2.4 Chapter Activities

Chapter Takeaways

  • It’s important to have short-, mid-, and long-term goals that are specific, realistic, time oriented, and attainable. Goals help you set priorities and remain motivated and committed to your college success.
  • Attitude is the largest factor determining success in college. Work to stay positive and surround yourself with positive people, and you’ll find you are motivated to carry out the activities that will help you succeed in your courses.
  • Planning ahead, and then following your plan, is the essence of time management. Organize both your space and your time to develop the best study habits. Learning strategies to stay on track, avoid distractions of people and technology, and to prevent procrastination will pay off not only in college but also in your career thereafter.
  • Plan your use of time based on your “time personality” after assessing how you typically use your free time. Then use an academic weekly and daily planner to schedule blocks of time most efficiently. Start well ahead of deadlines to prevent last-minute stresses and problems completing your work.
  • Because many college students have significant time commitments with work, family, athletics, or other activities, time management techniques are among the most important skills you can learn to help ensure your success.

Texas Tech University Resources

Need assistance with time management or goal setting? See a Life Coach at University Coaching and Student Achievement.

University Coaching and Student Achievement

225 Drane Hall
806.742.7774
www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/success/
University Coaching offers Academic Success Coaching and Life Coaching. Success Coaches work to engage Red Raiders through professional interactions that recognize potential, engage challenges, encourage excellence, and promote persistence.

Chapter Review

  1. Describe the characteristics of well-written goals.

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  2. List at least four or five things you can do to develop a positive attitude.

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  3. What have you personally found helps motivate you to sit down and start studying?

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  4. Describe the most important characteristics of an effective study space.

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  5. How can you prepare for unplanned interruptions while studying?

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  6. After you have analyzed how you typically spend time and have blocked out study periods for the week, you may still have difficulty using that study time well. List additional time management strategies that can help you make the most of the time that you do have.

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  7. If you find yourself procrastinating, what can you do to get back on track?

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  8. What can go wrong if you try to micromanage every minute of the day?

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    What should you do, instead?

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  9. Realizing that any action repeated consistently and frequently will soon become a habit, what should you do with your academic planner every day and every week to establish a strong habit that will help ensure your success in all your college courses to come?

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Outside the Book

Study Journal for Date: ____________

  1. My daily planner had scheduled ______ hours of academic time today (not counting time in class). It turned out that I actually spent about ______ hours on my studies.

    At some times I was scheduled to study or do academic work, I was doing this instead:

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  2. The academic time I most enjoyed today was doing ___________________

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    I enjoyed this most because _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

  3. The academic time I least most enjoyed today was doing _______________

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    I enjoyed this least because ____________________________________

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  4. I had the most difficulty getting started on this study activity:

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    Why?

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  5. I did my studying and other academic work in these places:

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  6. During the time I was studying, I was interrupted by these people:

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    Other interruptions included the following (phone calls, e-mail, etc.):

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Make an Action List

Goals

I have not yet set realistic, specific, and time-oriented goals for the following:

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In the coming weeks and months, I will think about and clarify these goals:

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Planning Ahead

Too often in the past, I have not started early enough on these kinds of school assignments and studying:

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To ensure I successfully plan ahead to complete all work on time in the future, I will do the following:

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Attitude

I have most difficulty maintaining a positive attitude at the following times:

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I can do the following things to “adjust” my attitude at these times to help ensure my success:

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Focus and Motivation

When I’m not feeling motivated to work on my studies, I often do these things instead:

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I will try to use these strategies to keep motivated and focused on my studies in the future:

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Study Space

I have the following problems with the places where I usually study now:

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I will make the following changes in my study space (or I will try these new places) to help prevent distractions:

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Time Management

I often feel I don’t have enough time for my college work for the following reasons:

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I will start using these techniques to make sure I use my available time well:

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RaiderReady: Unmasking the Possibilities of College Success Copyright © 2018 by Texas Tech University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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