The Schedule Exercise

The third of Stephen R. Covey's habits is to put first things first. You have to decide which tasks and activities take precedence. You also have to decide when they will be done. To get the maximum benefit from a class, you need to be devoting the necessary time to it. Quoting from page 17 of the HMC Catalog: Most students do approximately three hours of academic work outside of class for every hour they spend in class. Considering the price of a Mudd education, it's an incredible waste of money to devote less than the necessary time to a class. It's like going to a movie, coming late, and leaving before the dénouement. If you're paying for your own education, you have the right to throw your money away in that fashion. But if someone else (like your parents) is paying for your education….

Let's assume that the minimum necessary time outside of class is between two and three hours per hour in class. Then for a 15-unit load, you should be spending between 30 and 45 hours per week outside of class working, and a total of 45 to 60 hours for in-class and out-of-class work. The corresponding numbers for an 18-unit load are 36-to-54 hours and 54-to-72 hours per week respectively. A full-time job is 40 hours per week, so a 15-unit load is (or should be) the equivalent of a full-time and a part-time job. An 18-unit load is almost the equivalent of two full-time jobs. For perspective, many of the faculty and most of the trustees spend 60 to 80 hours per week on work.

My personal experience is that it is impossible to make effective use of time without planning and putting first things first. Thus your first exercise is to plan out a typical week, commit the plan to paper and give me a copy. This link is to a PDF which has all 24 hours of a day and all seven days of a week on one sheet. The times are divided up according to the Claremont class schedule. Your assignment is to:

Print out a copy.
Fill in all of your classes in the appropriate time slots.
For each normal class (not a lab) fill in when you are going to study and do homework for the class with the restriction that no more than two (2) hours can be the night before homework is due in that class. You must have between two and three hours outside of class for each unit of class.
For each lab fill in when you are going to do prep time for the lab.
If you want to eat, fill in times to eat.
If you have extra-curriculars, fill in times for those.
If you want social, recreation, or fun time, fill in those times.
If you want to sleep, fill in sleep time.
Make a copy of your completed form, and turn it in the second day of class.

Don't worry if you don't know the exact times for things like Clinic team meetings. Just fill in to the best of your knowledge at this time. The long-term hope is that you will use this form or some other time-management tool weekly and update it as tasks and priorities change. E106 has been structured to encourage such planning and time management. The homework, reading, and test times for the entire semester have already been posted. The lecture problem assignments (with rare exceptions) are made at least a week in advance. The homework is designed to be easiest if you start on it early and come in to see me when you get stuck. It's designed to be almost impossible if you start on it after midnight the night before it's due. The skills for the exams are published at least a week ahead of an exam to give you time to plan, study, and prepare. I recognize that most students will not take advantage of these proper time management techniques, but I ask you to consider doing it for one semester and see if it doesn't help. I usually get about five percent of the class to try it, and they unanimously endorse it after earnestly trying it.