University Survival Guide: Essays And Paper AssignmentsBy Angelica Malin

Starting a new semester is always thrilling as well as intimidating. On the one hand, you have an opportunity to meet new people, get to know some new information. On the other hand, there is always this fear of an unavoidable end of the semester with all of the deadlines burning and nerves on the edge. To be able to cope with multiple assignments in really short period of time, you have to be aware of some basic principles presented below.

How To Manage Multiple Essays In One Semester

To start with, it is a daunting task to write one essay. No need mentioning how difficult it may become to write research proposal sample paper as well as a few other ones within a restricted time span. There are though a few things one may do to ease the struggle a bit and find a study/life balance even in these periods. And this pain reliever is called time management.

Some say that planning is the core of one’s efficiency, others state that instead of planning it is better to “screw it and do it”. Whatever the case may be for you, it is still worth planning your time as this gives much more motivation to actually do things in the alloted time slots. We here suggest a combination of the approaches which will most likely be helpful to those struggling with both planning and time management.

If you get too many assignments at once, try to follow these rules which are designed to make it easier for you to cope with them:

• plan your time well in advance: plan can be anything from a scrawled set of notes or a wall full of post-its to a state-of-the-art automated electronic calendar, but the main thing is to make your plan work for you;
• turn your plan into tasks: planning is worth nothing, though, when it is not turned into tasks. Divide your work into a number of achievable tasks and put them into certain time slots at your calendar;
• focus on one thing at a time: if you really want to be efficient, stop multitasking. If you have many essays to be written in a short period of time, try to work on them separately nor mixing things up in your head;
• identify a burn-down: once you are tired and lack ideas, stop writing at least for 60 minutes. Try to switch your mind on something different, maybe listen to your favorite song or do some sports. This will help you release the tension and maybe find inspiration to continue;
• relax every once and a while: it does not matter how much you have on your plate, you should always leave some time for yourself. Try not to overstate the importance of academic tasks in your life, your health is the only thing that matters after all.

Upon planning comes the stage of doing. That is where a majority of people who have planned things out and expect them to run smoothly begin stumbling on several issues. For instance, if you are falling into this “I will make everything by the deadline” mode, the quality of your work may suffer a lot. Ultimately, it is always quality that matters the most. Especially, when these are application essays which would likely determine your closest future.

As regards multitasking, as we have mentioned it above, this is seen today as the main enemy of efficiency. Why so? As some compelling research shows, as you switch from one task to another, the transition is not a smooth one. There is a lag time while your brain shifts attention from one task to another. And while it feels like this shift is seamless, it actually takes time. How much time? It may take as much as 40 percent more time than focusing on one task at a time and even more for complex tasks.

If this still has not convinced you to solve tasks one by one, try to challenge yourself for a week or so not to multitask. It may seem impossible and incredibly hard to achieve, but it is well worth it. You are likely to see an increase in your productivity, and you might actually end up saving time and thus make the utmost of it. From now on multiple assignments shall not be intimidating to you as you know that single tasking and time management are the best friends for your busy semesters and life in general!