{"id":1275,"date":"2017-11-26T00:09:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T00:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2021-03-16T18:41:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T18:41:28","slug":"carpe-diem-seizing-and-redeeming-time-in-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2017\/11\/26\/carpe-diem-seizing-and-redeeming-time-in-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Carpe Diem\u2014Seizing and Redeeming Time in College"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Chad Chisholm, CIFC Director<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">As college students, you know that one of the hardest challenges is finding \u201cbalance\u201d in your daily life: balancing work, relationships, life, and assignments. What classes should you study for more? Should you focus more on learning the academic material in class, or on getting the grade regardless of content mastery?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ultimately, it is a question of how to use and redeem your time. In the movie\u00a0<em>Dead Poets Society<\/em>\u00a0Robin Williams plays an English teacher at a traditional prep school: he always tells his students \u201c<em>carpe diem<\/em>,\u201d which is Latin for \u2018seize the day.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Carpe diem. Seize the day.&quot; - Dead Poets Society\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vi0Lbjs5ECI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000;\">Make\u00a0<em>carpe diem<\/em>\u00a0your maxim for college, and you will spend these years developing lifelong skills that are crucial for success.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000;\">Let\u2019s explore more. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\">The<\/span>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/tus\/charts\/students.htm%20\">Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps information<\/a>\u00a0on the habits of full-time students, particularly with how they use their time during the week for study and other campus activities. According to the Bureau, the average student spends a 24 hour weekday doing the following things:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">9 hours sleeping<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">4 hours on some sort of leisure or sporting activity<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">2 hours and 18 minutes working at a job of sorts<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">5 hours traveling<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">1 hour eating<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">About 48 minutes grooming<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">About 2 hours and 12 minutes on \u201cother\u201d activities<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">On average, this leaves about 3.5 hours for \u2018educational activities\u2019 such as attending class, doing homework, writing papers, and preparing for exams. You might wonder if 3.5 hours a day is enough time for college. The best \u2018rule of thumb\u2019 is to maximize your academic time at the onset of the semester, then reassess how much time should be allotted to each class as you get closer to midterm. By then, you should better understand the demands of each professor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Some classes are more demanding than others, and\u00a0<em>the law of diminishing returns<\/em>\u00a0also applies to university courses as well. If you come to class feeling knowledgeable and engaged, then you have probably struck the right balance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Do Not Skip Personal Enrichment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Human beings are preprogramed for routines and rituals. You can make exceptions for exam week or when a paper is due, but sacrificing your routines for short-term goals can lead to burn out. As the anecdote of the \u2018empty pickle jar\u2019 illustrates, college study should be adapted into your own unique individual patterning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Empty Pickle Jar Movie for Simple Truths\" width=\"1170\" height=\"878\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iZ6vX7fl0Yw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Your prayers, hobbies, friendships, creative pursuits, and physical activities are an important part of redeeming your time as a college student. Cultivating routines that balance your personal rituals with academic tasks will improve both areas, and it creates a state of mind that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/06\/ray-bradbury-1920%E2%80%932012\/%20\">the writer Ray Bradbury calls \u2018optimal behaviorism\u2019:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you\u2019ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I\u2019ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn\u2019t matter how good it is, or how bad\u2014you did it. At the end of the week you\u2019ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I\u2019ll be damned, it\u2019s been a good year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The sense of hope that comes from performing your personal activities is often transferable to your academic work, so do not shelve these important routines. When possible, include them when the time for midterms and finals come.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Common Time Traps You Should Avoid<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Most professors prefer that students increase their academic hours, but they might also say that much depends on your ability to honestly assess the quality of your study time. What is equally important is recognizing and circumventing common \u2018traps\u2019 for students. Let\u2019s look at a handful of them. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The Phone Trap<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I once had a student who was in a panic. She told me she studied for tests and worked long hours on papers, only to receive Ds. She was sincere in her belief, but after 15 minutes I noticed other signs. We met in the library later that day, and I sat watching her \u2018study\u2019 for an hour. When it was over, she came to my table.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cSee, I studied for an hour like I did before your test.\u201d I replied, \u201cNo, you studied for 30 minutes at the most.\u201d I showed her my timer. She argued that this was incorrect because she had studied since four-thirty. I told her, \u201cI stopped the timer each time you picked up your phone for longer than 30 seconds.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Most professors have a similar story: students think they are \u2018studying,\u2019 but are taking unconscious breaks for calls, texting conversations, and aimless surfing on the web. This emphasizes the importance of making a clear and honest assessment of your use of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What other traps can college students fall into?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The Perfectionist Trap<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">One course I often teach is English Composition I, and many of the assignments are drafts that lead to a final project later in the semester. While I am disappointed with students who see \u2018draft\u2019 on an assignment and make a perfunctory effort, I\u2019m also concerned when students submit well-polished drafts that took hours of preparation for an assignment that was only intended as a \u2018first thoughts\u2019 response on a topic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">While you should strive for high personal standards that are independent of class or university requirements, an idealized \u2018perfection\u2019 can sometimes result in the misuse of time. While I never discourage students from taking an extra interest in a particular assignment for their own sake, I sometimes find these students can feel overstretched as we get to midterm.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The Activities Trap<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">One sad situation is the student who fails a class because, earlier in the semester, he or she was overextended with extracurricular activities. <a href=\"https:\/\/home.isi.org\/reading-without-professors\">I believe that student organizations and college clubs and groups are important for supplementing your education<\/a>. However, you must maintain a balance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In most cases, the \u2018trap\u2019 was not the organization itself, but an individual (a student, professor, or another well-meaning person) that the student had trouble saying \u201cno\u201d to. Indeed, it is easy to ignore a dorm poster or a listserv email, but individuals who value your contribution are hard to turn down. Intrinsically, you want to say \u201cyes,\u201d which is why you need boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Carpe Diem<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There are several strategies for organizing your time. Stephen Covey in his book\u00a0<em>The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People<\/em>\u00a0uses a system of quadrants that are designed to help you prioritize tasks and activities. Some colleges are pushing the\u00a0<em>DAPPS<\/em>\u00a0strategy (Dated, Achievable, Personal, Positive, Specific) for creating and fulfilling goals. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">However, these strategies might not be meant for you. Find your own or, better still, create a custom plan that will enable you to maximize your time for college activities. At the end of the day, all of this returns to the same question of how to use and redeem your time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is an old English proverb that says, \u201cThe time and tides wait for no man.\u201d Anyone who has read the adventures of the old buccaneers, or has used a non-powered boat on an ocean for a brief time, understands the analogy between time and the tides:\u00a0<em>they come when they come<\/em>, and so a sailor readies his craft to await the propitious moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The English mariner understood that time\u2014like the tide\u2014is a tool, though not one you can leave for convenience in a toolbox. No, time is like a tide\u2014take it as it comes, when it comes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Seize your day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chad Chisholm, CIFC Director As college students, you know that one of the hardest challenges is finding \u201cbalance\u201d in your daily life: balancing work, relationships, life, and assignments. What classes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[342],"tags":[99,368],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-studies","tag-best-of-essays","tag-motivational","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}