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My homework takes up my time...
I can't bring myself to sit long enough to study...
I want to do my homework correctly and take my time with it, but I have no time for anything else. How can I make it so that I will have more leisure time?
Answer:
It's great that you care so much about your homework, and that you're responsible enough to think about your homework. However, not having enough leisure time is a common problem for people who feel strongly about doing a good job on their homework. You need to do your homework whether you want to or not. There is not way around it, but there are some strategies that you could use to help make a little more time for fun.
Below are some tips to help with homework obtained from www.kidsource.com, and RUOrganized's reasons why it is important to try to use these tips for your advantage.
Here are some tips to help with homework: (These tips have been modified to suit your needs)
1. Keep in touch with the teacher or teachers to be fully aware of the quantity and the quality of the homework turned in.
When you get an assignment, it can either be important, very important, or not so important. Therefore, you can either do a good job on it, a really good job, or a not so good job. Obviously, the more important the assignment, the more important it is that you do a good job on it. Another life skill that this tip involves is prioritizing. Prioritizing means that you can figure out the order of importance of everything that you have to do in one day, and based on that order, make a schedule for your day. If you can get your priorities straight, than this tip may help you.
2.Set a schedule, including both a beginning and an ending time. Most people need some time to unwind after school before sitting back down to do homework. Doing work too close to bedtime may make it difficult due to being tired. Fridays are usually the best day for homework that must be completed over the weekend. Assignments are still fresh in mind and last minute panic rushes are avoided.
This tip could be very helpful to you, if you apply it to your day correctly. I know that when I come home on Friday nights, I justlike to get my work over with. If you can just sit down and get through another hour of work, you'll have a free weekend. Your question was of course targeted towards getting more leisure time during the weekdays too, but having a free weekend is a start. Last minute panic rushes are really annoying. I can assume that you have had a last minute panic rush at least one time in your life. These are due to human error. Human error can not be avoided completely, but you can try hard not to let it get in the way of your life. Human error accounts for a lot of wasted time. For example, if you lose you homework and spend a lot of time looking for it, that is a lot of time that could have been spent doing something else. However, because of human error, you had to spend that time looking for your homework.
3. Try to divide the homework assignment into "What I can do myself" and "What I need help with." This way, you can get the things that you can do yourself out of the way before you go and ask for help.
While this doesn't save you too much time, it does make it so that you aren't annoying your parents on and off all night.
Use "Grandma's Rule." Remember that Grandma is reputed to have said that there is no dessert until you are finished with your spinach. Hold off on watching TV and other fun activities until homework is completed.
In order to use "Grandma's Rule" effectively, you need to have a whole lot of will power. "Grandma's Rule" says that you can't have any dessert until you've finished your spinach. This tip modifies "Grandma's Rule" so that the word "dessert" becomes the word "fun", the word "eat" becomes "do", and the word "spinach" becomes "homework". If you don't have much will power, it will be hard for you to use this tip effectively. This tip should help provide last minute panic rushes, and having to stay up late doing homework. If you just happen to have so much homework one night that you have to stay up late anyway, there's really nothing you can do, because that's just life, and life can't be avoided.
Provide a home study center for yourself with adequate light and few distractions. If you concentrate better with white noise (music), than try to provide some for yourself. Also, a dictionary, paper, pens, etc., should be readily available.
The "home study center" referred to here is your desk. If you don't have a desk, than just try to work in a nice, calm, quiet place. If white noise helps you, than by all means, keep a white noise machine nearby. White noise is quiet noises used to soothe you, and keep you calm. Heavy metal rock does not count as white noise. A home study center is only helpful to some people. If you can keep it clean and organized enough that you can find things when you need them, it might save you a lot of time since you won't have to go searching for all your materials. Sometimes, a home study center is also just a nicer, more calm place to work, where your big brother won't be throwing a football around, or your little sister won't be climbing up on the counter to look for a box of cookies, and everything is just much more peaceful and easier to work in.
Study groups are often a good strategy. You may benefit from studying with one or two classmates. However, make sure you are using the time to study.
