessive pressure on your part, which is not healthy. 5. Make use of each extra minute wisely. You can accomplish small tasks during some situations when you find yourself with nothing to do, like waiting for the bus or sitting idly in between classes. These circumstances are good opportunity to accomplish simple tasks that will constitute the completion of larger tasks.
6. Identify the time of day when you know you are most productive. By identifying the time when you have more energy to work, you will know when to start and finish challenging or demanding tasks.
Meanwhile, during the time when you have less energy to work, dedicate them to less challenging jobs. Implement this time management strategy and see how you will get more tasks accomplished in each day.
Develop a well-maintained time management plan involving these tips and you will achieve better time management skills as you mature. You will also become a balanced all-around college student!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
College Students and Time Management
You all know how difficult it is to balance your studies and other activities in school, especially in examination weeks. It seems like you should do everything all at once. Students, especially college students, find it very hard to balance their hectic schedule.
If you are a college student, there are probably many things to do in school that you almost have no more time to study or miss spending time with your friends. This can be very frustrating and could lead you to get bored on your studies.
Knowing how to balance your time can and will work to your advantage. You can perform all your school activities and spend time with your friends when you know how to manage your schedule or time.
Having time management skills is very important for college students. With effective planning of your schedule, you will not get bored on your studies.
Exam weeks are probably the most hectic schedule you will ever have as a college student. You will be very busy on your studies and need lots of time with your books. However, there are also activities you need to do outside your school like, going to the laundry, or driving to town to buy groceries or eat.
If you listen to music while you are driving then you can study while driving by listening to audio study tapes or CD’s. You can record your entire professor’s lecture in a cassette and use them for study purposes.
This method is very efficient and very useful. Just name all tapes about the topic and date. This will be easier to understand than reading.
You can also try to attend seminars where speakers can teach and advise you on time management. Remember that scheduling and time management is important for you as a college student and as an individual.
Just imagine missing an important appointment and deadlines for projects, it can be very frustrating and can cost you your grades and social life. Imagine the frustration this will give you, that is why time management is very important.
Time management does not necessarily mean that you have to study more and socialize less. It will give you an idea on how to balance both and how to make use of your time that will fit your need.
Time management will also show you how to set your priorities straight. Some college students tend to forget about their important duties and priorities in school and ends up getting frustrated.
To start managing your time you first need to know how much time you spend on each specific activities you do.
First, you have to take note of all the activities you do for a week and list down how much time you spend on each typical activity. Doing this will help you prepare more efficiently on a specific subject or class of the day, and it will also help you identify which activity is a waste of time.
Set more time studying on subjects you know that you have difficulty on. If you think a particular subject is easy for you, try to take one hour of study time from that particular subject and add that extra hour on more difficult subjects.
Try to stick to your schedules as much as possible. College students are easily tempted by social activities like gathering of friends in a bar for a drink. Learn to say no to your friends. This is very important to avoid failing in classes. If you are invited on a school night to go out and have fun, tell your acquaintance that you are studying and could not afford to fail in the particular class.
Sometimes, it is very tempting that you should join your friends. You might think that you can pass up studying for today and you can always study the next day. Students make this common mistake college, if your schedule says that you should study, and then you have to study. Of course, you need to socialize, but do it in your free time.
Knowing proper management of your time as a college student can further help you in your future as a professional.
With this knowledge, you can easily adjust to the world of offices and work. Always remember that there are times for studying and there are times for having fun.
If you are a college student, there are probably many things to do in school that you almost have no more time to study or miss spending time with your friends. This can be very frustrating and could lead you to get bored on your studies.
Knowing how to balance your time can and will work to your advantage. You can perform all your school activities and spend time with your friends when you know how to manage your schedule or time.
Having time management skills is very important for college students. With effective planning of your schedule, you will not get bored on your studies.
Exam weeks are probably the most hectic schedule you will ever have as a college student. You will be very busy on your studies and need lots of time with your books. However, there are also activities you need to do outside your school like, going to the laundry, or driving to town to buy groceries or eat.
If you listen to music while you are driving then you can study while driving by listening to audio study tapes or CD’s. You can record your entire professor’s lecture in a cassette and use them for study purposes.
This method is very efficient and very useful. Just name all tapes about the topic and date. This will be easier to understand than reading.
You can also try to attend seminars where speakers can teach and advise you on time management. Remember that scheduling and time management is important for you as a college student and as an individual.
Just imagine missing an important appointment and deadlines for projects, it can be very frustrating and can cost you your grades and social life. Imagine the frustration this will give you, that is why time management is very important.
Time management does not necessarily mean that you have to study more and socialize less. It will give you an idea on how to balance both and how to make use of your time that will fit your need.
Time management will also show you how to set your priorities straight. Some college students tend to forget about their important duties and priorities in school and ends up getting frustrated.
To start managing your time you first need to know how much time you spend on each specific activities you do.
First, you have to take note of all the activities you do for a week and list down how much time you spend on each typical activity. Doing this will help you prepare more efficiently on a specific subject or class of the day, and it will also help you identify which activity is a waste of time.
Set more time studying on subjects you know that you have difficulty on. If you think a particular subject is easy for you, try to take one hour of study time from that particular subject and add that extra hour on more difficult subjects.
