Did I mention that I am a father of four girls? Being successful at online learning requires a delicate balance between professional, family, and school time. Being in education as a career and working on my Masters in Education, the school time has great interest to me and will be a benefit to me. I have no problem with the motivation to learn and do well. Wanting to do it and finding time to do it are not necessarily always going on at the same time, though.
For me, the best work time comes in the morning. I get up at 5:30. I am at work by 6:30 and I have that extra hour of quiet time. Even though the learning is work related, it is important that school time does not collide with professional time. Lunch hours work well for me, too, although that is my time to talk to my wife and see how her day is going. Did I mention that she is working on her degree in Painting and Art History and homeschooling our oldest daughter? She attends school at night several days a week and takes online classes. Time management becomes harder now and the balance is precarious, at best. Are you watching the hours tick away from me?
I get home from work and jump right into being Mr. Mom. Sometimes I need to make dinner for my wife before she heads off to school. On other days, she has eaten a late lunch, so I have some free time. Yeah, free time. There is no such thing as free time with the kids needing my attention, too.
I can sometimes squeeze in some computer time after dinner. The kids are reading, playing, or watching TV before bedtime. Or they want some computer time. Here is a big recommendation for you! If it is at all possible, get a separate computer for you and your schoolwork. I have three kids that enjoy spending time on everything from Sesame Street to Seventeen Magazine. I try to maintain a balance between their time on the computer and my own, but when push comes to shove, Dad gets the big push. (Except when I am fast approaching a deadline. They give up their computer time to allow me to finish that. After all, I am in charge. Right? Stop laughing!)
The babies go down to sleep. The older girls are off to their rooms to read before bedtime. My wife comes home from school and it is OUR time together (a VERY important thing to keep balanced because, as the saying goes, “If Mama ain’t happy, Nobody’s happy.”) My time is gone and so is my energy.
And so it begins over again tomorrow.
So how DO you balance time with work, family and school? I think that the secret is in working smarter, not harder. When I know that I am only going to have short bursts of time available to me, I use that time to do research. Find some websites that I am going to go back to when I have more time and bookmark them or copy and paste them into the assignment that I am currently working on. Use the quiet times to do some reading or just planning my next move. Set small goals and try to work towards them. Use technology tools like the Zotero plug-in for Firefox that makes easy use of applying APA format to website references. The references management in Word 2007 is awesome, too. Keep all of your files on a USB drive that you carry with you. I also carry OpenOffice 3.0 on my drive so that I have a compatible word processor with me at all times.
How do YOU manage your time? What kinds of things throw your best-laid plans out of whack? Are you available to babysit four kids? Talk to me.
