Making
Choices: The 9-Step Life Management Protocol
By
Johnie H. Scott, M.A., M.F.A., A.P.R.
Associate Professor
Pan African Studies Department
©
2002
Key Concepts:
- Persistence
- Nonentity
- Plight
- Academic disqualification
- Vows of poverty
- Quality units
- Unauthorized withdrawal
- High attrition rates
- Self-discipline
- Unit deficiencies
- Self-identity
- Prototype
- Diploma mills
- Hubris
- Plethora
Introduction:
The following
represent composites of students finding themselves in crisis during their
first year of college. These composite sketches are, sad to say, based upon the
observed experiences by the author, an Associate Professor of Pan African Studies, of many first generation African American and other
historically disadvantaged students entering a major college campus for the
first time. Mine is a special concern for those students who are the “first in
the family to attend college” only to find themselves just a few months later
the “first in the family to flunk out.” I have always taught my students that
what is most important about university life is that much-favored buzzword
“persistence,” that is, maintaining until walking across the stage to receive
one’s degree. This 9-Step Life Management Protocol has been designed to achieve
that end.
Critical considerations for college survival
and persistence will be approached and introduced to readers after studying
these profiles with their special emphasis on at-risk, high potential students.
The 9-Step Life Management Protocol – with the author acknowledging from the outset
a “debt” to the 12-Step Program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous – represents
an outgrowth from years of working with students who find their lives out of
control and college careers, subsequently, badly damaged, often destroyed, from
lack of a consciousness where time and study area management is concerned. The
composites, accordingly, integrate the real-life experiences of students
gathered from more than17 years of my teaching career spent at California
State University, Northridge and innumerable discussions with young
people wanting to know how to get a handle on the demands of this new
environment – the University. These names are fictitious but the experiences are certainly
related – and care has been taken so that each composite represents
students who are certainly real.
Silvia
Silvia Gomez is a
highly energetic, vibrant 18-year-old first year student from
Silvia
tries to study on campus from
Cecil
Cecil Thompson is
having a very hard time his first year in college. An 18-year-old graduate of
James Monroe Senior High in Sepulveda, Cecil is not doing well at all in the 16
units he is enrolled in. The young man is a slow reader and suffers from dyslexia as well. Cecil is the first in
his family of five siblings (three boys and two girls with him the
fourth-born) to go to college.
An undeclared
major at CSUN, Cecil “shares” a $1,200 per month 3-bedroom apartment off-campus
in Sherman Oaks with three roommates. One of those roommates is an Engineering major;
the second is majoring in Criminology with the third a junior majoring in
Business Administration. Cecil has a part-time job requiring him to work 30-36
hours per week at Subway in Northridge. He works Monday-Friday from
Cecil’s needs
in
Donyetta
Donyetta Grinnard comes
to Northridge from Lowell High in San Francisco where she had been President of
the Black Student Alliance, participated in student government, and was a
cheerleader as well. Donyetta’s grades at
This first year
freshman is determined to graduate within four years or less. She has enrolled
in 18 units that include Pan African Studies 098 Basic Writing Skills, Math
094, Theater Arts 111, Sociology 150, University 100 and Kinesiology 130A
(Karate). Living on-campus in the University Park Apartments, Donyetta
supplements her EOP scholarship and PELL Grant with a part-time job working 28
hours a week at Bodyworks in the
Discussion
For these
students, unless significant changes occur in their lifestyles (i.e., choice of
living, courses taken, etcetera), academic probation at the end of their first
semester followed by the distinct possibility of academic disqualification is
the highway they find themselves driving on. The lessons derived
from their situations serve as the basis for this presentation on making choices,
the importance of managing one’s time effectively and decisively, and the
importance of taking back control of one's life. The
discussion that follows is a candid one, honest and straightforward. One cannot be pleased or satisfied with the
failure of so many students to advance beyond the first year of college with
the data showing upwards of 60 percent of entering freshman falling into that negative
category (University 100 Freshman Seminar Faculty Workshop, May 2002).
