You’ve decided to take the plunge and take on the pursuit of a degree while you have children at home. You’re confident with your decision, you have the support of your family, and you know it’ll be worth it.
But how do you get through the day-to-day balancing act of keeping up with your already busy life as a parent and the added tasks of a college student?
If you're returning to school, here are eight simple, practical tips on how to get it all done in a day.
1. Compartmentalize visual and audio learning tasks. Tape lectures and listen to them while watching your kids’ soccer matches, baseball games or anything else that’s more visual, allowing you to watch your children while you listen and learn. Save the concentrated reading for times when you can devote your eyes and attention to the same task for a period of time.
2. Make practical study aids that work for you. Make flashcards and notes on note cards and carry them with you to review material while waiting in the doctor’s office, in the car in the school carpool line, and in waiting rooms.
3. Don’t expect perfection. “Let some things go. You can’t be 100 percent perfect,” Concord Law School advises adult parent students. Decide what you must do and do it well.
4. Think outside the box in your household tasks. Pack lunches the night before. Start assembling dinner in the morning. Run all your errands on your way to and from trips in the car. With your new, unique schedule, you may not be able to do things in the conventional way or at the usual times.
5. Do your homework when your children do their homework. Make it a family affair. Even preschoolers can color and do puzzles (and call it "homework") while mom and the older siblings are doing schoolwork. If you’re at the same table studying, you’ll be close by and available to your children to help them with problems and to answer questions.
6. Keep to a strict schedule. Buffie White, a New Jersey stay-at-home mom who is pursuing a degree in Web design, has this advice: “Buy yourself a PDA (personal digital assistant), put in your to-do-list and stick to it every day! If you fall behind it is very hard to catch up.”
7. Drop as many extraneous obligations as you can. Andrea Van Winkle, a New Orleans mom of two pursuing an accounting degree, suggests parents pull back from volunteer work, helping out at their children’s schools and even socializing. While studying during her son’s karate lessons, “just because the other parents sit and talk with each other doesn’t mean that I have to,” she said. “I learned when I first started classes more than two years ago that I can’t take on a bunch of other activities like I used to. My advice is to recognize that you don’t have to do everything.”
8. Pace yourself. If you’re a natural procrastinator, you’re going to have to acquire skills to do a project over a period of time instead of all at the last minute “If I do a little bit at a time instead of expecting to complete everything in one sitting, then I find I have a lot more time to spend with my family,” Van Winkle said. “Procrastination is the enemy! If I put my schoolwork off until the day everything is due, I’m doomed. It’s best to just take little bites at a time and not stress over it.”
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