Don't Juggle Time, Manage it
It all started in high school where I began to procrastinate with all my homework and put off studying. I was a student athlete and would always come home drained. All I wanted to do was rest and watch Netflix at any chance I got. I always knew I had homework due the next day or a test, but I would always put it off. When it seemed like I had time to do homework, I would delay doing it by thinking that I'll do it in 30 minutes or in an hour. However, I would not do it until it was about midnight. Since I was always rushing to finish it, I would do the bare minimum or would not even study because I wanted to go to sleep. At the end of each six weeks, I would receive a couple of B's and two C's, but that did not fly by with my teachers or my mom. They were always on my case about my grades so I was always in trouble but that was due to my decision to procrastinate. I know I am not alone on this issue because students all around have the same problem. At one point, being a student athlete helped me understand that other students possibly have priorities of their own that hold them back from getting things done. Why do you believe students cram the night before to understand class lessons?
Procrastination is caused by a plethora of reasons and it effects students' learning and studying habits. If they learn skills and time management, then it is possible to overcome it. In "Investigating Grit and its Relations with College Students' Self-regulated Learning and Academic Achievement," Christopher Wolters and Maryam Hussain discuss about how certain qualities that college students have affect them and explain why self-regulated learning is preferred. They define grits as qualities students have that may be the cause for their procrastination. The authors conducted a research to investigate the grits to understand people and their passion for long-term goals. “…procrastination repeatedly has been portrayed as a failure of effective self-regulation" (page 297). It seems that we, as students, procrastinate because we do not believe in ourselves. Procrastination is used as regularly as 75%. Wolters and Hussain did a study on 213 participants, studied their qualities, different learning habits, and predicted their motivational beliefs and their self-regulated learning. What I got from this source was that grits link to their learning habits and long-term goals. The reasoning for their research was that they wanted students to be aware of how their qualities could possibly be a reason on why they procrastinate.
It is believed that procrastination can be caused because of a student's background and their learning skills. In the reading, "Relationships Between Learning Approach, Procrastination and Academic Achievement Amongst First-Year University Students," Rannveig Sæle, Tove Dahl, Tore Sørlie, and Oddgeir Friborg tried to find the relations on why students procrastinate and study last minute and how that affects their GPA. They did a research on first year students and considered their backgrounds to compare them. Then they compared their findings to get a general idea. They also questioned them about their mental and physical health to see if that is a factor on why they procrastinate. Another thing they did was perform a study on their learning approaches and studying skills. I learned that the authors want teachers to use the strategic and deep learning approach to help students with their GPA and have a greater understanding of the lessons. The new approaches are supposed to help students who wait last minute to understand a lesson which will affect their GPA if they continue to do so.
This starts students on the path to academic recovery. However, one when you are used to doing a certain action and you finally break that habit, it is easy to fall back into it- especially regarding procrastination. In the research, "Academic Procrastination Prevention/ Intervention: Strategies and Recommendations," Mera M. Kachgal, L. Sunny Hansen, and Kevin J. Nutter want to help students be aware of cycles of why they fall back into procrastination. “Many
contributing factors to procrastination have been identified in the research literature, including feelings of being overwhelmed, lack of motivation, perfectionism, and poor time management and organizational skills.” (page 14) Procrastination is done because many students believe in themselves or want everything a certain way. They did a study on 141 students that were from 10 different elective study skills. The study was done by giving the student participants a survey on the first week of the spring semester. They gave them scenarios to see which ones they would procrastinate on and which ones they would not. The authors wanted students to understand why they procrastinate so they can help them break that cycle.
In the three articles, different studies were performed but all discovered similar information. They all found out that there was one way to break the bad habits of procrastination. The major thing missing was that their research was not based on first year college students. If they had based it on first year college students, then their research would have been different and would have helped make a change in the academic community.
