With the 2020 school year beginning, learning good time management skills is crucial. Teachers are trying to teach beneficial time management skills and habits to their students. 

“Time management is important for any class, especially for classes with more work outside of class. You need to be able to manage your time well,” Lisa Baughman, AP World and Honors US History teacher at Westerville South said.

Baughman defines time management as being able to have the foresight to look ahead to your schedule and plan for a period of time, not cramming everything the night before.

Students tend to feel stressed about school; learning good time management skills can help relieve some of that stress. According to The Atlantic, researchers “49 percent of students reported feeling ‘a great deal of stress’ on a daily basis.”

Baughman has seen many cases of students who overextend themselves and the stress of doing extra work outside of class takes away their motivation to get things done. Baughman said  students “need to get back to the basics to learn these skills.”

Baughman divides her assessments into smaller pieces so students who tend to struggle with time management cannot cram all the work too close to the deadline.

Claire Miller, an honor roll senior at South, has experienced stress. “It’s not the school work, itself, that’s stressful. I stress about the idea of school work,” Miller stated.

The most difficult part of time management, for Miller, is “knowing where the line is between being productive and overworking.”

Miller stated, “I would find myself a lot, last year, working too much consecutively without a break, and then I wouldn’t be working well anymore.  I think that’s really important for time management, to allow yourself breaks.”

Samantha Varney, a senior varsity soccer player and honor roll student at South, suggests not overbooking yourself, knowing due dates, and not procrastinating. She uses a planner; this has helps her keep track of when assignments are due.

Her time management skills have improved throughout high school. “I have been trying to do my homework right after school instead of waiting to do it at like 9 0’clock at night, so like procrastinating less and trying to get less of my value from grades… I have been trying to do my best… and I have been asking for help more,” Varney stated.

One of the first assignments Beth Eddy, honors and AP chemistry, and material science teacher at Westerville South, assigns students is to watch a TEDtalk by Tim Urban. He talks about how procrastination affected him during college and how he learned to deal with his procrastination.

Eddy teaches chemistry in a blended learning environment, meaning the teacher gives some instruction but there is a self-taught component of it. She gives her students access to all of the assignments for a unit at the beginning of the month and everything is due at the end of the month.

Procrastination makes learning this way more difficult; teaching yourself a whole unit in a shortened period of time isn’t beneficial, according to Eddy.

She sets up a suggestive calendar for them to be getting things done by. This gives students flexibility but also shows them ways to do things one step at a time.

Eddy defines time management as “being able to use your time wisely to get stuff done that you need to have done.”

Eddy has seen many high school students gain good time management skills through blended learning chemistry. She strongly believes that high school students can learn how to manage their time well, it just takes practice. 

Eddy stated students struggle with time management because they haven’t had any practice with it.  “People want instant gratification, the easy and fun now, but you’re going to have fun if your work gets done so that you don’t have anything hanging over your head when you have free time,” Eddy explained.