College Students vs Time Management
As a first year college student, when I was told to write an essay to other struggling students here at UTRGV, I didn’t even have an idea of my what own struggles were. When I failed a class last semester, it was the first time I had ever failed a class in all my years of education. Realizing the real issues I encountered of why I had failed and contemplating the situation with my partner now, we both agreed we had similar problems in the past and we decided to write about time management and research. Why does time management while doing research differ between experienced researchers and first year composition students? It seems first-year composition students do not use their time wisely while doing research or completing research papers and it’s causing less work to get done and more half assed work to be turned in. As first-year college students, is this a problem we are all experiencing?
According to Akcoltekin Alpturk, “Some manage to do more work compared to others in the same amount of time.” (2241) Our research results presented throughout this article infer that some students can be given two hours to do a task and choose to do it poorly rather than to do it well. It is all a matter of how they decide to manage their time. This relates to the differences in upperclassmen and first year composition students managing their time while doing research papers. Keep in mind that there are many factors that contribute to how time management is used between experienced researchers and first-year composition students such as their methods to complete a research paper, balancing school and a job, time management skills, etc.
One of the main factors contributing to how time management is used while doing research papers is that first-year composition students are not learning enough critical thinking skills. (Keeley, Browne, Kreutzer) “The superiority of seniors is caused by college experience.” (153) From this, we can conclude that seniors are superior to freshman when it comes to critical thinking. This as well can affect time management between the different level students because first-year composition students are spending too much time trying to include critical thinking in their research papers while it is easier for seniors to do it.
Another major factor that affects time management between experienced researchers and first-year composition students while doing a research is working a job outside of school. “Among second year students, being employed was associated with less students stress.” (Randi Koeske, Gary Koeske 245) This shows that the experienced students deal with stress better while balancing school and work than inexperienced or first year composition students do. First year students with jobs and experienced students with jobs appear to have different stress levels. First year students with more stress may have a harder time with time management considering that they are stressed out.
The visual above is a schedule of a working student, looking at the time he/she goes in to work ( 6pm) just imagine when they get to study, sleep,or do homework. Assuming that they attend to school at least twice a week at the minimum, this can be something difficult to keep up with.
When is this student doing homework ? At what time is this student sleeping, eating, socializing, etc. The stress levels easily affects this student, regardless if he/she had a well planned out agenda. Students like this may be distracted while doing homework by checking time and feel as if he/she is being rushed. They had to go to work perhaps? Some professors try to understand these elements, but others simply don’t care. What does this cause? Discouragement among students who are trying hard to make money and get an education.
To find our own answer, we set up two separate interviews here at UTRGV with two students and asked them both the same set of questions to give them both the same opportunity to answer. Both were given a two week period to answer all 41 questions and both had to be current college students. The questions presented gave enough detail so that the students were able to engage easily and answer without trouble. In order to answer the main question, we need to be acknowledged about the incoming high school graduates (freshmen) and those getting ready to graduate from college (seniors). We must also evaluate all the obstacles they are facing including the methods they use to be successful in their education, and what they’ve done or are doing to be able to manage their time. The goal is to be able to help first year college students who are having trouble with time management or facing problems related to time management.
Keep in mind, both interviewees are current students at UTRGV. The senior responded within the 3 days that the interview was set up, opened up easily and gave very detailed answers, making it into a conversation base environment. It took the senior about two hours to fully answer all questions and he even gave some feedback to the interview questions. The freshman was very different in this aspect. He took about an hour to answer all the questions and his answers ended up being short and seemed rushed. That also reflected when we read his answers. Further into the research, we were able to tell the major differences between the two students. This gave us a clearer understanding of how some students take their methods into consideration while dealing with research and using time management.
Here’s an example of some of the questions that we asked and answers from the first-year composition student. As you can see, the questions are simple and easy for the student to engage in.
From the answers we got from the first year college student, we can conclude that there are many things this freshman could be doing to improve his time management that would improve his grades. The answers from this interview differ greatly from those of the experienced researcher because the experienced researcher appears to manage his time much more efficiently.
Here are some examples of the experienced researcher’s answers to compare to those of the first-year composition students answers.
From the senior, we can see the extensive experience they have dealing with research and the efficiency they project on answering the questions. It gave us more to work with.
Above we pick out one interview question that shows a lot about the methods the two students might be using to create their research.
The methods a student uses to complete a research paper is another big factor in time management. If an experienced researcher knows exactly how to complete a research paper, his time will be used more wisely compared to a first-year composition student that may have never done a college research paper. Many first-year college students have a misconception about research. “Research means plagiarizing the encyclopedias and stringing together blobs of quoted material from secondary sources.” (Glen A. Love, Michael Payne 739) This quote about high school researchers shows that recent high school graduates are already having difficulty writing research papers in college. This is also affecting time management in first-year composition students considering that a lot of the work they are doing is incorrect and creating excess, time consuming revisions. As for an experienced researcher, they are already passed the misconception of research papers that first year college are facing.
