Guest Post - Managing Your Time

                              

                             How to manage your time well

                                                by CeCe Gauger

Hello again! My name is CeCe, and I am going to be talking about how to manage your time well. I myself have struggled with this being a high school student, bassoonist, and flutist. Finding time for my hobbies has been hard as well, though with a proper schedule, you can find time for it all! 

As I mentioned above, I am a high school student, a freshman to be exact. To those of you who are still in middle school, you ain't seen nothing yet. I was very overwhelmed until I found a schedule that worked for me. I am a very tightly wound person, so I can go from 0 to 60 in a zeptosecond, and with the increased difficulty in the curriculum, this happens quite a lot, achieving nothing but frustration from my family and for myself.  Here are the things that I find helpful;

1) Get up a reasonable time, and go to bed at a reasonable time. 

2) Begin with P.E (you will read why in a moment)

3) Don't dilly-dally in getting your work done

4) Study for tests a little bit each day, so you won't feel unprepared when they crop up

5) If you have extra-curriculars, discipline yourself to get those things practiced, made, or written everyday

Now that you have a basic grasp on the things that are important for a stress-free school week, you'll see how to get them done. Begin by writing the schedule that you would like to create, either by typing it out or writing it down. This will help tremendously, even though it seems a bit dumb at first. If you don't have an alarm clock, I highly recommend purchasing one, so that you can begin your day earlier. Try to aim to wake up 30-60 minutes earlier than you do currently. This will relax your morning more than I can say. 

The next thing; DO P.E FIRST!! This is a source of dread for athletic scrubs such as myself, so just grit your teeth and get it done. You'll get it out of the way, allowing more time for the things you love doing. 

DON'T DILLY-DALLY IN GETTING YOUR WORK DONE. I cannot stress this enough, because if you study in an area that distracts you from your work, you won't achieve a thing. If this means doing your work outside, the dining room, or the living room, then do it! Don't look around your bedroom wondering what life would be like if you were a tomato, focus on what your day would be like if you had your work done BEFORE 5 p.m!  

STUDY FOR TESTS A LITTLE BIT EACH DAY. I get insanely stressed about stressed about tests. I can't recall what the coordinating chain is for adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine is, I don't know when the Egyptians worshiped bugs, so I start to wonder what will happen if I fail high school and end up the creepy old lady at the end of the block who eats canned hot dogs and rhubarb pie...

All this to say, go over what you have learned in each subject so you can retain it. Memorize vocabulary words, go over the basic anatomy of a cell, try to recall what it means when angles are skew. This helps more than I can say, so DO IT!

Finally, if you have extra-curriculars, practice, make, or write what you have to do each day BEFORE noon. As I said above, I am a bassoonist and a flutist in the West Suburban Homeschool Band, and I know that I probably shouldn't say this, but I really HATE to practice! Why do I need to practice Symphony no. 5 when I could be practicing braiding my hair or eating some Twinkies... All this to say, get it done! 

Welp, that's it! I hope this proves to be helpful as well as instructive to you. To all of you stress-cases out there; there is hope for you yet! Hang in there!