Resources for politics and international relations students
- Managing your time

Managing your time

Starting university is an exciting time, but it can be overwhelming. All of a sudden you have an enormous amount of time that is all your own, to spend doing whatever you want. If you're not careful, it's very easy to use that time to catch up on Netflix's entire back catalogue, or doing anything other than studying.. Our panellists give their best tips to use your time wisely.

Organise your priorities and make a detailed schedule.
Jerome Aguilar, University College Dublin

Create a timetable, write out all of your lectures, seminars and other commitments and work out your free time. Once you've worked out when you're free you can divide time equally between your modules so you're guaranteed to stay on top of work! This will also really help when coursework submissions are due.
Grace Petty, University of Nottingham

Work as much as you can in the morning and afternoon so you can have a relaxing/fun evening with no pressure to work.
Alice Maley, University of Bath

The main thing is to stay focused and have an end goal for what you hope to achieve that week.
James Nixon, City University of London

Begin an essay a month before due date- 2 weeks for research and 2 weeks for writing.
Jonathan Evans, Winchester

Try to combine work with other activities. Audiobooks are a great way to absorb an important book or text while walking to university, on the train or on a bike ride. Most of the texts required for political theory (The Republic, On War etc) are available as audiobooks.
Samuel Hamilton, University of Nottingham

Don't overcomplicate your schedule. Print all of your deadlines at the start of the semester, and set mini-deadlines in the run up to them.
Jordan Auburn, University of Bath

I was terrible at managing my time before I started creating specific to-do lists. I used an app called "Wishlist" and wrote every task down with a deadline that triggered an alarm. No excuse to forget your deadlines or classes anymore!
Shirel Gertan, Free University Berlin

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