Try to stick to your schedules as much as possible. College students are easily tempted by social activities like gathering of friends in a bar for a drink. Learn to say no to your friends. This is very important to avoid failing in classes. If you are invited on a school night to go out and have fun, tell your acquaintance that you are studying and could not afford to fail in the particular class.
Sometimes, it is very tempting that you should join your friends. You might think that you can pass up studying for today and you can always study the next day. Students make this common mistake college, if your schedule says that you should study, and then you have to study. Of course, you need to socialize, but do it in your free time.
Knowing proper management of your time as a college student can further help you in your future as a professional.
With this knowledge, you can easily adjust to the world of offices and work. Always remember that there are times for studying and there are times for having fun.
College Students, Strengthen your Time Management Skills Research!
It is but natural for college students to find ways of strengthening their skills in time management. It is an essential aspect for them to achieve a successful life. College students are aware of time management skills through research and practical means.
Time management is an important skill for college students because they typically need to juggle many different activities in a rather unstructured environment.
Many college students struggle to maintain a productive and balanced time in order to accomplish all their goals and the tasks involved to achieve them. Most college students lives evolve in attending classes, working a part-time (some even full-time) job, allocating quality time for families and friends, and striving to find time for their own needs.
With proper time management skills and researching effective methods and system, these ongoing tasks will not become heavy burden for college students.
Once college students go to a class with a positive attitude and still manage to accomplish their other tasks with ease, their time are spent wisely and their whole disposition will turn out positively. If they lack time management skills, they will likely procrastinate, become too stressed out and pressured then end the day in a sour mood with nothing accomplished.
Now do you see the importance of knowing time management skills? If you have little or no experience in managing your time do a time management skills research. If you cannot do this, you can also talk with an accomplished professional who is experienced in time management.
In your part-time or full-time job, you are also likely to meet someone who can support you and share with you valuable time management system. You can even go outside your campus and research on how fellow college students in other universities and community colleges struggle with time management.
There are time management courses designed for college students that can provide a good foundation developing the time management skills, strategies, tools and methods. This will help strengthen college student’s resolve to create an effective time management system to aide them through achieving their life’s goals.
College students can also research on other time management skills resources online for further knowledge on how to create significant and efficient time management skills.
In the course of your time management skills research, you are likely to learn of making plans. Plans are the steps in setting up a time management system according to your college routine, whether academic or non-academic. Plans may, can, will, and has failed, though. Still, knowing ample time management strategies can teach you how to be flexible in putting up an action plan, scheduling and listing of priorities tasks.
Setting your priorities straight is also an important aspect that you need to learn and research about in time management. As a college student, you need to set priorities and work hard to achieve your goals. Doing this will further strengthen your skills and even your character and resolve.
College students are often struggling, simply because many of them procrastinate, or have difficulties in a course and refuse to ask for help. Do not fall victim to the habit of putting off for tomorrow what you can do today.
Alternatively, proper research of time management skills will also give you more ideas on how to manage your other affairs outside of college. These affairs include social entertainment activities with old and new friends.
Failure to balance out your college student activities and your social activities outside of college can distract your mind and lead you to over-choice and over-commitment. This will tip the precarious balance you are struggling to maintain.
You can strengthen your skills by looking at the situation and realizing that these distractions are mishaps waiting to happen. Do not be proud enough to reject help. Refusing assistance or refusing to admit that you need assistance will lead you to a road of disaster.
You will also find out in your research about time management skills for college students that procrastination is not an option if you are striving for success. Procrastination is a considerable waste of time and energy. It will only pile you up with additional tasks you already had on your plate.
Finally, through research and healthy practice of time management tips, you will learn that the key to strengthen your time management skills is to move obstacles out of your way. You have to run over the outward obstacles head on without having to suffer complications.
As a college student, you need to further your research and improve your time management skills. Learn it well by doing and you find out that experience is a good teacher.
Time management is an important skill for college students because they typically need to juggle many different activities in a rather unstructured environment.
Many college students struggle to maintain a productive and balanced time in order to accomplish all their goals and the tasks involved to achieve them. Most college students lives evolve in attending classes, working a part-time (some even full-time) job, allocating quality time for families and friends, and striving to find time for their own needs.
With proper time management skills and researching effective methods and system, these ongoing tasks will not become heavy burden for college students.
Once college students go to a class with a positive attitude and still manage to accomplish their other tasks with ease, their time are spent wisely and their whole disposition will turn out positively. If they lack time management skills, they will likely procrastinate, become too stressed out and pressured then end the day in a sour mood with nothing accomplished.
Now do you see the importance of knowing time management skills? If you have little or no experience in managing your time do a time management skills research. If you cannot do this, you can also talk with an accomplished professional who is experienced in time management.
In your part-time or full-time job, you are also likely to meet someone who can support you and share with you valuable time management system. You can even go outside your campus and research on how fellow college students in other universities and community colleges struggle with time management.
There are time management courses designed for college students that can provide a good foundation developing the time management skills, strategies, tools and methods. This will help strengthen college student’s resolve to create an effective time management system to aide them through achieving their life’s goals.