Time
management, sadly, appears to be a nonentity in the life experience of the
entering student today, particularly those from historically disadvantaged,
economically-deprived backgrounds and circumstances. To understand this, one
must go to the meaning of the word nonentity: “Something that does not exist in
fact; one of little or no significance.” The reality is that as College
Outreach and Recruitment Programs become more aggressive and successful in
regards to identifying and attracting students from inner-city schools or from
disadvantaged backgrounds, we are finding an entire generation of young people
with high ambition and motivation, but very little sense of what it takes to
succeed in the university – much less in professional life.
Young
people like Silvia Gomez and Cecil Thompson quite often are the first in their immediate
or extended families to attend a four-year college or university. They
represent young folks with considerable ability, but who also find themselves carrying a great deal
of “baggage” accumulated while growing up and going to school – with the elementary, middle and senior high
schools they attended often plagued by high dropout rates, poor performances on citywide,
statewide and national achievement tests like the Academic Performance Index,
and environments that were never conducive to promoting positive
learning experiences.
Others, like
Donyetta Grinnard, come from outside the Los Angeles Metropolitan area as very active
students from supposedly “good schools” (i.e., integrated schools with good
performance records). This is the student who, somehow, missed the mark with respect to acquiring the
study skills and personal discipline needed to survive and thrive in
college. Once students like Donyetta find themselves living on-campus, theirs is a very
different personal and social agenda in contrast to those entering with a track
record of achievement and guidance. The personal agenda tends towards going
after items they were never accustomed to while growing up. Just think of Cecil
in that $1,200 a month luxury Yuppie apartment now having to finance
that lifestyle by working a full-time job while carrying a load of classes that would demand his full attention even if he were not working at all!
Moreover, so many of these same young people say afterwards they had no
mentor(s), no one to tell them about the deep holes they were digging for
themselves and falling into, no one to stress the importance or show them how
to take control of their situations. Think of Silvia, rising the Metro 5-6 hours everyday starting at
six in the morning and getting home at midnight, working a part-time job on the
side, not aware there are only so many hours in the day – and definitely not
knowing how to establish priorities.
Still, time
management is not as simple as turning off the television set (although one
wishes it were!). Not with a new generation dubbed Tidal Wave II raised on
DVDs, books condensed to movies and cassette recordings, with these young people showing a decided
distaste for reading anything other than TV Guide or the televisions listings
in the newspaper. There is also the situation that catches students such as
Donyetta – a young lady whose basic financial needs are taken care of but who
feels somehow compelled in the fast lane world of Los Angeles to have a
complete wardrobe of designer clothing, shoes, jewelry and new car note (along
with the high insurance rate for teenaged drivers) while also trying to join every
campus organization she can – thinking she can do this all while graduating in
four years or less.
These profiles
are of students who rarely make it past the first year: Silvia whose immediate needs
are for college courses that develop study skills and self-confidence
along with providing university credits; Cecil who needs to separate the
imagined glamorous life of the Yuppie collegian from the much more constrained
world of a young African American inner-city male, a young man who must
constantly segregate and separate the important from the
can-wait-until-later, maybe even a lot later. This includes trying to emulate
the lifestyles of his “homies” and peers who very easily might be making lots
of “fast” money selling drugs with nice homes, new SUVs, pretty girls and
parties to go to every night. There is Donyetta who is in need of finding what truly
is her own identity, who needs 2-3 semesters strictly to get her own act
together academically while understanding and accepting the fact that college
is not something a person rushes through.
What we’re
dealing with here is not a question of whether these young people have the
ability to make it through college and graduate. The issue is far more basic – Can and will they learn the discipline
required to take control of their time and life in order to avoid
becoming another statistic of failure, or another one of those who was “first
in the family to go to college, and first to drop out and do nothing
afterwards with their life.?”
