Being an MA student at the University of Sheffield for
almost 6 months, I can say that my first semester did not go very well in terms
of time management. I had successfully wasted my time.
Apart from studying, I did not participate in any other
activities, which meant that I must have had more time to study. In fact, I
still thought that there wasn’t enough time. Long, enormous reading lists
intimidated me, especially when the terminology was unfamiliar. Because I had no
time to go through the lists in detail, I ended up reading mostly the first and
last pages of the articles or chapters, which were not good for my knowledge
and academic performance. The most difficult part was the assessments, in the
form of essays worth 100% of the marks for that module. I had to write a total of 3 essays, 3000 words each, due in a month on
the same date. I spent Christmas break on the essays and, for the first time in
my life, I was stuck in my room on Christmas Eve doing my essays instead of
experiencing the jolly season with family and friends. I almost didn’t have
enough sleep for a week until the deadlines!
All of it was not at all enjoyable. After long thoughts,
I realised that the problem was neither lack of time nor too many assignments;
it was how I managed myself. During the first semester, I tended to
procrastinate. The fact that I had “the whole day” to do my readings and
assignments made me underestimate them. Instead of reading articles, I watched
movies and kept checking my social media accounts. I waited until all of my tasks
piled up and felt really bad about it afterwards.
If this pattern keeps happening throughout my study,
there is no point of flying far from my country to pursue education here. So,
in this new semester I decided not to make the same mistake again. I have
started making priority lists and set goals each day. More importantly, I try my best to stick to
them. Since social media and movies are the worst distractions to me, I won’t
usually check my Facebook/Instagram or watch movies until I reach the goals of
the day.
As an international student, I wish to learn as much as
I can during my study in Sheffield and, for me, learning academically is not
enough. So, I finally let myself join other activities (e.g. volunteering) to
help gain skills, connections and more experience while studying. Having
extra-activities other than attending classes somehow helps me manage my time
better. I used to think that the more free time I have, the more I allocate the
time for studying (which turned out to be wrong). But now, because I have less
free time, I appreciate it more and use it effectively.
The changes are difficult to make. But believe it or
not, things start to get better after I do so.
Maria Caroline Samodra, MA Applied Linguistics with TESOL
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