College students can also research on other time management skills resources online for further knowledge on how to create significant and efficient time management skills.
In the course of your time management skills research, you are likely to learn of making plans. Plans are the steps in setting up a time management system according to your college routine, whether academic or non-academic. Plans may, can, will, and has failed, though. Still, knowing ample time management strategies can teach you how to be flexible in putting up an action plan, scheduling and listing of priorities tasks.
Setting your priorities straight is also an important aspect that you need to learn and research about in time management. As a college student, you need to set priorities and work hard to achieve your goals. Doing this will further strengthen your skills and even your character and resolve.
College students are often struggling, simply because many of them procrastinate, or have difficulties in a course and refuse to ask for help. Do not fall victim to the habit of putting off for tomorrow what you can do today.
Alternatively, proper research of time management skills will also give you more ideas on how to manage your other affairs outside of college. These affairs include social entertainment activities with old and new friends.
Failure to balance out your college student activities and your social activities outside of college can distract your mind and lead you to over-choice and over-commitment. This will tip the precarious balance you are struggling to maintain.
You can strengthen your skills by looking at the situation and realizing that these distractions are mishaps waiting to happen. Do not be proud enough to reject help. Refusing assistance or refusing to admit that you need assistance will lead you to a road of disaster.
You will also find out in your research about time management skills for college students that procrastination is not an option if you are striving for success. Procrastination is a considerable waste of time and energy. It will only pile you up with additional tasks you already had on your plate.
Finally, through research and healthy practice of time management tips, you will learn that the key to strengthen your time management skills is to move obstacles out of your way. You have to run over the outward obstacles head on without having to suffer complications.
As a college student, you need to further your research and improve your time management skills. Learn it well by doing and you find out that experience is a good teacher.
College Time Management- Access to a Good Career
“Son, remember that the journey to a thousand miles always begin with a first step.”
James is getting irritated with this usual reprimand of his father. Every morning when he wakes up late, instead of scolding him, the father always utters this friendly advice to his son.
Are you like James? Wake up to reality dear college students.
College life is very different from spending your time in high school. It is the point when people are expecting much from you. You are bearing greater responsibility.
It is a period of maturity, you are accountable in every decision you take.
What do you think is the greatest factor that hinders your everyday task as a college student? Is it peer pressure or the burden of school projects?
Most of the students are complaining in the duration of their college life. It seems too long for them. They have many things to do. Group discussion today, project tomorrow and examination the next day, all these sometime make you freak out.
Have you ever had a time of reflecting within you? Did you ever ask yourself about the real reason behind the problems you encounter?
Well, you had better do so. Perhaps, this is the time for you to assess yourself and make a difference.
The reason behind all the problems that you encounter during your college life falls on one key factor, time management. It is most important than what you think.
Managing your time properly is just associated with your dedication and commitment. If you do so, it will simply mean that you are starting to become more responsible individual.
Time management is a very essential practice for every college students. This will help you to lessen the pressure you feel. This will also prevent you from cramming. It will make things work lighter for you, little by little.
Here are some tips for you to manage your time accurately:
1. Be organized; make a timetable.
When you are just getting started, this is a bit time consuming. You need to provide yourself with a handy notebook where you can place the date, time and your scheduled activity for the day.
This will teach you to become organize. You can allot your time properly. If there are necessary adjustments that you will do, at least you can easily check it in your timetable.
2. Be goal driven- tack a goal for every activity.
There is always a time for enjoyment with your peers. However, in every activity that you do make sure that you are tracking a particular goal.
Every move that you take should be base on your personal objective. This will make you grow as a person.
3. Set your priorities.
Important activities should be settled first above other minor actions. If you have examination tomorrow and it was the birthday party of your friend, better go on with your exam first.
You can ask your friend to go out maybe on the weekends. If he is really a true friend for you, he will understand you.
Your priorities will also be reflected on your timetable. Your entire schedule that can be set aside should be place at the bottom. Usually, for a college student the common activities that you need to prioritize are those that concern your school.
Those are just simple tips for you. The kind of life that you will have in the future will depend upon you. If you continue to mismanage your time, expect that you will also have a lesser chance to succeed.
You must grab all the opportunities offered for you in your college life. Make use of every second that you have resourcefully. This will serve as your initial step in tracking a good future.
Time management is your doorway to success. This is your first pace towards the thousand miles. Do not be annoyed when your parents are scolding you when you are always late. They always know what the best is for you. This is for your own sake.
Keep in mind that whatever you are performing now will determine the kind of person that you will become in the future.
James is getting irritated with this usual reprimand of his father. Every morning when he wakes up late, instead of scolding him, the father always utters this friendly advice to his son.
Are you like James? Wake up to reality dear college students.
College life is very different from spending your time in high school. It is the point when people are expecting much from you. You are bearing greater responsibility.
It is a period of maturity, you are accountable in every decision you take.
What do you think is the greatest factor that hinders your everyday task as a college student? Is it peer pressure or the burden of school projects?
Most of the students are complaining in the duration of their college life. It seems too long for them. They have many things to do. Group discussion today, project tomorrow and examination the next day, all these sometime make you freak out.
Have you ever had a time of reflecting within you? Did you ever ask yourself about the real reason behind the problems you encounter?
