News flash: College students are busy. We go to class, we intern, we work, we hustle any and every way we can to pay for books, food, alcohol, transportation, and whatever other expenses we have. And in the hustle and bustle of our busy lives, something always slips through the cracks. We forget to study for a test, forget to phone home every once in a while, forget to do laundry… you get the idea. But the biggest problem we seem to have is this: We worry about MAKING time for everything we have to do.
Do you realize how silly that is?
Time cannot be made. You do not MAKE the time to study for a test, you FIND it somewhere in your 16-hour day to get it done.
Let that sink in.
Time is not, and cannot, be made.
However often you sit and wish you had more than 24 hours in a day (or 16, or 18, depending on how many hours you sleep) is time you could be spending on something productive. I can admit that I am guilty of this, and I know most people are, not just college students.
The simple fact of the matter is there is ALWAYS time to do what we need to get done. We just choose to fill it with other things that may or may not be as important. I can’t count how many Tuesdays or Saturdays I’ve sat in my room watching SVU for hours when I could have and should have been studying or writing a paper, only to kick myself when it was 3 in the morning and I was still doing work. My priorities were clearly mixed up. Even as I’m writing this, I could (and should) be writing one of two papers I’ve been putting off until the last minute.
If you replaced one frivolous thing each day (like watching a Scrubs episode you’ve already seen a dozen times) with something from your to-do list, would you feel less stressed out about everything you need to do? What about two or three things? Even if you just take baby steps to replacing what you want to do with what you need to do, once you make it a habit, it will get so much easier. Try it and see how it works for you. It may be hard at first, but you’ll be grateful when you finish everything on your agenda and can take a day or two to catch up on all the things you want to do.