by Jenna Wilson, Chemistry

Time management is something that I, and many other students, either struggle, or have struggled, with. In fact, I, and many other instructors, have seen that procrastination is something like a plague upon our students. Whenever I go in to read my students’ papers, over half of papers were turned in the same day the assignment was due, and over half of those papers were turned in within an hour before the time the assignment folder closed. However, is this level of procrastination a plague, or is it a symptom of a larger issue that is affecting our students? Are our students actually procrastinating or are they managing time in a way that their writing takes a backseat to their other assignments? Are our students essentially writing zombies that have been drained of all life and replaced by a gross representation of a dysfunctional system?

I admit the last question is more hyperbole, but there is some truth in it. There have been countless studies on the level of burnout our students face today, with socioeconomic factors being a major impact on a student’s ability to concentrate and not burn out in college. Furthermore, today we have more to compete with for students’ attention, between screens and a declining attention span in our population. In my experience, we can do many things to mediate these factors, be it splitting large assignments into smaller, easier to digest parts, or by adjusting our grading scales so that smaller, in-class assignments are more emphasized for the overall grade than a draft of an essay, but that may not be enough to actually attract our students’ attention. However, that’s the key: students who are not interested in the assignment—or engaged in it—will have little motivation outside of a grade to complete the assignment.

This is a nearly universal experience. We’ve all had that class or assignment that is so outside of our interest that we have no interest in actually working on it, the one assignment that “I’ll get to tomorrow.” Our students are no different than us when we were their age, but that means that we need to make sure that students are engaged with our assignments and their own writings in order to increase their connection and appreciation of the subject that they are writing on. Think back to when you were an undergraduate in that one course that you always wondered why it was required for your degree. The material/professor were boring, there was nothing that would apply to your future career, and there you were, being asked to write on this subject. Naturally, the assignment seemed easy, and you had tests for “more important” classes to study for, so it suddenly was the night before it was due and you’ve written maybe one paragraph for it, if we’re being generous. This disconnect is, in my opinion, the largest source of procrastination we see in students today.

How do we engage our students to be interested in writing? There are many answers but it’s never one size fits all. We can mitigate our students’ time management issues by encouraging them to see us after class or schedule a time to meet with us. If there is a disconnect with the material, we need to know so that we can cater to those students who aren’t engaged. This approach allows us to meet the individual student and cater to them. The use of TAs can also mitigate student engagement, especially if the TA in question is able to meet and provide feedback in an ungraded environment with low pressure.

It’s hard to manage others’ time management skills, and it’s insane that we should think that we should be soldiering the burden for adult students. However, we can help lift the burden while keeping accountability on the students and helping them connect with our material. If we are able to do this, we will have less writing zombies and more writing students who can communicate ideas effectively over a more manageable time period.