Undergraduate Blog / First Year at Babson

Time Management – Key to a GREAT Babson Experience

I’m writing this blog at 1am in the morning…You may think I am crazy, but really—I’m not! I don’t have class until 9:45 tomorrow and, believe it or not, this is the time that I have blocked off in my hectic daily schedule. You’re probably wondering WHO in his or her RIGHT MIND would block off a half hour at 1am to blog. Welcome to Babson.

Before I start digging deep into this whole time management thing, let’s take a look at my schedule from last week (keeping in mind that this is typical. I could show you my schedule from other weeks and it would be very comparable):

A Typical Schedule

YIKES!?!?! It may look terrifying, but it is a really great system that keeps me organized. Outlook is by far my most-used program as it has functions such as email, calendaring, and tasks. Once you get to Babson, you too will have a schedule quite like this. Don’t worry, though, it’s simple to get started and easy to maintain. Also, I should remind you that many students have different methods of staying organized and managing their time, and I am just showing you mine. Do whatever works best for you.

Looking at my schedule, you will see different colors, wide boxes, thinner boxes, and gaps. Each color represents a different “event” such as green for classes, red for work, yellow for class-related functions, and so on. The gaps in between are times that I am eating, sleeping, working out at the gym, or just relaxing (WHICH IS SOOO NICE once in a while). Some people think it’s a waste of time to keep a schedule like this, thinking they can memorize it or just keep track of it by referring to their emails and flyers around campus. It may work for them, but I tried doing that at the beginning of the year and failed…miserably. I was not able to prioritize what was most important to me, and I would oftentimes forget about an event altogether. Now, that has all changed and I operate very efficiently (most of the time…everyone has his or her days!).

Basically…Time management is extremely important to a student’s success at Babson and life in general. There are so many things that a person needs to juggle each and every day that having some type of organizational method is essential. If you are a person who finds yourself “too busy” or unable to do everything on time, there are plenty of resources that Babson offers to help you out.

Workshops dealing specifically with Time Management and Strategies for Success are headed by the wonderful Michele Brown who is the Senior Program Manager for First Year Programs at Babson. Time Management skills are also taught in First Year Seminar, and students are encouraged to seek out additional help from the kind advisors in Academic Services or other campus departments if they find that they are struggling with their time.

I am the type of person who loves to be busy, but also need structure in my day. I didn’t go into too much detail, but if you want to go more in depth with Time Management there are some great articles at MindTools: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_HTE.htm.

It’s now 1:30 and that means time for bed—sticking to the schedule is important!

P.S. I told you about doing a “virtual campus tour” in my last post, but unfortunately there were torrential rains during the tour last week. Stay tuned for this in the upcoming weeks!