How To Manage Your Workload

Brady Ehler, OP Features Editor

Many of you are new to college, and as such may not know what will-be expected of you in
terms of study habits and managing your workload. Odds are that if you had good study
habits in high school, you will have good study habits in college. If you didn’t have good study
habits, you may have done fairly well regardless. Unfortunately, unlike in high school, it’s a lot
harder to get decent college marks without studying.

If you do have bad study habits, take heart, because it’s never too late to develop good
ones, even if you’ve been out of school for a few years. Just read on, and follow these simple
instructions. There is no substitute for putting in the study time—and you will have to put in
plenty, but there are some tactics you can use to lighten the load. Read on and I will attempt to
enlighten with some advice and tricks of the trade. ;

As soon as possible, you should familiarize yourself with the prerequisites you will need to
acquire your degree, or properly complete your first two years before going to university. You
can do this by going online and figuring it out for yourself, (you can go to: douglas.bc.ca/cal-
htm/programsandcourses.html as a starting point) or you can make an appointment at the reg-
istrar’s office, (or just walk in) and a staff member will show you what you need to
know.

Knowing exactly what you need to take and how many electives you
are permitted can be helpful for balancing your course load. If you
are taking four courses for example, try to arrange your schedule
for two hard courses and two courses that are easier, or
require less homework. Think Arts or Social Sciences.
Creative Writing 1101: Introduction to Writing Poetry is a
good example of a course with a light homework load.
First year Sociology courses require more homework,
but are easy courses overall. Your trump card is
Theatre 1110: Acting for the Stage Level I. This
course requires virtually no homework and is easy
as Sunday morning.

Perhaps for some reason, you cannot balance
your course load, or perhaps college is a little
frightening, and you don’t want to rush into it
full bore like a, Viking berserker into battle.
Remember, you don’t /ave to take five courses
right away. You can always start with less and
see how well you manage your work load. You
can also make up the credits by taking a class
or two during the summer.

The most important thing is that you don’t
overburden yourself. Many students try to take
on too much, too quickly and end up paying for
it in the long run. Whatever you do, if you are
taking a full course load, do not try and hold a job.
Many teachers wiil tell their first year students
about former students that have tried to balance five
courses with a part time or even full time job, and
boasted of their incredible fortitude only to crash and
burn in a few weeks. Heed your teacher’s advice. There
are only so many hours in a day, and you can only forgo
sleep in favor of homework for so long until you start hallu»
cinating. If you try to work while taking a full course load, you
will most likely either end up getting fired from your job, getting
bad grades, dropping courses, or failing them.

If you need to work, while going to school, it is wise to take fewer f-

courses. However, if you cannot take fewer courses, then you may want to con-

sider taking night courses. Night classes start at 6:30 and end at 9:20, so they rarely conflict
with most people’s work schedules. Also, they only require you to attend one class per week.
The classes are slightly longer; but you only have to go once a week! Not all courses are
offered at night, but most of the popular ones are.

Remember, you have full control of creating a schedule that works for you. If you are not a
morning person, you can usually get away with creating a schedule doesn’t require you to come
in until the early afternoon. If you are a night person, you can always load up with night class-
es. If you prefer to fill some days with courses to create more free days for you to focus on
homework, you can do that too. Don’t feel you need to start at 8:00 every day and space your
courses out equally from Monday to Friday. Create a schedule that works for you. Granted,
sometimes taking the courses you want to take can mess up your ideal schedule, especially in
your first couple semesters, when you won't always have first pick, but you usually work out a
reasonable compromise without too much effort.

Many new students have a tough time with their first few essays. I highly recommend tak-
ing English 1130: Academic Writing as soon as possible. This course will show you step-by-

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step how to research and write a well-written essay. If you are confident in your writing skills,
but are not so sure about your research technique, it’s a good idea to go to the library and ask
librarian to show you how to use the library resources.

If after a few weeks of classes, you ate doing your best, but feel you aren’t doing as well a
you'd like to, then you may want to make an appointment at the Learning Centre. At the
Learning Centre, you can schedule 50 minutes sessions with peer tutors that can help you witl
math, reading, writing, English, and study skills. Specialized tutoring of course concepts may
or may not be available depending on the tutors available. Staff members at the Learning
Centre are friendly and helpful, and the tutoring is free for Douglas college students, so don’t
hesitate to swing by if things are getting overbearing.

If you need help with a specific course that is outside the expertise of the available peer
tutors, or if you feel you don’t require tutoring, but need help with a course project, you can
always get help directly from your teachers. Most teachers have set office hours, for which tim
students can schedule appointments, or simply drop in. The great advantage of going to a col

lege is the availability if the professors. Most of them are easy to get a hold of,
and are happy to help with your academic problems.
If you ate having bad luck with your professors, or just want to
find out which ones give the best grades, you can check them out
before you sign up for their classes by going online and seeing
what other students have to say at
www.ratemyprofessors.com. This site can be useful, but
take the ratings with a grain of salt. Sometimes the
reviews are unfair or inaccurate. Commonly, students
who don’t study and get bad grades will give their
professors bad ratings out of spite.
There are many things you can do to help you
be successful in college. However, there is no
substitute for studying, Try to set aside some
time every day, (or at least weekdays) even if it’
only for an hour. Even if you don’t get much
work done, it will get you into the habit of
studying consistently. Take notes in class, and
read your textbooks if you wish to do well.
Take notes from your texts and combine thet
with your lecture notes if you wish to do bet
ter. It is important to set aside enough study
time to get all of your work done; if you don
study regularly, you probably won't do very
well on exams, no matter how much you try t«
cram in the 24 hours before the your test.
When studying, it’s best to find a quiet plac
without distractions. If you don’t want to study
at home, there are several places in the college
that fit the bill. If you go to the New West
Campus, the bottom floor of the library is good, bu
the top level is better, vice versa in Coquitlam. The
Student’s lounge in the Student’s Union Building is a
great place to study with other people; it is usually quiet,
and sparsely populated, but you and your study group can
make as much noise as you want. There is also a store so you
can by coffee or snacks and a microwave so you can heat up a
meal.
Hopefully you will never get to this point, but if you find yourself in
danger of being overwhelmed, there is one last tactic that may help you. I call
the Resident Evil Technique. In the popular videogame, Resident Evil, the player controls :
Special Forces agent that runs around solving puzzles and shooting zombies.

Sometimes, while playing Resident Evi/, you will find yourself surrounded on all sides by
flesh eating zombies. The zombies are approaching slowly, but there seems to be no end to th
horde. If you lose your cool and freeze up, you will be eaten. If try to run, you will be eaten.
you aim poorly, you will be eaten. The only way to save your skin is to stay calm and shoot thi
nearest zombie until it dies, then shoot the next closest one until /¢ dies, and so on.

The same principal applies to assignments; stay calm and focus on the next assignment du
When that is completed, move on to the next one, and so on. If you lose your cool and fall
apart you won't get eaten by zombies, but you'll fall behind and start to lose marks—and it’s a
slippery slope!

Hopefully I haven’t scared you. It’s really not that hard to get by with decent grades, espe-
cially if you’re organized. Really, by the end of you two years at college, you’ll be a pro...until
your first semester at university.

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