As a college student and mother of a four year-old daughter, Megan Skalley, 22, admits she feels the pinch of managing her time wisely and the burden of stress associated with college.
“The biggest thing that stresses me out is time management,” Skalley, a Social Work major at Sinclair said. “Everybody has different stuff that they are doing outside of school, but for me it’s time management. Specifically, finding the time to get assignments finished and also studying.”
Whether it is the daily grind of classes and homework, the challenge of juggling college life with their family life, or the prospects of facing a bleak job market, Sinclair students attempt to balance time management and stress along with their personal lives.
Bobby J. Beavers, coordinator of Minority Student Success, witnesses how stress plays a detrimental role in student’s lives because those students are unfamiliar with the college process.
“A vast number of our students don’t know about college. They don’t know what going to college is all about,” Beavers said. “Many of our students are first generation college students and many of them are not directly out of high school. They don’t really understand how college works and that causes a lot of internal stress.”
Minority Student Success helps to alleviate the difficulties minority Sinclair students face while progressing through their degree programs.
According to a handout for the program, “Minority Student Success assists the college in providing a supportive educational environment that enables minority students to achieve academic and personal enrichment, achieve their purpose in life, attain personal success…and achieve academic success” they do this through Counseling Action Plans, academic counseling and coaching, staff orientations, support groups, learning activities and workshops.
Beavers also described some of the unique obstacles that Sinclair students face.
“The nature of our students is that many of them have issues with transportation, childcare and housing,” Beavers said. “It’s sad to say that many of them (students) are homeless and are coming to class and trying to get a degree to improve their lives.”
The transition from quarters to semesters has been another change Sinclair students have been forced to adapt to. Starting in the fall semester of 2012, Sinclair joined Ohio University, Wright State University, The Ohio State University, The University of Cincinnati, among other Ohio colleges, in the mass exodus into a semester academic calendar.
Though the switch will provide Sinclair students with an easier transferring process and will require students to pay for books and register for classes twice a year, Sinclair’s website said the new 16-week terms also allows ample time for classwork to drift until the last minute.
“Many students around [the middle of the] semester are freaking out because of all the things that are due,” Associate Professor of Communication Rob Leonard said. “Many students seem to think that these things are thrown at them at the last minute, when in fact on day one on the syllabus it said ‘this is going to be due.’ Good time management would help to prepare and get things done in a timely manner.”
While Skalley believes the quarters-to-semesters transition has deadened her stress levels, she believes the allure to procrastinate still exists.
“I think it’s a little less stressful because you do have more time in between assignments and tests, but there is more room to procrastinate because you have more time before you have to get something turned in,” she said. “I know, [personally], it’s easy to put off assignments due to other life activities that are still going on.”
To combat the litany of reasons that attribute to stress associated with college, Skalley makes sure that her schedule includes an equal amount of time for herself and for school. She also leverages classmates for studying purposes.
“When I know I have free time coming up, I set aside specific time for school and I set aside specific time for myself to be free and do whatever it is that I want to do,” Skalley said. “When I am stressed out with any type of classes, I find it makes it a lot easier to find people to study with. I am also never shy to reach out to professors and ask them ‘how can I do better?’ or ‘what types of things will help me succeed in the class?’ I don’t wait until I am falling behind,” Skalley said.