This is a guest blog by Sarah Nelson-Jones, an English, music and psychology tutor on MyTutor.
There are a lot of things to experience when you first come to university, and often, it feels like there simply isn’t enough time to fit everything in! What with societies, spending time with friends, your academic work, and perhaps a part-time job too, it’s hard to know where to start! The good news is that there are plenty of strategies that you can use to help you manage, prioritise and schedule your time.
Make lists and timetables 📝
The first thing to do is make a list of all the things that you’re going to need to set aside time for. Then, create a timetable for yourself of all of the lectures, seminars and meetings that you’re required to attend (yes, even the ones at 9am – you’ll thank yourself later!). Then, think about how much time you will need to do any independent work that’s required for your degree.
What’s needed will vary from degree to degree and from university to university. Some courses will ask you to do prep work before each lecture, some will ask for you to do work between them. Sometimes – in a drastic change from school – these will be optional (or, at the very least, no-one’s going to be checking!), but this work is set to help you get the most out of your lectures and will save you a lot of stress later on, so make sure to schedule some time in for this.
Create time for things outside your degree🧘
Once you’ve thought about how much time that you’ll need to set aside for your academic work, you can start thinking about the time that you can set aside for the things outside of your degree. One of the main things is finding time to join societies. Usually, universities will have sections on their websites which will tell you about all the different societies available – and critical information like when they meet. As there are often hundreds of societies in universities, you probably won’t be able to join all of the ones that tempt you all at once!
Instead, you can make a shortlist of all the ones that interest you (remembering to make a note of which time they meet), decide how many societies you want to join, and choose your favourite for each night. The first few weeks of uni especially are a great time to try something that you haven’t tried before – and there’s likely to be a number of weird and wonderful options for you to choose from! Many societies will give the option of a taster session before you have to commit to buying a membership, which gives you the chance to experience lots of different societies, and see which group of people you click with best. Even for the societies that don’t offer this, membership is often very cheap (usually £4-9 for the year), meaning that it’s not too big of a deal if you’re not enjoying a society that you signed up for – you can always leave!
First year especially is a great time to take advantage of all of the extracurricular activities at uni. In a lot of universities (although make sure that this is the case for yours!), your first year marks aren’t counted towards your final degree classification. Although you should still make sure to work hard to give yourself the best possible foundation for your degree, this is one of the best chances that you’ll have to find what you enjoy doing with your time.
Remember to factor in time for your errands 🛒
Coming to uni inevitably means stepping into ‘adult’ life – meaning you’ll also need to find time to do errands and chores. How much of this you’ll need to do depends on whether you’re in catered or self-catered accommodation, with the latter needing to regularly find time for food shopping, cooking (and washing up), laundry and cleaning, whilst the former only regularly need to worry about the last two.
Although everyone finds their own way to find time for this, my recommendation is to set aside a regular time (or at least, a regular day of the week) to do these chores, as they’re easy to forget otherwise (until you suddenly find yourself in a late night study session, without your favourite snack!). My personal recommendation is to find quiet times to do these – there’s nothing worse than hauling your laundry back and forth, as all the laundry machines are taken!
Everyone works differently – the most important thing is to create a schedule that works perfectly for you!
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us on tutors@mytutor.co.uk or 0203 773 6024.