Time management is a crucial skill that all Manual students should learn and develop over the four years they attend this school. It’s a skill that you will carry throughout your entire life because as many of us know through the adults in our life, life only gets busier. While sometimes life can be insane from expecting to get eight or so hours of sleep, go to school for seven hours and do extracurriculars, sports and/or a job, there’s a fix to getting in some time for yourself by scheduling a study skills. It seems like a simple fix, but you may hear students say that having a study skills is a waste of time when you could be getting another credit, but a study skills can be crucial to a student’s mental state throughout the school year. 

Burning through your work

The first and quite possibly the most obvious reason why study skills is great is that it allows you time to go through your homework and leftover classwork. Depending on your teacher and level of class, homework can range from a simple worksheet to notes on a chapter to a full out essay. It’s hard to motivate yourself sometimes when you get home from a rough day, from practice or a game or a shift at work, to sit down at a computer or to stare into the long paragraphs of a textbook. A study skills can help you work on things assigned the day of so you don’t have to do them at home, things assigned the previous day or even things that are due next block. 

Having this extra time to work can allow you to also enhance what you already have to turn in. If you could add to an essay or project, a study skills is a great place to do that. Furthermore, a study skills is a perfect time to study for tests or quizzes or even get extra teacher help. Speaking from personal experience, not having a study skills sophomore was awful because the workload increased so much and I never had time to go see teachers for help. 

“I think that having a study skills has helped me with my classes because it allows me to meet with my teachers if I need extra help. I can also use the time to catch up on work or homework,” Halle Baisas (12, HSU) said. 

Having an excessive amount of work can be harmful to you both physically and mentally. If you stay up working on an assignment, chances are you will come to school more exhausted than usual and work less effectively due to the lack of sleep. Mentally it can go multiple ways, but most likely it will cause you to shut down and shut yourself away from your friends while you feel anxious and/or depressed. A heavy workload can be very damaging to a teenager but a study skills has the ability to relieve you of that additional stress. 

Cooling down

In addition to using the time to get through whatever work you may have, a study skills can be a great time to cool down from both the day and/or life in general. Everybody has hard days and a study skills can help you take a break from the day or even catch up on a little bit more sleep. The great thing about Manual’s block schedule is that classes are 90 minutes long and the sleep cycle the body goes through at night completes in about 90 minutes. If you had a study skills first thing in the morning and got there early, there’s a chance you could get a full extra cycle of sleep and not feel gross from being woken up in the middle of it. 

Besides sleeping to chill out during the day, there’s always personal things you can do such as reading a book, journaling or simply watching Netflix or YouTube. Your goal should be to find something that makes you happy even if it pushes off your work a little bit. Taking some personal time will help get you back in the right mindset which will help you work more efficiently. 

One thing every student should be aware of though is the difference between using a study skills effectively versus wasting it. Your mental health is something you should always take into consideration when deciding on what to do with your time, and while watching Netflix or reading may be ideally amazing to sit and do for 90 minutes, it’s important to use it to get some work done or at least make a compromise with yourself as to when you’re going to go about doing your work. 

“Last year I didn’t use them [my study skills] at all. I regret it because I could’ve used the help,” Mary Claire (9, YPAS) said.  

Study skills is a luxury that not every school offers in the district. If you can’t fit it into your schedule, believe me, I know how hard it can be, but you have to learn to make do with what you have. It can be a great use of your time and while yes, you will have one less credit to present to colleges in the future, it’s important to think about yourself now. It’s easy to get swept away thinking about the future but your mental and physical state in the current need to come first so you don’t get burned out only a couple of weeks of your year. 

“[I] absolutely [recommend having a study skills], as long as they use their time it’s the most beneficial thing at Manual,” Claire said.