The following
question is of even greater concern – do
you recognize something of yourself in the descriptions of Silvia, Cecil and
Donyetta? If you can, and can admit that you do, then it may just be
possible that one student’s future – for that is the bottom line of the 9-Step
LMP! – can be saved. What does one need to know
about being a full-time university student and how does that relate to Life Management?
Three considerations immediately come to mind where this is concerned:
- Being a college student is your
primary purpose in life.
If you were not in college, then where would you be?
- Being enrolled in college on a
full-time basis (i.e., 12 units or more) is a full-time job. If you were working the typical
“full-time” job, then 36-40 hours each week would be spent in an office,
factory, store, in the field, perhaps at a fast food franchise punching a
time clock; and
- Studies show that full-time students
– regardless of background – must spend an average of three hours
preparation time outside the classroom for each hour of actual class time. Doing so allows for reading
(especially if you are a slow reader, or have a limited vocabulary),
research, homework, writing assignments, group projects, tutorial
sessions, meetings with professors, counselors and advisors. This amounts
to 36 hours outside the classroom for a student carrying 12 units of
coursework – a total of 48 hours. Those 48 hours are the equivalent of a
full-time factory or assembly-line job plus overtime.
Most students never think of time in this way. That is, they never stop to think
of committing three hours outside for every hour spent inside the classroom –
the formula followed by successful students who do well in their courses and,
in fact, do graduate. Imagine the plight of the 18-year-old first year student
carrying 13 units and then taking on a so-called “part-time” job requiring an
additional 28 hours a week of their time. You’re now looking at 80 hours a
week (i.e., 13 hours of classroom time + 39 hours of preparation time + 28 hours of employment) right off the top devoted to work – the “real” work required for that
college degree and the “part-time” work done unnecessarily to pay for a lavish
lifestyle!
This is where
students start having nervous breakdowns! The problem doesn’t really set in,
though, until the second semester. The student is now on academic probation.
This means the grades for that second semester must be high enough to raise the
overall gpa to a 2.0 or better (e.g., the student with a 1.4 gpa for the first
semester must achieve a 2.6 or better the second semester in equivalent units),
and eliminate any unit deficiencies. Students failing to do so are academically
disqualified.
Our students
like Cecil and Donyetta, by this time, have accumulated debts that literally
force them into working away from the campus – if not the same, then even more
hours that second semester. By this point, aware of the problem, these students
“disappear” from campus (i.e., becoming “Unauthorized Withdrawals” that count
the same as a “Fail” in a course). They don’t say a word to the professor or
their advisors (if they have an advisor), or go on to draw straight “Fails” in
all of their courses and guarantee academic disqualification for themselves.
These
scenarios need not repeat themselves every semester. These cases can be
eliminated. The person in the position to do this, the one in the
decision-making capacity is the student – You! The student and no one else
has to make a gut-level choice as to what their priorities will be – going to
class and doing well, or tooling around campus in an SUV one is afraid to park
for fear of it being repossessed, wearing the latest in athletic gear. The
student has to decide on the lifestyle – will it be an affordable apartment or
room that is on or near campus, or a scholarship and grant-devouring
luxury apartment that will have you working two jobs just to keep a roof over
your head? In a word, the student decides what the issues will be – maintaining
decent grades, making Dean’s List and graduating into a professional career or
following Cecil and Donyetta to every college party, never fully accepting the
fact that whatever you do, there are “dues to be paid” sooner or later.
Going to
college can, and should be, the greatest years of a person’s life – they certainly don't have to be the
most stressful and painful. To make certain that college becomes a treasure
chest of fond memories, one has to think about what the basic commitments are,
take into account those realities which accompany being a full-time university
student. This is just as true if one is living at home with one’s parents as it
is for those living in their own apartment. Those realities can be summed up
thusly:
- You are not expected to get rich
as a student!