Well, you had better do so. Perhaps, this is the time for you to assess yourself and make a difference.
The reason behind all the problems that you encounter during your college life falls on one key factor, time management. It is most important than what you think.
Managing your time properly is just associated with your dedication and commitment. If you do so, it will simply mean that you are starting to become more responsible individual.
Time management is a very essential practice for every college students. This will help you to lessen the pressure you feel. This will also prevent you from cramming. It will make things work lighter for you, little by little.
Here are some tips for you to manage your time accurately:
1. Be organized; make a timetable.
When you are just getting started, this is a bit time consuming. You need to provide yourself with a handy notebook where you can place the date, time and your scheduled activity for the day.
This will teach you to become organize. You can allot your time properly. If there are necessary adjustments that you will do, at least you can easily check it in your timetable.
2. Be goal driven- tack a goal for every activity.
There is always a time for enjoyment with your peers. However, in every activity that you do make sure that you are tracking a particular goal.
Every move that you take should be base on your personal objective. This will make you grow as a person.
3. Set your priorities.
Important activities should be settled first above other minor actions. If you have examination tomorrow and it was the birthday party of your friend, better go on with your exam first.
You can ask your friend to go out maybe on the weekends. If he is really a true friend for you, he will understand you.
Your priorities will also be reflected on your timetable. Your entire schedule that can be set aside should be place at the bottom. Usually, for a college student the common activities that you need to prioritize are those that concern your school.
Those are just simple tips for you. The kind of life that you will have in the future will depend upon you. If you continue to mismanage your time, expect that you will also have a lesser chance to succeed.
You must grab all the opportunities offered for you in your college life. Make use of every second that you have resourcefully. This will serve as your initial step in tracking a good future.
Time management is your doorway to success. This is your first pace towards the thousand miles. Do not be annoyed when your parents are scolding you when you are always late. They always know what the best is for you. This is for your own sake.
Keep in mind that whatever you are performing now will determine the kind of person that you will become in the future.
College Students’ Time for Study and New Friends: Balance Them Out Nicely
College students really have a time of their lives during their university or college years. It is a time when there is a whirlwind of activity, piles of obligations and responsibilities and an advent of fresh faces and personalities to meet.
Do not think that once you become a college student you are deprived of making new friends in favor of study and work. If your goal in life is to successfully finish your college degree and become a professional in the career you chose, then it is doubly important to gain new acquaintances. These new associations will be a great help in achieving your goal.
First, new college friends are the ones who would primarily understand the pressure you are going through. They can be a great help when it comes to sharing lecture notes and project perspectives. They can also introduce you to new activities, which will serve as stress busters.
While your old friends are worth treasuring and still on hand for traditional activities you have shared over the years, new friends in college will pave new avenues for much improved college social life.
However, this does not mean that you will have to spend the whole lot of your time hanging out on social functions with them. Between your goal of making good as a college student and meeting new friends, you need a good time management plan in order to keep track of your foremost responsibilities.
We all know that new friends mean new social commitments, another addition to your college class schedules, important dates and other social functions with old friends. Sometimes, if you fail in efficiently setting up a time management plan, you might find yourself drifting off from one social activity to the next. It will get that way until it time gets too crowded to permit more time for browsing lecture notes and reading materials, accomplishing your projects and reviewing for exams.
Indeed, the advent of new friends for college students may mean incessant interruptions and sets awry your carefully planned schedule.
Here are several time management tips to prevent you from heading off to the destructive path of carelessness and jovial abandon.
1. Use a time chart as a tool in finding the best time for different types of activities. Since as a college student, you have a unique time management challenge in certain portions of your schedule, you also need to have a more disciplined time management tracking. One feature of the uniqueness of your schedule is the fixed classes and ample free time in between each. Rest is also much wide open, allowing you to commit to other social endeavors with friends.
As a college student, you can avoid getting swamped up with not-so-important commitments by having a time chart to help you add some additional structure to your schedule. You can base this time chart according to the different time and different types of activities.
The time chart will help you discover your peak times for mental concentration and studying. You will have to schedule study hours for your most difficult classes during these peak times.
Once you have written this off in your chart, you will know that you cannot be available for any other activity. You can decline politely from invitations by new college friends, then.
Maintaining a time chart can also help you balance your schedules. Avoid focusing much of your time just studying and not getting out of your way to make new friends. As much as possible a proper balance of study and leisure is needed to keep your mind and body alert and receptive to learning.
2. Do not indulge yourself in a common time management problem called, over-choice. College students can choose among many different activities.
Understandably, it is natural to become more inclined in a certain activity though it does not have significance whatsoever on gaining your goal in life. Even if it would mean meeting new friends, things that will cause you to lose priority are not good.
3. Remember that every time you take on something, like going out with your new friends to an excessive degree, you are automatically rejecting everything else you could have done with that time.
That’s why, aside from over-choice, guard against over-commitment and the overwhelming attempt to do too much.
Your college life as a student can effectively function if there is a significant amount of interaction with new friends. Nevertheless, do not overdo yourself. Remember the important time management tips and balance your commitments according to what is necessary to achieve your ultimate goal in life.