From the interviews, we observed that the freshmen took about an hour and a half but answered poorly, while the senior got a lot more done in the same amount of time. In fact, during the interview we asked the students what methods they used to make a research paper and how much time it took them to come up with a specific topic. On the freshmen side, we noticed a domino effect and lack of interest to learn the topic they chose. We also saw that professors had given them the choice to write to the career field that they are pursuing, of course with the focus of the topic. Yet from what we learned, students are still being affected by wrong research and writing habits. On the senior side, we learned that the professor seemed to be more flexible and students are given a more optional way to do research. The downside to this is that the students are going to be criticized more harshly and don’t really have time to fail a class if they are trying to graduate.
Here in South Texas, we are labeled differently. Here at UTRGV we’re a different group of students. Different in a sense that we seem to be more on family matters first and education is then forgiven. Unfortunately, we can’t simply close our eyes and ignore the problem. In a way this is bad for our future students because they too will follow our steps. In the interview we did, our freshmen was working to help pay for their education. Coming from a low income family in this case was the interference with time management. Lack of time played a big part in not studying more, which in the article of Keeley, Browne, and Kreutzer they state that freshman failed to learn critical thinking skills. Well how can a student who works and pays bills think clearly? How can their mind be care free? We soon learned that stress can really take over students easily when they can’t manage all things at once. Now our senior on the other hand said his problem was procrastination. In this case, it’s the student who is directly affecting the process of learning critical thinking skills. Contradicting to what the article above states, we can always say that a good 25 percent of students who lack critical thinking skills or any academic learning is due to self discipline. When we asked the senior “What are some of the flaws you have notice that affect you negatively when it comes to school ?” he replied with “PROCRASTINATION that has been my biggest flaw. When it comes to homework I always wait until the last second, which is bad.” That shows clearly that it is not critical thinking skills that are affecting the student;s academic performance but it is the time management. As another example, when we asked the freshmen “If you do turn in late work, why is it late?” he replied with “Because I didn’t do it due to choices.” We can see that it is clearly self discipline or time management over critical thinking skills that are holding this student back.
It’s just information based in the experience and non experience. (W. P. Anderson and Sandra Lopez-Baez) “What levels of personal growth do members of a sample of college seniors attribute to each year of their 4-year college careers and what percentages do they attribute to academic and non-academic experiences, respectively?” (74) it helps us see the other side of the research. that way we can give our audience that benefit of acknowledging how time management plays a role in their everyday life.
Here is an example of someone who is successful so far. Of course he is not the best or perfect, but we can see that he is doing great. Above are some of the procedures you can follow and apply to your daily studies and life.
The lesson here to be taught is to be organized and efficient in order to obtain a greater amount of work done in a period of time. Yes, we are well aware of all the pressure you face when it comes to balancing life, school, and a job. But it happens, life happens and sooner or later if you don’t get your situation together, eventually you will be stuck in a pattern of failure. So, does time management while doing research differ between experienced researchers and first year composition students? According to our research, yes, it does. We were able to identify some of the behaviors and characteristics students who are failing academically portrait. We learned that some FYC students tend to transition their bad habits to college, affecting them in the long run. Not realizing this has affected them harshly, versus seniors who have learned and tend to take their education more seriously using their time wisely. As you can see all students in general and especially FYC students, need to understand that time management is an important aspect to success, so we all need to prioritize and follow a strict agenda.
The table below was created to give specific layouts and pointers so that students who identify themselves having academic troubles, can use this tool.
Works Cited
Alpturk, Akcoltekin. "High School Students Time Management Skills in Relation to Research Anxiety." Educ. Res. Rev. Educational Research and Reviews 10.16 (2015): 2241-249. Web.
Jr., W. P. Anderson, and Sandra I. Lopez-Baez. "College-Student Personal-Growth and Attributions of Cause." TPC The Professional Counselor 2.1 (2012): 68-80. JSTOR. Web.
Keeley, Stuart M., Neil Browne, and Jeffrey S. Kreutzer. "A Comparison on Freshmen and Seniors on General and Specific Essay Test of Critical Thinking." Springer (1982). JSTOR. Web.
Koeske, Randi D., and Gary F. Koeske. "Working and Non-working Students: Roles, Support, and Well Being." Council on Social Work Education (1989). JSTOR. Web. 1 Mar. 2016.
Love, Glen A., and Michael Payne. "The Research Paper: Does It Belong in High School?" The English Journal 56.5 (1967): 739. JSTOR. Web.
