As February comes to an end and college students move closer to the middle of the semester, it’s important to reflect on a few things that the month has taught us.

February was national time management month, and for college students, time management is something that can be considered crucial to achieving a degree in a healthy way.

First, let’s look at some time management statistics as presented by www.colickify.me.

• 82% of people don’t use any type of time management system
• 33% of people reported that they use to-do lists to manage their work
• 25% of people deal with what feels the most important in their workload
• 24% rely on their email inboxes to decide the order in which they do things. 

So a lot of people do not manage their time well. I have experienced college students acting the same way. Friends will play video games at 3 p.m. and have to stay up until 2 a.m. getting schoolwork done. Then they’re confused as to why they wake up exhausted the next day. 

When stressing the importance of time management to friends I’ve been told that it’s just not the “college experience” to go to bed earlier than midnight.

I’m about to graduate in May, have worked hard to perfect my time management skills, and have a GPA of roughly 3.9. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed up doing schoolwork past midnight, and have stayed relatively healthy throughout my time at college. I’d like to share a few things that I keep in mind when managing my time.

1. Get work started and completed early.

Not only will this allow you to worry less about the assignment later, but it will give you time to go back and perfect the assignment if you weren’t one hundred percent confident in your work. Thus leading to better grades on individual assignments.

2. Know due dates well in advance.

This goes with the last one. Use that syllabus to write down due dates so you know exactly what is coming up. Then start planning for the assignment because the professor even brings it up in class.

3. Sleep is so much more important than you might think.

I understand that it’s tempting to stay awake with all of your college friends, but more sleep allows you to be more aware in class, letting you take better notes and comprehend concepts better to ace tests. 

4. When you have a job after college, you won’t be completing work at 2 a.m.

Unless you work overnight somewhere of course. But for the most part, you’ll need that time to sleep to prepare for the next day. 

So don’t just let time management stay in the month of February. Practice good time management now so you can be successful in the future as well.