Do not think that once you become a college student you are deprived of making new friends in favor of study and work. If your goal in life is to successfully finish your college degree and become a professional in the career you chose, then it is doubly important to gain new acquaintances. These new associations will be a great help in achieving your goal.
First, new college friends are the ones who would primarily understand the pressure you are going through. They can be a great help when it comes to sharing lecture notes and project perspectives. They can also introduce you to new activities, which will serve as stress busters.
While your old friends are worth treasuring and still on hand for traditional activities you have shared over the years, new friends in college will pave new avenues for much improved college social life.
However, this does not mean that you will have to spend the whole lot of your time hanging out on social functions with them. Between your goal of making good as a college student and meeting new friends, you need a good time management plan in order to keep track of your foremost responsibilities.
We all know that new friends mean new social commitments, another addition to your college class schedules, important dates and other social functions with old friends. Sometimes, if you fail in efficiently setting up a time management plan, you might find yourself drifting off from one social activity to the next. It will get that way until it time gets too crowded to permit more time for browsing lecture notes and reading materials, accomplishing your projects and reviewing for exams.
Indeed, the advent of new friends for college students may mean incessant interruptions and sets awry your carefully planned schedule.
Here are several time management tips to prevent you from heading off to the destructive path of carelessness and jovial abandon.
1. Use a time chart as a tool in finding the best time for different types of activities. Since as a college student, you have a unique time management challenge in certain portions of your schedule, you also need to have a more disciplined time management tracking. One feature of the uniqueness of your schedule is the fixed classes and ample free time in between each. Rest is also much wide open, allowing you to commit to other social endeavors with friends.
As a college student, you can avoid getting swamped up with not-so-important commitments by having a time chart to help you add some additional structure to your schedule. You can base this time chart according to the different time and different types of activities.
The time chart will help you discover your peak times for mental concentration and studying. You will have to schedule study hours for your most difficult classes during these peak times.
Once you have written this off in your chart, you will know that you cannot be available for any other activity. You can decline politely from invitations by new college friends, then.
Maintaining a time chart can also help you balance your schedules. Avoid focusing much of your time just studying and not getting out of your way to make new friends. As much as possible a proper balance of study and leisure is needed to keep your mind and body alert and receptive to learning.
2. Do not indulge yourself in a common time management problem called, over-choice. College students can choose among many different activities.
Understandably, it is natural to become more inclined in a certain activity though it does not have significance whatsoever on gaining your goal in life. Even if it would mean meeting new friends, things that will cause you to lose priority are not good.
3. Remember that every time you take on something, like going out with your new friends to an excessive degree, you are automatically rejecting everything else you could have done with that time.
That’s why, aside from over-choice, guard against over-commitment and the overwhelming attempt to do too much.
Your college life as a student can effectively function if there is a significant amount of interaction with new friends. Nevertheless, do not overdo yourself. Remember the important time management tips and balance your commitments according to what is necessary to achieve your ultimate goal in life.
Monday, May 12, 2008
So-Called Education Intentionally Dumbs Down Americans
Sunday, May 11, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson
As Mike Adams' wonderful analysis of the current state of the world shows in "The Biofuels Scam, Food Shortages and the Coming Collapse of the Human Population" (http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html) , something is deeply wrong in America and the world. It's as if the vast majority of people have given up. Given up caring. Given up thinking. Given up common sense. Given up everything but gluttony.
But why? What has brought us to such a state? Could it have just "happened"? Or was it intentional? To call it intentional, it's necessary to demonstrate planning. Fortunately, John Taylor Gatto, who was once named Teacher of the Year in both New York City and New York State, has explained what happened, when it started, and why.
Perhaps you were like me as a child. You loved learning. You'd spend hours and hours studying something of interest. Yet, you hated school. It was unutterably boring. It was rigid. It stifled original thought, even punished for it. Give any answer other than the prescribed one, even if you had clearly demonstrated a full understanding of the subject, and you were given a bad grade. Disrupt the class –- meaning that you questioned the teacher –- and you could expect time in detention, even more grinding boredom. Standing out from your classmates made you "different". You'd be ostracized by the other kids. The school itself supported such behavior. It sponsored things like cheerleading, another term for a popularity contest, where the kids from the right families were nearly always elected.
To survive through it all, you either had to get out –- a daunting prospect for a child –- or stuff your creativity, your spark. You probably thought of yourself as an oddball. After all, it was you who was different from all the others. It probably never dawned on you that most of the other kids were just as miserable –- and just as fearful of speaking out. It probably never dawned on you that many of your teachers felt much the same way. That is, they did if they really wanted to teach.
What Created This Monstrous "Education" System?
We think of our school system as something that has always existed. The reality is quite different. In the U.S. expecting all children to go to school a certain amount of time every day for a certain number of months and a certain number of years didn't come into being until the early twentieth century, 1905-1915.
Hardly any of the greats of American history went through much formal schooling. That includes Thomas Jefferson. George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Edison. Herbert Melville. Mark Twain. Margaret Mead. Admiral Farragut. And so many more.
Obviously, formal secondary schooling, at least of the type we now have, is not a requisite for learning, creativity, or greatness.
