How to Stay Organized While Going to Graduate School Part-Time
The Master's degree is one of the most important milestones in a graduate student's career. Getting it part-time while working can be tricky, but with discipline and good organizational skills, you will not only succeed but thrive!
In addition to having a job, you are working towards your Master's degree at night. This can be a very stressful period in graduate students' lives. If you have a job and a Master's degree, you need to be able to manage your time effectively. If you cannot manage your time effectively, you will soon find yourself overwhelmed. Focusing on the right things is key to success, so here are some tips to help you get through graduate school with flying colors. Check out these 4 tips to help you stay on track.
Give yourself deadlines for each task - this will allow you to keep your tasks prioritized. Give them due dates so that they don't get forgotten or put off until later. Even if an assignment is due at midnight on Sunday, set a due date earlier for the week. Therefore, you can have free time during the weekend to relax. Putting on good stress helps with not doing assignments last minute.
Create a weekly schedule and map out all of your work commitments so that nothing falls through the cracks. It's also helpful to plan ahead by mapping out how much time you'll need for each project early on before it gets too close to the deadline date. Use a calendar like Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook to add time blocks for studying and working on assignments.
Use technology to your advantage. As discussed, use your online calendar to do time-blocking. Time blocking is essential for any student to ensure they're getting things done and staying on top of their responsibilities. When you take a block of time, whether it be an hour or a whole day, and you put it on your calendar and try to fill it with studying and other work, you'll find it much easier to get things done. This is because it creates a sense of urgency and security. You'll know exactly what you need to get done and you won't have to leave it to chance. You'll be able to focus more and be productive.
Keep your documents organized. You are going to receive a lot of digital documents during your grad school journey, and likely even more if you are taking courses on the web. Some examples of these documents include articles, book excerpts or digital textbooks; or files such as lecture slides from your teacher. In addition to that, you'll create many notes, papers, and other types of materials that can help you with major assignments at the end of each course. Therefore, online storage solutions like OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive are several good alternatives to keep your documents organized.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post on how to stay organized while getting a master's degree when working full-time. Part-time studies can be a challenge, but it is possible to succeed with the right organizational skills.