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The #1 student-mom skill to hone

Time management is a skill that many college students struggle with. Due tomorrow, do tomorrow, anybody? But motherhood has put how I negotiate my time into sharp focus almost overnight. As a single mom and a student, I have had to re-evaluate my habits.

My main goal as a mom is to spend as much quality time with my daughter as possible so I’ve made it a rule to separate my scholarly life from my home life. On the flip side, my main goal as a student is to take advantage of all the opportunities available to me as a university student (and pass my classes, ha.)

This is harder than it sounds. I have to make sure the daily schedule fits in classes AND study time AND work time before I pick my daughter up from daycare to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening doing toddler things. Without a carefully scheduled weekly planner and monthly calendar, this would not be possible.

Even if you’re not a parent, taking the initiative to better manage your time is well worth the effort. Imagine writing a paper and having the time to actually edit it before you turn it in. Crazy, right? Or better, scheduling the babysitter ahead of time so that you know which Saturday to fix your hair for a well-deserved night out.

Hey, I get it. Sometimes things on the daily to-do list don’t get checked. For me, that’s laundry almost every week, but when everything is scheduled, you’ll be amazed at what you can do, and be able to better enjoy that precious time with your little one. 

Photo by Shannon Simmons / The Lasso

As seen on page three of The Lasso, Vol. 104, Iss. No. 8, printed on March 7, 2018.

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