Let's ask who benefits when the great mass of people becomes complaisant, unable to think, unable to entertain themselves, and interested only in possessions. The answer is simple: corporations. When the mass of children are forced to go through a system that destroys creativity and rewards group-think, they are prepared to fill their predestined roles in a lockstep workforce and unthinking consumption corps.
What are Americans good at? Buying, of course. Having the latest and greatest of... well, of anything and everything, as long as the media tells them they should have it. It's how Americans measure themselves, how they determine their success. Who cares if someone can carry on a good conversation about the state of the world? Who even wants to listen? It's so depressing. Let's talk about the cool super-fast car that Joe just bought or the fancy house Jim and Mary are getting for no money down!
Go into any supermarket and look at what's surrounding the checkout aisles. Publications -- if you can call them that -- telling about the clothing of some super model or the antics of an actor or actress, anything but factors that will affect them, like how the planet is heating up because of overuse of natural resources, overpopulation, over-consumption, burning fossil fuels, and all the myriad of other things that really matter. Pseudo-food, filled with petroleum products, sugar, sweeteners as bad as or worse than sugar, colorings to make them appealing, hydrolyzed this and phosphorylated that -- virtually nothing that nourishes. And the junk sells!
The only beneficiaries of this purchasing rampage are those who own and run corporations. The masses of people work in them at soul-numbing, mind and health destroying jobs. Running on treadmills at just the proper, accepted speed. Wearing just the right fashion and makeup. Commuting in latest style vehicles, purchased for that reason. Returning to the overpriced homes that they'll never have the time to enjoy just so they can say they live in them, since they'll almost never actually own them. Doing jobs that promote the destruction of their environment and their health for these dubious benefits. Unable to think that there might be another way.
As John Gatto wrote in Harper's, "There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy
A Brief History of Modern Schools in the U.S.
To achieve the needed unthinking production workers and consumers, the major corporatists of the late 1800's, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller, pushed for compulsory schooling of the masses. It was, of course, sold as being for the benefit of the people.
Prussian culture, the predecessor of 20th century Germany, created a system of schooling designed to produce nonthinking masses. It was this system that supplied the concepts for America's compulsive pseudo-education of the masses.
The Prussian system was first introduced in the United States during the 1840's. In 1918, Alexander Inglis, for whom a Harvard lecture hall was named, published the definitive book, Principles of Secondary Education, which defines modern schooling. He specifically stated that its purpose is to support a command economy and society. This book describes modern "education's" design.
James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard from 1933 through 1953, wrote The Child, the Parent, and the State in 1959. In it, he delineates and approves of Alexander Inglis's ideas to inform other members of his class that following this system of training is the best possible way to keep the masses in their place. He stated that the creation of the American school system was a "coup de main", a surprise action against the enemy, in this case, the general American populace. He further stated that not continuing with the same type of training of the American public would result in, "A successful counterrevolution."
Before 1910, there were almost no high schools in the United States. A seemingly grassroots movement to open public high schools resulted in massive production of them between 1910 and 1940, at which point it became routine, and even compulsory, to attend high school.
One should always be cautious at the concept of a grassroots movement. As we often see nowadays in patient support groups, an apparent groundswell of support for something, as often as not, is the result of an influx of money and propaganda from a wealthy, usually corporate, source. In the case of public eduction, it was manufacturers in need of two things: Dumbed-down masses as cogs in their production facilities and sponges to soak up the message that they needed to buy the dross pouring out of them.
How Compulsory Schooling Is Designed to Work
According to Inglis, there are six functions filled by the new mandatory "education" system:
1. Adjustive: Creating reflexive, fixed responses, as opposed to creative thinking.
2. Integrative: Making children conform, making them be predictable and easy to manipulate in a large labor force.
3. Diagnosis and Direction: Schools are intended to identify and enforce each child's role in society and the labor force.
4. Differentiation: Once diagnosed, children are trained as far as their role in labor has been determined.
5. Selection: Children are tagged with punishments, poor grades, poor classroom placement, and any other humiliation that can be thought of. The purpose is to separate out those the system determines to be unfit and allow them to be treated as inferiors by the rest.
6. Preparation (called propaedeutic by Inglis): Those few deemed to be leaders, often only by their birth, are taught to be the controllers of the masses described in the other five functions.
In the 1922 edition of Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley, a textbook editor at Houghton Miflin, wrote:
Our schools are... factories in the raw products are to be shaped and fashioned... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.
There you have it, from one of the major textbook editors during the buildup of secondary schools in the United States -- a clear, concise statement of the purpose of those schools.
As John Gatto wrote:
We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
What it All Means
Today, there is so little critical thinking that almost anything can be sold. In the arena of health, it's now possible for purported research to make claims that vitamins are unhealthy. And people believe it! Immunization programs that cause death for diseases that carry little harm to healthy people, such as RotaTeq for gastroenteritis in children. And parents rush out to have their children inoculated! Agrobusiness pig growers destroy entire watersheds, even to the point of creating dead zones in the ocean. And hardly anyone cares.
This is what has been wrought by our anti-education school system. We are seeing what happens when a populace has been so dumbed-down and made complaisant that the only thing they're capable of doing is shop.
