How to Schedule College Classes to Make your Life Easier

You can make your life a lot easier in college by paying attention to your schedule. Unless you’re in a heavily regimented program, you’ve likely got a fair amount of flexibility in your choice of classes, and you’ll be able to create your schedule yourself when you pick your courses for the upcoming semester. It’s important to take advantage of this power you’ve been given to craft a schedule that best suits your learning needs and lifestyle.

Early morning classes

You should only schedule classes at times that you know you’re going to show up for, and if you can’t make an 8:30 am lecture three times a week, then it’s probably not a good idea to take that class. Unless you are a morning person and are sure you’ll come to class wide awake and ready to learn it would be unwise to include any classes before 10 am on your schedule.

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Length of class

Some classes may be divided into three 60 minute sessions per week, two 90 minute sessions per week or even one 3 hour session per week, depending on the course and program. With some courses, a longer session may be required for lab time or intricate, hands-on projects, but as much as you can you should avoid classes that will require you to concentrate for a longer period of time than you are comfortable for.

Distance between classes

You may not have time to get from one side of campus to the other for back-to-back classes, but you wouldn’t want to “waste” a whole class period in between two classes in the same building. When you pick your courses the rooms will likely already be assigned, so take a moment and make sure you can get where you need to go before picking one class over another.

Evening classes

If you like to work or party in the evening, you should avoid evening classes, especially those later in the week, as you’ll be too tempted to skip them.

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You can make your college life a lot easier by paying just a little attention to your scheduling. If you’re lucky, you can often schedule yourself a “day off” somewhere in the week, even on a Monday or Friday. Just be forewarned that a three day weekend all semester long isn’t as good as it sounds – you still have to do all of your work and get it in on time. As a general rule no matter how you schedule your classes you should remember to schedule in study time for yourself, with at least one hour of study and homework allotted to every hour that you are in class.