Before joining ESN as a writer/editor in 2014, Hannah Eagleson wrote her series What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School just after finishing her PhD in 2011.Â
![A different perspective on time: the Prague Orloj, a 600-year-old astronomical clock. Astronomical Clock (Astronomical Dial), Prague, Czech Republic by Grufnik, on Flickr.](https://blog.emergingscholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Clock-300x214.jpg)
Even with good coursework management strategies, semesters can feel overwhelming. Here are some more general tips for managing time and squeezing in a life beyond grad school.
1. Recognize that valuable things can be done regularly yet infrequently
If you don’t have time to meet with your accountability partner once a week, do it once a month. Once a week might be better than once a month, but once a month will probably still be helpful.
If you can’t pick up and see a movie just anytime, schedule one movie viewing a week or a month and stick to it. If you know a break is coming, it will be easier to face the daily grind.
2. Have a list of short tasks that can be squeezed into small chunks of time
Coursework often has a lot of small breaks – an hour between classes, etc. If you make a list of short tasks, like calling the library to renew books or writing a short email to a colleague, you can squeeze them into breaks that might otherwise have gone to waste. [Read more…] about What I Wish I’d Known: Managing Time and Having a Life In Graduate School