"Shop 'til you drop" has another, far more sinister meaning than usually intended. We're in the early stages of a rapidly accelerating collapse of civilization –- all brought on by a population so blind and complaisant it couldn't see the obvious: What can't continue won't continue.
Reference:
Harper's Magazine, September 2003, "Against School", by John Taylor Gatto. Reprinted at (http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm) .
The LINK, Homeschool News Network, Vol 5, Issue 6, "A Conspiracy Against Ourselves", by John Taylor Gatto.
based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need."
Fellow, British Institute of Homeopathy
Gaia Therapy (http://www.gaia-therapy.com)
The author is a homeopath who became concerned with medically-induced harm as a result of her own experiences and those of family members. She says that allopathic medicine is the arena that best describes the motto, "Buyer beware."
Iatrogenic disease is illness, disability, and death caused by medical practice. It is common, resulting in huge costs to society and individuals. It's possible - even common - to suffer an iatrogenic illness without realizing its source. Heidi Stevenson provides information about medically-induced disease and disability so members of the public can protect themselves.
As Mike Adams' wonderful analysis of the current state of the world shows in "The Biofuels Scam, Food Shortages and the Coming Collapse of the Human Population" (http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html) , something is deeply wrong in America and the world. It's as if the vast majority of people have given up. Given up caring. Given up thinking. Given up common sense. Given up everything but gluttony.
But why? What has brought us to such a state? Could it have just "happened"? Or was it intentional? To call it intentional, it's necessary to demonstrate planning. Fortunately, John Taylor Gatto, who was once named Teacher of the Year in both New York City and New York State, has explained what happened, when it started, and why.
Perhaps you were like me as a child. You loved learning. You'd spend hours and hours studying something of interest. Yet, you hated school. It was unutterably boring. It was rigid. It stifled original thought, even punished for it. Give any answer other than the prescribed one, even if you had clearly demonstrated a full understanding of the subject, and you were given a bad grade. Disrupt the class –- meaning that you questioned the teacher –- and you could expect time in detention, even more grinding boredom. Standing out from your classmates made you "different". You'd be ostracized by the other kids. The school itself supported such behavior. It sponsored things like cheerleading, another term for a popularity contest, where the kids from the right families were nearly always elected.
To survive through it all, you either had to get out –- a daunting prospect for a child –- or stuff your creativity, your spark. You probably thought of yourself as an oddball. After all, it was you who was different from all the others. It probably never dawned on you that most of the other kids were just as miserable –- and just as fearful of speaking out. It probably never dawned on you that many of your teachers felt much the same way. That is, they did if they really wanted to teach.
What Created This Monstrous "Education" System?
We think of our school system as something that has always existed. The reality is quite different. In the U.S. expecting all children to go to school a certain amount of time every day for a certain number of months and a certain number of years didn't come into being until the early twentieth century, 1905-1915.
Hardly any of the greats of American history went through much formal schooling. That includes Thomas Jefferson. George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Edison. Herbert Melville. Mark Twain. Margaret Mead. Admiral Farragut. And so many more.
Obviously, formal secondary schooling, at least of the type we now have, is not a requisite for learning, creativity, or greatness.
Let's ask who benefits when the great mass of people becomes complaisant, unable to think, unable to entertain themselves, and interested only in possessions. The answer is simple: corporations. When the mass of children are forced to go through a system that destroys creativity and rewards group-think, they are prepared to fill their predestined roles in a lockstep workforce and unthinking consumption corps.
What are Americans good at? Buying, of course. Having the latest and greatest of... well, of anything and everything, as long as the media tells them they should have it. It's how Americans measure themselves, how they determine their success. Who cares if someone can carry on a good conversation about the state of the world? Who even wants to listen? It's so depressing. Let's talk about the cool super-fast car that Joe just bought or the fancy house Jim and Mary are getting for no money down!
Go into any supermarket and look at what's surrounding the checkout aisles. Publications -- if you can call them that -- telling about the clothing of some super model or the antics of an actor or actress, anything but factors that will affect them, like how the planet is heating up because of overuse of natural resources, overpopulation, over-consumption, burning fossil fuels, and all the myriad of other things that really matter. Pseudo-food, filled with petroleum products, sugar, sweeteners as bad as or worse than sugar, colorings to make them appealing, hydrolyzed this and phosphorylated that -- virtually nothing that nourishes. And the junk sells!
The only beneficiaries of this purchasing rampage are those who own and run corporations. The masses of people work in them at soul-numbing, mind and health destroying jobs. Running on treadmills at just the proper, accepted speed. Wearing just the right fashion and makeup. Commuting in latest style vehicles, purchased for that reason. Returning to the overpriced homes that they'll never have the time to enjoy just so they can say they live in them, since they'll almost never actually own them. Doing jobs that promote the destruction of their environment and their health for these dubious benefits. Unable to think that there might be another way.
As John Gatto wrote in Harper's, "There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy
A Brief History of Modern Schools in the U.S.
To achieve the needed unthinking production workers and consumers, the major corporatists of the late 1800's, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller, pushed for compulsory schooling of the masses. It was, of course, sold as being for the benefit of the people.
