Your schedule is important because it can save you a lot of lime if it is well-planned and works for you. The time you save from school work can be used for other things such as more socializing, more spare time for fun things or just plain taking it easy.

This section can be used in two different ways. First, if you have not started your classes yet, it can be a great help in planning a time saving program. Second, if you have already started your classes, it can help you to change your general schedule in small ways so that more things get done in less time.

You will learn some new things about several phases of scheduling in this chapter. You will get useful ideas on: the things that go into making a good general schedule and a good class schedule, how to combine the general and class schedule, how to change your ideal and real schedules so that they best fit you, and how to stick with your schedule once you get it.

What Steps to Follow in Making Yourself a Good General Schedule

1. Make it as complete as possible. Try to allow a time for everything. Class hours, work hours and sleep time are included. However, it's also important to include time for personal care, things like taking care of your hair or showering. You also need to include time for eating, running errands and rest and relaxation periods.

2. Use the best time for each activity. If you are a “morning person” then the best time for you to study is before lunch. If you are a "night person" the best time for you to study is at night and it’s better for you to sleep late. There is a best time to do many things. If possible, it's better to study immediately after a lecture class and immediately before a recitation or discussion class, e.g., language classes and seminars. It may be better for you to eat at 11:30 a.m. instead of twelve noon because the lines are shorter. Put these "best times" into your schedule as much as possible.

3. Keep it personal so that it fits you and your quirks. For example, if you can't sleep at night unless you vigorously exercise for half an hour, your schedule should allow time for this.

4. Make it realistic. Don't draw up ouch an elaborate schedule that you cannot follow it. If your schedule is too difficult to follow, simply revise it so that it's more reasonable. For example, you might enroll in a microbiology class lab which meets late in the evening. After the first week you realize that using a microscope at night is too hard on your eyes. If this should happen simply revise your schedule by taking another lab.

5. Allow for outside activity. There are clubs, groups of all kinds and many social-interest activities on every campus. You are really short-changing yourself if you don’t get involved in more than just school work. A carefully planned schedule can give you more free time for interesting and enjoyable extra-curricular activities.

6. Make it flexible. Allow for the unexpected. Allow for some free time somewhere in your schedule so that you can change plans without redoing the entire schedule. For example, on Friday night you have the hours from 7-9 p.m. as free time. That means you can go out on a date or study for a sudden quiz without completely changing your overall schedule.

7. Make your schedule easy to read and always in reach. Your schedule should have the time on it and indicate what you are studying as well as when. For example, it should say, "Study German vocabulary," not just "German" in the time slot. Keep one copy of your schedule with you in your notebook and another in your room near your books. One student pasted a third copy behind his door. He used it for a final check to see if he had everything he needed just before leaving his room.

8. Set up your schedule for maximum learning effectiveness. It is more efficient to study hard from fifty to ninety minutes at a stretch. If you schedule yourself to study more than two hours at a time you will probably suffer from excessive fatigue or boredom. Schedule a five to ten minute break every hour. Stand up, stretch or take a walk and then go back to the books. You may keep thinking about what you are studying even while you are taking a break or you may refresh your mind with other thoughts.

Make a schedule that alternates the type of studying you do. For example, don't study two physical science courses in a row and then two social sciences. Alternate them, first a physical science then a social science. Then back to physical science again. Finish up with a social science course.

Schedule review time for all the material you studied in a given week. This review time reinforces what you have learned and is invaluable. Now that we have looked at the things you can do to make a good general scheduler let's look more specifically at the process of making a good class schedule.

How You Can Learn to Set Up Your Class Schedules

If you look through any college catalogue you can see that each course is assigned a certain number of semester hours or credits. The number of semester hours assigned to a course tells you two things. First, it usually tells you how many times a week that particular class meets. For example, if you plan to take English Literature for 3 semester hours, the class will meet three times a week for fifty minutes each time. If the class is assigned four hours it will usually meet four times a week or twice a week for two hours. An exception to the rule is that lab science may require 8 class hours of lecture and lab for only 4 credits. Second, it usually tells you how many credits you can apply toward your degree if you take and pass the course. These credits are applied to the total number of credits you need to have for your particular degree.

How many of these class hours should you take? Most colleges think of a full-time student as one who carries twelve hours. Many students carry fifteen. Usually to carry more than fifteen hours requires special permission from some college official. What should yore do? If you have average ability, you should not even consider more than fifteen hours. If you have had difficulty in high school or are a marginal college admission or have a really tough batch of courses, take twelve hours. It is far more realistic to take twelve and do very well than to take fifteen or more and do badly. For example, a freshman student was having trouble keeping up in an engineering program after just four weeks of school. He had been admitted to the school on probation. He had to have a C or better average his first semester, or flunk out. He was carrying seventeen hours and doing terribly. When he dropped back to twelve hours, he did just fine! He passed all his courses with better than C grades and went on to graduate.

What Steps to Take to Set Up Your Class Schedule

Once you decide how many hours to take, you need to pick your classes. Here are some tips that will make the process easier for you.

1. Don't take classes back to back if possible. Give yourself an hour in between if you can. You can use the free time for review and study, especially before a test.

