Take your time

A graduate program is challenging in many ways. New students have to prepare their program schedules, negotiate that with program advisors and expect to deal with hundreds of pages to be read for the semesters ahead. Obviously, to accomplish with all these tasks students must allocate a great amount of time for the graduate enterprise. Their obligations lay far beyond to attend new classes, but also diligently deal with the required readings to bring meaningful contributions to each session. The problem becomes more difficult because the graduate program is not the only thing in the student´s life. The majority of students have to work to pay for their studies, quite often in full-time jobs and there is no need to mention social life activities, family obligations and occasional leisure to keep some mental sanity.

Time management becomes a key ability for graduate students who expect to be successful in their academic programs. It seems, though, that such ability is constantly challenged or even threatened by an interesting student behavior: procrastination! Every time students have to study, read their articles and, more importantly, start writing their dissertations, then the previous night dishes negligently left in the kitchen sink exert such a powerful attraction for immediate action that even the most responsible student can resist. They are like mermaid singing love melodies to the ear of old sailors who cannot resist the impulse of plunging into the deep sea. “Dirty dishes” have other disguises too. They can be dressed like an ironing boards and a pile of shirts or an infinite list of responsible things to be done that would stand as an apparent justifiable excuse to deviate from the real thing, the monster to be killed, the paper to be written.

Fortunately, the greatest threat to graduate students is only a quixotic wind mill and resolute students may finally see that wind mills do not need to be killed to save the princess. Setting a weekly period that will not be deviated at all and will be used solely to study seems to be a good strategy to cope with the majority of graduate obligations. It may not be enough, but may be a good start to cross the finish line in the graduate journey.