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.

Chapter Review

  1. Describe the characteristics of well-written goals.

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  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.

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    What should you do, instead?

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  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?

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

Outside the Book

Make seven copies of the “Study Journal” page following. Near the end of the day, every day for the next week, spend a few minutes reviewing your day and writing answers to those questions. At the end of the week, review what you have written and summarize what you observe about your study tendencies by answering these questions:

  1. Did you usually get as much, more, or less schoolwork done as you had scheduled for the day?

    ________________________________________

    If you got less done, was the problem due to scheduling more time than you actually had, or not making effective use of the scheduled blocks of time?

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  2. List the steps you will follow to make your scheduling process work better next week.

    _______________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  3. What other things did you do repeatedly during the week when you should have been studying? ________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  4. What were the most common distractions (people or other interruptions) during the week when you were studying? ________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  5. List ways you can control your study space to avoid these activities and prevent these distractions next week. _____________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  6. Do you see a pattern in the activities you least enjoyed and had difficulty getting started on? ___________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

  7. Review Chapter 2 “Staying Motivated, Organized, and On Track”, Section 2.2 “Organizing Your Space” and Chapter 2 “Staying Motivated, Organized, and On Track”, Section 2.3 “Organizing Your Time” for specific strategies to use to stay focused and motivated. Make a list here of five or more things you will do differently next week if studying becomes difficult or less enjoyable.

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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:

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    I enjoyed this most because _____________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    I enjoyed this least because ____________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    Why?

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

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

    __________________________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________________________

Make an Action List

Goals

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Planning Ahead

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Attitude

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Focus and Motivation

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Study Space

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Time Management

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

College Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.