When do you do schoolwork....and how much time do you spend?

[icampy]

Hi yall,
I was curious, how much time does everyone spend on their school work, when do you work on it, and do you have a set schedule? I will start.

I wake up at 430 instead of 530 and come to work an hour early in the morning and hop on my work computer (off-the-clock) and do schoolwork. I skip my lunch break most days to knock out a SL exam. I also stay an hour late (off-the-clock) and do schoolwork then, too. I don't have a schedule, other than skipping lunch to do some schooling. Then going in early or late, depending on the other things I have going on.

I work 60+ hours a week, and have a 45 minute drive to and from work. I am married, and want to spend time with my wife when I am at home. I, unfortunately, have to treat my schoolwork like a "side hustle". If I see an hour in my day where I can be on the computer with no other obligations, and alone, I will jump on and knock out some schooling. Doesn't happen often, so I sacrifice my lunch break at work, and an hour sleep to have time to do school work. I am sometimes jealous of the people here that can spend more than an hour or two at a time on studies. I can get time for proctored exams on the weekends sometimes, but that's about it...everything else is a mad rush to finish something in the 45 minutes to an hour that I have. I could earn better grades if I didn't have to rush...but C's get degrees right:roflol:

If I had the money, I would love to take a few months off from working and knock out a bunch of schooling.

Or, if the day was a couple of hours longer, or I could freeze time, etc:p

So how does everyone else find time to get school-work done?

(If only I had used my late teenage years to be productive, being single and having rent and groceries paid for would have sure been a perfect time to knock this stuff out, instead of just a year and a half of CC and then stopping for years).

[jessikalauren]

I am very similar to you! I really wish I had done all of this when I had much fewer obligations. Alas, here I am trying to get a degree while I'm working full-time, married to someone who wants to start a family ASAP, and trying to finish it all as quickly as possible.

I do the same- I come in an hour early and usually stay late 2-4 hours after work ends. Most lunch breaks are spent on IC and I'm spending two Saturdays a month at a proctoring center (the closest one is 2 hours away so that's fun). I find "working" off the clock, sitting at my desk, still dressed in work clothes, helps me to think of it as my 2nd job, much like you do. I try and plan later studying nights for when my husband is working crazy hours, and go home early (on time) on days he's not. Scheduling date nights is more important than ever.

I'm on a "short sprint" right now. My husband is starting a new job and I'm taking a light courseload at school so I'm trying to get through EVERYTHING with a CLEP/DSST equivalent by the end of summer semester, I have about 45 credits left to go. Then I'll have a few semesters of 2 classes each to trudge through at a slow and steady pace.

Just keep doing what you did before, but you have to be really mindful with scheduling.

[Collegelady2]

Right now I'm spending as much possible time as I can between jobs at moment have a month to work my tail off before I start my next job on June 12th. Trying to get thru aleks using modern states to get as much super cheap credit in as I can get. Oh yea also have the study.com guardian scholarship as well.

[clep3705]

You described my life from 20 years ago. I studied before work, after work, and at lunch for a year or so. I would have liked to have spent more time with the family, but I think overall the family would have been worse off had I not made the sacrifices to improve my career options.

[Ideas]

About the same here too. I'm upset that I didn't do more of this sooner. I don't have a lot room in my life for this now, but I really don't want to put this off longer. I wish I could put other life things on hold for a few months, so I could graduate in Dec.

[SolarKat]

I'm getting the work done in early mornings, late (often VERY late) evenings, the occasionally scheduled times (proctored tests, for example), and otherwise threaded througout my day. As a homeschooling mom, I just don't get a lot of desk-time for me. So I have to be prepared to do my own homework pretty much anytime, anywhere. Food cooking? Time to read a few pages. Waiting in the car for someone to get done a class? Squeeze in a few video lectures by a professor. Kids working on something quiet? I'll haul out my work for family study time. I have to, because I'm trying to accomplish a lot in a very short (to me) time. It helps that the kids are excited to see me making progress alongside them- they're pretty cooperative when I'm really in crunch time. (College boy is home for the summer now, too, and my own struggle is making him appreciate his "leisurely" 4-yr engineering courseload and his quiet dorm room back on campus! He's also good about helping out with the household needs.)

Honestly, my schedule is way less than ideal. It really sucks. I'm fortunate that I test well, regurgitate fairly easily, and only have left the courses that truly fascinate me...otherwise I'd be jamming a fork in my skull. I'd love the time to really wallow in my AOS...but for medical and financial reasons, there's just not time to stretch it out right now. Instead, I'm living on caffeine and getting more grey hair by the minute. I wish we'd had opportunities like this 30 years ago. But better late than never. (And I wouldn't recommend anyone copy my schedule. It sucks that much.)

(JessikaLauren, your username made me smile...my middle kids, the twins, are Jessica & Lauren!)

[pugmomx2]

When I get home from work I usually spend two hours doing school work in between fixing dinner. Most Saturdays I will spend five to six hours working and a few hours on Sunday. Any holiday or extra time off work is also spent studying. I am trying to get done as fast as I can so everything else gets put aside.

[icampy]

It's interesting to hear everyone's stories. Glad to know I'm not alone!

[jessikalauren]

(JessikaLauren, your username made me smile...my middle kids, the twins, are Jessica & Lauren!)

That is amazing! I am a twin! Also my brother's girlfriend is Lauren and we're very close, I may be biased but both names mean a lot to me

Also, keep being amazing and studying wherever you can! When I was studying for my real estate license exam I had practice tests that expired a few days before the exam, so every question I got wrong, I put on a flash card and moved on until I went through ALL of them. This worked really well for me. I'm doing the same thing with IC - my flash cards come out when I'm in the car wash, in line at the grocery store, etc. So I spend one or two LONG days per week on IC getting my flash cards together, and the rest of the week studying the flash cards. I'm currently taking two CLEP/DSST exams every 1-2 weeks.

[jessikalauren]

It's interesting to hear everyone's stories. Glad to know I'm not alone!

You've got this. You're doing it for the right reasons, I'm miserable and exhausted now (and I'm pretty sure my husband forgets what I look like sometimes) but I know I'll look back and be glad I pushed through as quickly/aggressively as possible so I can get back to "real" life.