Study groups are not such a good idea if you don't think you can stop yourself from chatting with your friends or breaking away to watch TV. Most kids don't have enough self control to do that. Ask a parent if it's ok with them for you to have a study group. If your parent trusts that you will get work done, they will probably O.K. your study group. Still, unless you really, truly, believe that you will be able to control you, as well as your friends, it is not a good idea.
Allow yourself bathroom, drink, and/or snack breaks, but make sure you will still be able to achieve completion of tasks.
Only allow yourself breaks if you know that you will still have time left to complete all neccesary tasks. If you are not 100% sure that you will still have enough time to complete these activities. Many people underestimate the time they need in order to complete the neccesary tasks. If you do not trust yourself, do not take any breaks. Or, just greatly overestimate the needed time, and if you still have time, than you can take a break. Make sure that you are not just saying that you trust yourself so that you can take a break and not feel guilty about it. Only put this tip into use if you really trust yourself, which most people can not honestly say that they do.
Well, we hope we've helped. Write again if you want!
First off, thank you very much for writing to RUOrganized. We really appreciate feedback from our visitors. As you know, we sometimes put entries on our page. We always ask first though...
Would you like your question and answer posted on the RUOrganized website? (Your name and email do not have to go up if you don't want.)
Your question was:
I have a promotional test at school. It is the last test of the year. If I do not pass, I'll have to stay down another year. I know I have to study, but I can't sit down too long. Can you help?
As you surely know, studying for finals/90 point tests is stressful, often boring, and discouraging. Hopefully, we'll be able to help a little bit. (Don't worry, we're not trying to convince you that studying is fun...)
First of all, try taking short breaks every 20 minutes or so. Do some short activity to relieve your stress. Then, go back and study some more. A strategy we reccomend is to write down the things you already know. Then, look at a certain section of your notes, and than when you think you have it, write it down. If you don't get it the first try, than keep going, and come back to it. This way, you know when you truly have memorized it. If you are really having trouble studying, take something in the opposite hand that you are(righty, lefty), and squeeze it lightly while you are doing your work. It sometimes help to fiddle with something to keep yourself otherwise occupied. Keep turning it and squeezing it lightly while you do your work, and then try to focus yourself on remembering the information sentence by sentence.
The key to studying is being able to tune out everything well enough to actually CONCENTRATE on what your are studying! If you think that you have something down in your mind really well, and you have written it down to prove it to yourself, go on. After you are done with everything, run over it in your mind and check in on the paper that you wrote on. We can only make suggestions, but you have to be the one that stays in your chair and does the work.
The best way to stay in your chair is to isolate yourself. Get comfortable... Wrap yourself in a blanket, go sit in a comfortable chair in an solitary room with no phone, no TV, and no available computer. A sitting room will do nicely, if you have one. Picture this:
Say you're in the gym at your school, and your coach tells you to run 5 laps, do 20 pushups, and then 5 chinups. Say you couldn't do 5 laps because it was too tiring for you. Maybe you could only do 3 and a half. Well, you'd probably stop trying because it wasn't that important. Now picture that you are being chased by an outlaw on the streets of New York. What would you do? Would you stop running just because you were tired? Probably not, because it is too important.
It's just like testing. Normal quizes which are usually about 5 pointers should be studied hard for, but you can still get an A in class, and it will not keep you from advancing to the next grade. The final exams are really important, so they can not be forgotten.
Studying is 2 hours of pain, but then it's over. Though I personally do pretty well in school, I have to study more than anyone else because I just don't have a good memory. That's not really my fault, but I have found a few strategies that help me. One was the study-and-write it down strategy, and another was to take breaks every-so-often. I've found that these strategies really work, but again, it all depends on the personality. Again, we can only make suggestions. The way the test turns out is mostly based on your will-power.
Remember: You're climbing a mountain, here, not a molehill; but think of it this way: When you get to the top, the rest of the trip is all-easy downhill. Please write back and let us know if we've helped.
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