Prussian culture, the predecessor of 20th century Germany, created a system of schooling designed to produce nonthinking masses. It was this system that supplied the concepts for America's compulsive pseudo-education of the masses.
The Prussian system was first introduced in the United States during the 1840's. In 1918, Alexander Inglis, for whom a Harvard lecture hall was named, published the definitive book, Principles of Secondary Education, which defines modern schooling. He specifically stated that its purpose is to support a command economy and society. This book describes modern "education's" design.
James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard from 1933 through 1953, wrote The Child, the Parent, and the State in 1959. In it, he delineates and approves of Alexander Inglis's ideas to inform other members of his class that following this system of training is the best possible way to keep the masses in their place. He stated that the creation of the American school system was a "coup de main", a surprise action against the enemy, in this case, the general American populace. He further stated that not continuing with the same type of training of the American public would result in, "A successful counterrevolution."
Before 1910, there were almost no high schools in the United States. A seemingly grassroots movement to open public high schools resulted in massive production of them between 1910 and 1940, at which point it became routine, and even compulsory, to attend high school.
One should always be cautious at the concept of a grassroots movement. As we often see nowadays in patient support groups, an apparent groundswell of support for something, as often as not, is the result of an influx of money and propaganda from a wealthy, usually corporate, source. In the case of public eduction, it was manufacturers in need of two things: Dumbed-down masses as cogs in their production facilities and sponges to soak up the message that they needed to buy the dross pouring out of them.
How Compulsory Schooling Is Designed to Work
According to Inglis, there are six functions filled by the new mandatory "education" system:
1. Adjustive: Creating reflexive, fixed responses, as opposed to creative thinking.
2. Integrative: Making children conform, making them be predictable and easy to manipulate in a large labor force.
3. Diagnosis and Direction: Schools are intended to identify and enforce each child's role in society and the labor force.
4. Differentiation: Once diagnosed, children are trained as far as their role in labor has been determined.
5. Selection: Children are tagged with punishments, poor grades, poor classroom placement, and any other humiliation that can be thought of. The purpose is to separate out those the system determines to be unfit and allow them to be treated as inferiors by the rest.
6. Preparation (called propaedeutic by Inglis): Those few deemed to be leaders, often only by their birth, are taught to be the controllers of the masses described in the other five functions.
In the 1922 edition of Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley, a textbook editor at Houghton Miflin, wrote:
Our schools are... factories in the raw products are to be shaped and fashioned... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.
There you have it, from one of the major textbook editors during the buildup of secondary schools in the United States -- a clear, concise statement of the purpose of those schools.
As John Gatto wrote:
We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
What it All Means
Today, there is so little critical thinking that almost anything can be sold. In the arena of health, it's now possible for purported research to make claims that vitamins are unhealthy. And people believe it! Immunization programs that cause death for diseases that carry little harm to healthy people, such as RotaTeq for gastroenteritis in children. And parents rush out to have their children inoculated! Agrobusiness pig growers destroy entire watersheds, even to the point of creating dead zones in the ocean. And hardly anyone cares.
This is what has been wrought by our anti-education school system. We are seeing what happens when a populace has been so dumbed-down and made complaisant that the only thing they're capable of doing is shop.
"Shop 'til you drop" has another, far more sinister meaning than usually intended. We're in the early stages of a rapidly accelerating collapse of civilization –- all brought on by a population so blind and complaisant it couldn't see the obvious: What can't continue won't continue.
Reference:
Harper's Magazine, September 2003, "Against School", by John Taylor Gatto. Reprinted at (http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm) .
The LINK, Homeschool News Network, Vol 5, Issue 6, "A Conspiracy Against Ourselves", by John Taylor Gatto.
based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need."
About the author
Heidi StevensonFellow, British Institute of Homeopathy
Gaia Therapy (http://www.gaia-therapy.com)
The author is a homeopath who became concerned with medically-induced harm as a result of her own experiences and those of family members. She says that allopathic medicine is the arena that best describes the motto, "Buyer beware."
Iatrogenic disease is illness, disability, and death caused by medical practice. It is common, resulting in huge costs to society and individuals. It's possible - even common - to suffer an iatrogenic illness without realizing its source. Heidi Stevenson provides information about medically-induced disease and disability so members of the public can protect themselves.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Will New Bill Help Lower College Costs?
The Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, passed by the Senate on Wednesday (April 30th), would let parents and students borrow more from the government. It could also boost grants for some needy high achievers.The House has passed its own version of the bill. Here's a rundown on the proposal and how it could affect you:
- House and Senate leaders agreed to provide more government backing for so-called unsubsidized Stafford loans. This is likely to save students millions of dollars by letting them forgo costly private loans.
- The bill is projected to make money for the government -- $450 million over five years. Lawmakers agreed to use those funds to boost grants for needy students.
- Parents now can borrow under the Parents Loans for Students program, known as PLUS. The catch with a PLUS loan is that borrowers must start repaying within 60 days of disbursement. This legislation would let parents defer repayment while their child is in school. The bill also broadens the definition of parents with an adverse credit history, allowing more parents to be eligible to help their kids.
To read more about this Act and to keep up on the changes being made, go to: http://edlabor.house.gov/micro/loansact.shtml
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