MP3 Script: THEME ONE AWARENESS Managing Your time at Graduate School By Learning Strategies Development Queen’s University, Kingston The greatest difference in managing time from undergraduate to graduate school is the level of complexity. By graduate school, there are greater responsibilities and expectations both academic and personal. These expectations for both internally (self) and externally imposed. We have prepared four presentations on how to you can improve your time management during graduate school. To get a comprehensive picture, it’s best to view all four presentations; however, they can be viewed individually as your needs require. Our first presentation focuses on being aware of your values and habits affecting your time. Grad students face many challenges which impact their ability to manage their time. Some of these include: * being unclear expectations from self, professors, supervisor * not feeling in control of processes, timelines, outcomes * supervision: communication, availability of your supervisor, unclear on rights * lack of accountability or feedback on progress * juggling multiple and complex tasks * managing large project e.g. thesis writing, data collection, or preparing a large paper * lack of structure e.g. no classes to ‘frame’ the week * non-academic demands: family, work * financial limitations and stress Overseas students have added stressors and challenges such as homesickness, loneliness, and/or culture shock, perhaps language difficulties. Often they are taking care of or worrying about family who has accompanied them to Canada or have left family behind. Take a moment to list your present challenges/stressors which pertain to time and managing your time. Include both professional and personal challenges. You might wish to rank order them from most to least challenging or stressful. Where does my time go? Did you know that there are 168 hours in each week to do EVERYTHING, including sleeping and eating. Take a few moments to see how you allot your time each week. To assist you in this task, CLICK on the hyperlink to go directly to the “Weekly Time Use” in our online module. Print versions of this tool are available in several formats. After you’ve analyzed where your time goes, ask yourself: “Am I using my time the way I want to?” Awareness of Underlying Values Before you can set goals, you need to know your values. Values are those core ideas you have about the worth of something, and the judgments you make about what is important in life. E.G. You might value being a responsible grad student. The values you form help determine how you use your time. E.G. If you value being a responsible student, you will put a high priority studying, finishing assignments, etc. If your values and actions match, you feel on track and motivated. On the other hand, if your values (e.g. being a responsible student) don’t match your actions, (e.g. chronically missing deadlines), you will feel conflicted. Before you continue to the next presentation, we suggest taking time to reflect on what values you hold and how these values affect your decisions about managing your time. Ask yourself: What are my values? Do my current actions reflect those values? Awareness of My Habits The next step is becoming aware of your current time management habits. We all have developed personal habits that may help or hinder our efforts at using time effectively. These patterns may reflect our personal values, or may result in distress or personal conflict. Ask yourself: So what is my current approach? Why do I use this style and why do I keep using it? When is this style helpful and when is it not effective? When do I need to be more self-aware and change my style to suit the situation? Here’s a 3 step strategy to help you become more aware of your time management style or approach: 1. Monitoring: How is my time used? What are my time usage patterns? Click on the hyperlink to take you to the “Time Monitoring” form to assist you with this task. 2. Analyzing: When am I the most productive? Is this style working for me? Should I change or modify what I am doing now? 3.      Revising: Given what I now know, what do I need to change? Who’s in Control of MY Time? Grad school requires a great deal of independent thought and work. Therefore, one might assume that grad students have more control over their time than undergrads. Although this might be true at some levels, there are many aspects of grad life over which a student has limited or nominal control (e.g. availability and time spent with supervisor and certain deadlines imposed by your supervisor or department). Even a well-organized grad student might face slowdowns and stoppages from time to time and this may cause stress. Unchecked, high levels of stress associated with this feeling can produce crippling affects, both emotionally and physically. Before things start feeling out of control, analyze how much control you have over each aspect of your program. Once you have a better sense of your situation, you can implement processes and strategies to assist you in feeling more in control. Click on the hyperlink “Being in Control of My Time” for a tool which can guide you through a process. This is the end of the first time management theme “Becoming Aware of Your Values and Habits”. Continue to the next presentation to learn about setting and prioritizing your goals.