Uni & Study: Study Time

A certain student gets up in the morning (on weekdays at least). Gets ready for classes. Goes to school/campus. Goes to classes. Clubs or hanging out with friends may follow. Might have a job too. Goes home and studies a bit. Sleeps. A test or important task comes up. On D-Day, the student proclaims to the heavens,

"I DIDN'T HAVE THE TIME TO GET READY FOR THIS! *Insert appropriate exclamations*"

Wait. Rewind a little. How much time is really needed to cover the above activities and be prepared for an examination or assignment?

Many students, especially those in university, will be worried about balancing their grades with other activities, such as clubs, jobs, or social life. They believe that the boosting of one requires the sacrifice of the others, and usually come to accept a certain grade level and time spent on 'other' activities. And they're not wrong in the 'balance' logic actually: one cannot exactly spend all their time NOT studying and expect to get stellar grades (I don't count geniuses).

But do these students really have to accept their typical grades? Is raising their performance impossible without some sacrifice on their non-academic activities- or their sleep? To answer that, rack your brains a little- how much time do YOU spend per week actually studying? I mean REAL studying- not sitting in front of a textbook playing Angry Birds (or 2048 or Water, I don't really keep up with the trends in phone games), lazing around with the 'intent' to study, or anything that wouldn't help you get the material in your head.

Don't be surprised if it turns out barely an hour per week is spent in actual study. Or less.

(Of course, I acknowledge there are quite the number of students who have the discipline to study for several hours regularly per week, and obviously the figures for almost everyone go up just before exams. But I'll be focusing on the non-stressed average student's regular study schedule, as this will represent the majority of studying patterns throughout an academic year.)

But how is this possible? Even the most busy of students should be able to find the time to squeeze a lot more to what amounts to 10 minutes of daily study per week. With a completely study-free day. For crying out loud, a lot of people spend TWO hours per week in the BATHROOM! Where does all that time go?

Well, if the hint wasn't obvious enough, it goes into distractions and indiscipline.

The latter of the above is probably one that doesn't get enough attention, for while other potential focus-breakers can be physically removed or worked around, the apparent lack of ability to simply buckle down is inherent in the minds of many people, leading in this case to losing all concentration on the material and even looking for the nearest source of entertainment during study time. This human flaw is also often seen in diets or fitness programs. And unfortunately, as it's not something physical and external, there's nothing that can be done about it. Or is there?

Yup, it turns out there's a lot. That's how wimpy recruits get turned into hardened soldiers at boot camp after all. Frankly speaking however, the topic of self-discipline is a broad and lengthy one, and there are already many solutions and tips out there for the average (even insanely busy) student, which I don't have the space (or time or will) to discuss (or look up or think about). What I can say is that however you try to improve your self-discipline, you'll need a decent amount of willpower to follow through and maintain the habit (no need to sign up for boot camp by the way). 

The most notorious culprit of distraction is the modern hand-held device, or the smartphone. A device originally meant to facilitate portable long-distance communication, now mostly used for games and social media by the typical student. Not that this is unacceptable of course, but there's a time and place for everything. And in front of a desk during study time is definitely not the smartphone's. So how does one get over this hurdle?

The things that fuel the smartphone's time-burners are its apps and the Internet. It isn't hard to see that these are the two features people often use, especially during periods when they really shouldn't. It may help if unnecessary and distracting apps such as games are removed, with Internet access turned off during study sessions. Actually, these two are what pretty much put the 'smart' in smartphone, so you might as well save your time and money and buy an old Nokia.

Of course, there are many other focus-breakers out there, the blend of which varies from person to person. Whatever they are, if you want to improve your study quality, you firstly need to have the courage to admit that these distractions are distractions. Many times students try to look away and deny this, particularly when it comes to 'study group' friends whose presences clearly do NOT help. The next step is to find the path to get over the problem, which I'm sure the average student can find easily with our awesome information world. The real difficult part though, as I mentioned above, is garnering the willpower to execute the solution, and how to do so is something you'll have to figure out for yourself.

Hopefully though, if you manage to get over these problems and make your study time effective, it won't be long before the proverbial seeds you sow sprout into success in your academic life. How successful of course depends on the student's ability and studying techniques, but rest assured there's bound to be an improvement. In fact, as a bonus, you may even be able to REDUCE study time if you really buckle down when it's needed, thus allowing more time for... whatever university students do beside studying. Bowling maybe? Anyways, that's all for now!

"The truth may lie between two extremes, but it never lies between right and wrong".