2. Don't try to take all of your classes in two or three days. Spread them out over the week. It's too exhausting to pile all of your classes into two or three days.

3. Don't let yourself be trapped into taking a lopsided schedule or all of the same kind of courses. One freshman ended by taking five science courses because some courses filled up and closed and somebody else told him to get the hard courses out of the way first. Be smarter than that. Talk to an advisor or an upperclassman and get yourself a balanced schedule.

4. Before signing up for a course, be sure you know when and where it meets. Be careful that you don't sign up for two different classes that meet at the same time. In science courses, be sure to find out if there is a lab meeting as well as a class.

5. Don't forget to include some time for lunch and don't take dull classes after lunch if you can help it. You may end up sleeping through them.

6. If you have a choice of teachers, ask around. Find students who have already taken the course to find out which instructor is best and most stimulating. There is nothing a student enjoys more than praising a good teacher or knocking a poor one, so don't hesitate to ask.

7. If you are having trouble getting registered, try for classes at odd hours. Nobody seems to rush into eight a.m. classes or classes right at noon.

8. Have an alternate program. If your college has pre-registration, you won't have much trouble getting the courses you want. Unfortunately many schools don't. Sometimes you find that all of the courses that you had planned on taking are filled up and are closed to you. Therefore you should have an alternate plan. If you can't get one set of classes, try for another. Have the alternate plan in mind and on paper even before you go in to register.

9. If you must have a certain class and it's filled up or closed, don't give up. Find the department chairman and ask about the possibility of opening another class that same hour. This happens frequently. Also, ask the instructor teaching the class if you can check with him again after classes start. In this way if anyone drops the class (also very frequent) you can have the vacated seat. You go ahead and sign up for something in its place from your alternate schedule just in case you don't get what you want. If your first choice comes through, formally cancel the second course by filling out a drop slip.

You won't always be able to get the program or the course or the teacher that you want. But surprisingly, most students don't even try and simply accept matters as they are, so try. Frequently with just a little effort you can get what you want.

What You Can Do To Modify Your Schedule If Necessary

When you actually get your general and class schedule set up, it may be far different from an ideal one. However, you can have a schedule that looks great on paper and yet is difficult to follow. Remember a schedule is only a time chart. Your ideal schedule is where you would like your time to go. Your real schedule is where your time actually goes. The closer the ideal and real schedules become, the more time you save. About every three weeks, it's useful to check yourself out to see where your time is actually going. Checking your real schedule can make you aware of wasted time and can get you thinking about better ways to use your time. How can you do this?

About two or three weeks after classes begin, write on a card what you are doing every half hour for that week. Don't wait until the end of the week and then try to remember what you did. Instead, put it down as it happens hour by hour, day by day. Just seeing where your time is going may come as a surprise to you. It win help you to see new ways to use your time more wisely. After a while your real schedule will look much like your revised ideal schedule.

How to Help Yourself to Actually Follow Your Schedule

Sometimes, no matter how good your schedule is, you don’t follow it. It's well planned and you have allotted enough time for everything but when it actually comes down to studying, you just don't. You can't seem to bring yourself to read English or to type up lab reports or to study French verbs. You find yourself daydreaming instead of concentrating or stalling by lingering over coffee. Sometimes courses aren't as interesting as they might be and you get a little bored with them or maybe they are a little tough and you feel it's no use plugging along, you won't pass anyway. The reasons behind your lack of study are not that important. The fact remains that you are stalled and need to get started again. The best way to get yourself going is to tackle your courses in small segments and to reward yourself as you go along. To illustrate: a student was disappointed with himself because he wasn’t doing his psychology homework. He was getting behind and if something didn't change he was going to fail the required introductory course He found that both the course and the reading were very dull. He tried to do the reading but found his mind wandering or found himself reading without any comprehension. What could he do? The first thing he had to do was to find something that he enjoyed doing. That was easy. He enjoyed listening to records from his jazz collection and reading light material like mysteries or science fiction. Then he had to find out how much time he felt he could spend reading psychology without becoming bored or tuning out. He considered 10 minutes, 5 minutes or 2 minutes. He decided that he could concentrate for 5 minutes. With this in mind he set up the following action plan. He would concentrate on his psychology reading completely for 5 minutes, then reward himself by reading or listening to music for 10 minutes. At the end of his reward time, he would read psychology for another 5 minutes, reward himself for another 10 minutes. He made sure that he did not read for more than 5 minutes or reward himself for more than 10. He used a clock to time himself.

He used this system for 2 days and then decided to change it. It was working because he was getting through more psychology than ever before, but 5 minutes of reading time wasn't enough. So, he extended the psychology reading time with recitation, to 15 minutes and kept the reward time at 10 minutes. At the end of 10 days he was concentrating on psychology for 50 minutes out of the hour and rewarding himself for 10. He had no further difficulty.

Anyone can get stalled. All of us get in these sterile moods where we just don't feel like studying or doing much of anything. When you find yourself in this spot, try applying the technique just illustrated. It works every time, and is just enough to get going out of the doldrums.

It's easy to see how important scheduling can be in your daily life in college. With the great amount of reading and studying expected of you, careful scheduling is the best way not only to get everything done, but also to make sure you have the time for doing those things you most like to do in your non-studying time.