With Martin Luther King Jr. Day being the last holiday on our Spring calendar at FAMU along with the cancellation of spring break, this fast-paced Spring semester will command increased dedication and time from a lot of Rattlers.
On Thursday, the Academic Success Center hosted a time management workshop that provided these tools for FAMU students.
Hosted by academic coaches Ebony Greene and Johnny Darisaw ll, the event focused on interaction from students which was well accomplished throughout the presentation in order to achieve teachable and eye-opening moments for students.
The discussion began with the importance of time management and how lack thereof could lead to stress and poor performance.
“Poor time management can create more stress for you and others,” Greene said. “Since we all want to be successful, we have to manage our time.”
Although the main focus of the session was academic success as a result of effective time management, Greene and Darisaw made sure to address external issues that may affect students’ time management such as self-care, sleep, and digital device screen time.
“Unplugging and recharging so that you are able to focus and give every task you have the attention it deserves,” Greene said.
The importance of self-care in relation to organizing and managing time was an important topic that was also mentioned. Self-care includes giving yourself rest breaks along with getting enough rest at night in order to keep your energy going. As Darisaw said throughout the event, “It’s the energy for me.”
“It is important to rest 8 hours of the 24 hours of the day,” Darisaw said. “Make sure you get enough rest so the next day you can be champions.”
Considering the fact that we currently live in a digital age, our devices were an important part of the discussion about time management. This topic sparked an interactive portion of the event, where students checked their android and iOS devices in order to share their estimated screen time throughout the week.
Screen time is the amount of time that is used by someone on their device. This amount of time used on the device is broken up by social, financial and productive apps.
In order to overcome procrastination, a grasp on how we utilize our time throughout the week will be the first step.
“Start cutting out distractions which is something you can do by setting limits with your screen time,” Darisaw said. “You can set mini goals for yourself so that your productivity and financial categories are just as high as our social categories [in your device’s screen time settings].”
These external factors can cause us to lose time during the day for productive activities such as doing homework or studying. This lost time, as a result, contributes to the next topic that presenters Greene and Darisaw discussed — procrastination.
Greene pointed out that sometimes students procrastinate due to the simple fear of not completing the task correctly.
“Are you afraid of completing the task?” Greene asked. “Do you fear the topic or assignment?”
These are questions that were asked in order to present a resolution of communicating with professors after class or staying after class to ask any questions regarding assignments that students may be hesitant in completing.