Student Blog: When 525,600 Minutes Turn Into 0

I knew off the bat that I would do theater as an extracurricular in college but, at the same time, I recognized that it would come with challenges regarding my time management. As someone who was a top-tier procrastinator in high school, I knew that I needed to find a better sense of balance between academic work and hobbies. One tool that has been extremely helpful is Google Calendar or some type of scheduling platform. At Yale, Google Calendar is used religiously especially when it comes to the many different student productions happening simultaneously. Stage managers and producers will often use the app to schedule rehearsals at times when a majority of the cast is available. Each semester, I block out time where my classes will go and each week, I add new time blocks for events, upcoming meetings, important assignments, and study sessions. Students on the production team can see these time blocks I’ve set and try their best to schedule around them. This has definitely improved my time management abilities. A detailed calendar establishes a solid blueprint for how my day will go and prevents me from missing anything. 

This sounds silly but another one of my tools has been free time. More specifically, I have applied more structure to how I use my free time. As many college students experience, I arrived on campus and was shocked by the amount of time I had. There were 2-3 lectures a day and I often had good breaks between them. I thought I was living the life! However, as we inched further into the semester and rehearsals started to amp up for the mainstage production of Rent I had joined, I quickly found myself deep in the trenches. I would let so much unused time go by and then, all of a sudden, I was in night rehearsals going until 10pm. Consequently, I would return to my dorm tired and that one long-term assignment became a problem for the next day…and the next day…and the next. I knew that I was officially trapped the night that I finished rehearsal and immediately had to start cram studying for my economics midterm the next day. As a side note, never take a course like economics unless you have to as a major requirement or you are genuinely interested. I took the course as a math credit when there were multiple alternatives. Anyway, as I desperately tried to remember everything I could from my notes, I knew I had no one to blame but myself for being in this predicament. Wishing you had more time as you recount how much you wasted is the worst. Early moments like these showed me that I needed to use the time between and after classes differently. While it is unrealistic to be on the go and productive 24/7, I definitely needed a greater sense of time regulation. Instead of returning to my dorm when I had free time, I started to frequent areas on campus catered to working like libraries and cafes. This helped me avoid the feeling of being trapped as I took on more productions.