Fifteen Minutes to Higher Grades
Adult students return to college with well defined goals, significant life experience, and maturity. In those areas they are generally ahead of their younger counterparts.
So, what challenges are most difficult for them?
It is not always easy to divide one's week so that career, family, and education all get the time they require. And, while students in online degree programs have more flexibility than those attending on-campus classes on a fixed schedule, they still face the pressures of keeping up with readings and other assignments.
Good time management skills and strong self-discipline, important to all students, are even more necessary to adults facing family, career, and academic demands.
Interestingly, even the most accomplished people often overlook a very simple technique that is very simple but can yield great results.
It would be nice to be able to add hours to your days or days to your weeks. But, although that is not possible, finding unused fifteen minute periods of time is not. And, if you can find and use just two such periods each day, the result is three and a half hours a week...nearly fifteen hours a month...of additional time devoted to your studies.
What can you get done in just fifteen minutes? The list may be longer than you first imagine. You can email a question to a professor or classmate. You can find websites with information related to your readings or the topic of an upcoming paper. You can do some highlighting in one of your texts. Or, you can review and/or revise a few pages of notes. See the possibilities?
No doubt about it; fifteen minutes is enough tme to get something done. And, how hard is it to find a few fifteen minute blocks of time? Get up fifteen minutes earlier. Read while eating lunch or dinner. Bring schoolwork with you whenever you anticipate waiting. Spend an extra fifteen minutes in your office at the end of the day. Read for fifteen minutes before going to sleep. The possibilities are almost without limit.
One student I know spends fifteen minutes on her assignments whenever she returns to her home. You might laugh, but it's been two years since she's had a grade of any kind below an "A", and that was a B+ on a quiz.
It doesn't matter how busy someone is, they can find two additional fifteen minute blocks of time to devote to their pursuit of higher education. And, that half hour a day can make anyone a far more successful student.
Career educator Daniel Kane has developed more than a dozen educational websites. Among them are a site on online college degrees, and a site on online education.
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