University of Scranton students came back to campus this week after a nice enjoyable Thanksgiving break. And as crazy as it seems, there’s only three weeks of school left! It’s incredible how time flies.

Unfortunately, this time of the year becomes very stressful for many students. It seems that projects, papers, and group assignments stack up towards the end of semester before final exams. Plus the holidays are right around the corner.

However, there is a solution to these stressful times: time management. It’s an incredibly useful and helpful skill that all students should practice. Managing time is not always easy, but if you can do it well, it leads to a lot less stress and maybe even some free time for yourself.

There’s lots of different ways to manage your time effectively, but I’ll share a couple methods that I find to be extremely helpful.

Get some sort of day-planner. I was never the type of person to use a planner in high school because I really didn’t need one. College, however, is a much different story.

Get one of these planners! They’re extremely useful.

I definitely use my planner every day. I probably use it for school related assignments as much as I use it for extra-curriculars and other events I have going on. With it, I’m easily able to reference any specific day to see when I have time for homework or time for friends.

Along the same lines as a planner is a simple “to do” list. A lot of times, I use these in addition to my planner during busy times. For one, it’s good to be able to see what I want to accomplish on a certain day or weekend, and for two, it’s a great feeling to cross things off of the list.

With all this in mind, it’s important to remember that the key to a good “to do” list is to set reasonable goals. If I were to put tons of different things on my list to accomplish in one day, I would either not get it all done or be stressed to finish everything on the list. After all, the point is to relieve stress, not add to it.

Another important consideration is that sometimes time management techniques can make us less efficient. For example, if I were to color code my planner to have a different color for each class and each extra-curricular activity, and then put all these different things on a calendar in my room, and make a “to-do” list every day, I would be spending so much time “time managing” that it would actually waste my time.

However, everyone has their own styles and preferences. There’s lots of different ways to help you manage your time, and so it’s helpful to experiment. And remember, the point is to make you more efficient and less stressed, so be sure to do what works best for you.