The reason I am doing my own research is to gain a better understanding and have a different perspective on why first year college students procrastinate. I used interviews because I wanted people to be open and honest about why they procrastinate. I asked a series of questions and requested an example to explain their response and get a more elaborate answer. The data collected was from different types of college students that I had interviewed. I did interviews on three different students from the University of Rio Grande Valley that could help me with my research, but it was mainly a study on first year college students. The reason I chose first year college students was because we are transitioning from high school to college which is a big struggle for plenty of us. When you are in high school, teachers are lenient with assignments, homework, or tests because they are usually just trying to help you graduate from high school.
Students were always given the opportunity to make up any missing work, so they were always doing last minute work to ensure they did not fail. Transitioning from high school to college is critical because your old habits may hurt you in college in the long run. During my first semester of college, I would procrastinate so much thinking that the limited time I had set aside for homework and studying would be sufficient, but it turned out it was not. I asked the following questions to see why students procrastinate so it could help with my research.
When I inquired the first question, the three interviewees had the same answer but different experiences because they all had different priorities. One of the interviewees was a student athlete and explained to me that juggling both school and sports was difficult. I understood why she felt that way because, like I stated earlier, I once was a student athlete. She explained to me that she is always tired and just wants to go home to rest. When I asked her whether she had time to do her homework or not, she replied that she did, but she did not know how to manage her time wisely. Although she told me that sometimes when she studies the day before it can either help her or hurt her. One of the interviewees related to her problem but the only difference was that she was a full-time student. They both had trouble managing their time, so they did not have enough time to get all their work done or study.
The last interviewee was a full-time student but also had a job. In his case when I interviewed him, his answers were significantly different from the other two interviewees. He stated that when he procrastinated, it helped him understand the concepts better. That was tough for me to believe because most people do not learn as much when they procrastinate. He reassured me when he told me that whenever he is under pressure or on time crunches, he was able to memorize and learn the concepts of the subjects quicker. When I questioned him if he had
time for school assignments or not, he told me that he did but that he knew how to manage his time effectively while procrastinating.
An analyst oft the rest of the interview questions, they all answered the same except the interviewees had their own experiences along with them. These responses helped me to realize that students need to manage their time with assignments, so that they can have enough time to complete them. It will notably help you, a first-year college student, more by giving you enough time to do all your assignments without worrying if you will have enough time to complete homework or study. Being on time crunches and having minimal time to do innumerable assignments negatively impact a student's learning because they only grasp few of the concepts.
Through my own personal experience and research, it is evident that students engage in procrastination not because they are lazy but because they are busy with work, family obligations, or being a full-time student. One should not assume that students do not care about their academic duties or that they do not want to make the extra effort because it is difficult for them to juggle all their obligations. I know exactly how it feels because I was a student athlete and I struggled juggling my obligations when I was in high school. Imagine the difficulty doing the latter in college! I want students to understand why time management is important and how it will help them have enough time to do their homework and study for exams and quizzes. It will not only help make the students life significantly easier, but it will also grant them a chance to better understand academic lessons. By having limited time to do numberless assignments, students get negatively impacted because they are only able to comprehend few of the concepts.
Citations
-Wolters, Christopher1, wolters.21@osu.edu and Maryam2 Hussain. "Investigating Grit and Its Relations with College Students' Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Achievement." Metacognition & Learning, vol. 10, no. 3, Dec. 2015, pp. 293-311. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11409-014-9128-94
-Saele, Rannveig1, rannveig.sale@uit.no, et al. "Relationships between Learning Approach, Procrastination and Academic Achievement Amongst First-Year University Students." Higher Education (00181560), vol. 74, no. 5, Nov. 2017, pp. 757-774. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10734-016-0075-z
-Kachgal, Mera M., et al. "Academic Procrastination Prevention/Intervention: Strategies and Recommendations." Journal of Developmental Education, vol. 25, no. 1, Fall2001, pp. 14-24. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN=507715819&site=ehost-live.