Making money is an expectation once a person graduates, but shouldn’t
dictate choosing a lavish lifestyle while being an actual student. While
you have not taken “Vows of poverty” in becoming a student, the
expectation is that students have learned how to be patient;
- Learn to and insist upon getting
sleep! I
recommend that students try to get six hours a night for sleep during the
week, being in bed by 1am so as to rise by 7am if you live within 30
minutes of the campus; on the other hand, for those having to commute 1-2
hours in getting to school, then a routine needs to be developed during
the week for getting into bed by midnight so as to be up by 6am, giving
one that precious time needed not just to get to school but be fully
rested. Don’t cheat your body of the sleep so badly needed to function
efficiently and effectively!
Remember
that students will always have midterm and final examinations. These are the
times when you will want to study a little longer, but having developed a sound
schedule for the entire semester allows you to do so without feeling exhausted.
It certainly eliminates falling asleep in class.
- Turnoff the television set and put
down those video games!
This apparently is a very difficult thing to do for those who grew up during the 1990s -- Tidal Wave
II. They’ve been brought up with 2-3 color television sets in the house,
two-way and three-way pages, cellular phones and Oprah. They find,
however, that when the discipline required to manage one’s time is finally
acquired, life becomes a lot sweeter and more tolerable;
- If you can, don’t schedule classes
that meet every day of the week. For those taking the developmental Math classes,
this is an impossibility. Even so, those students need to enroll in Math
classes meeting later, rather than earlier, in the morning – especially if
they have to commute or carpool to school in the mornings. Develop course
schedules where classes meet MWF or TTh. Doing so will give time for
outside study, tutoring, conferences, and yes, part-time employment; and
lastly,
- Forget about graduating in four
years! That
phenomenon was happening when financial aid was available and classes not nearly as demanding as they are now. Today’s student
has to work -- for example, more than 75% of the CSU Northridge student body are not only
commuters but students with part-time jobs working 24-40 hours a week and more. Many who are working those kind of hours do so not because they want to, but because of personal necessity (i.e., family responsibilities, etcetera). I am not arguing against attempting to finish one's undergraduate work in four years. Rather, the 9-Step strongly advocates, insists as a matter of fact, that students do careful planning where employment is a necessity, making sound decisions and establishing proper priorities. For those first two years of college where attrition rates for students traditionally run high, take a smaller load of coursework while getting acclimated to the University. Don't make the mistake of taking on 17-plus units per semester while working, getting adjusted to college and stressing over how you're going to pay credit card bills and the rest when that concentration could be better spent on improving your quality of life.
Instead, go for the “quality units” rather than loading up on classes that, by the end of the semester, yield nothing but “C’s.” Learn what it feels like to be named to the Dean’s List for Academic Achievement, to graduate with Honors, to develop for oneself the option for going onto graduate school and further increasing one’s opportunities. Remember that this is your life and you have one of two roads to travel: (1) to say “I went to college for hot minute” or (2) “I graduated.” During the summers, take that General Education courses that are required which are outside of your major, doing one per summer (when you will no doubt be working!) so as to assure getting a decent grade to transfer back into school with in the fall -- this can amount to 12 units of "A's" and "B's" earned over the summer which will more than makeup for that reduced courseload the first two years. The same holds true for courses offered during the Winter Intercession Breaks that can be taken and applied towards graduation. Remember this -- No one is going to ask how long you took to graduate in today’s world. What employers want to see is that piece of paper saying that you did finish.
The 9-Step Life Management Protocol:
Life
Management, as I prefer to call it, should be more than a term or concept that
students allow to go in one ear and out of the other. In looking closely at
the reasons for poor student performance in school, high dropout rates, why
African American students from urban ghettoes along with their Latino
counterparts from the barrios in particular seem to have a difficult time
adjusting to the university environment, time and time again the need for a life management plan
rears its head. For a plethora of reasons that sociologists would be better
spent addressing, the failure to control their own time is part of the common
ground that minority students seem to meet upon.
This is the same sort of denial process that alcoholics and other substance abusers engage in. The only difference is the university environment with its own built-in pressures and stress factors. The failure is
covered with up with niceties of expressions like “I procrastinate,” “I work
better under pressure,” “I like waiting until the last minute even when I know
ahead of time that a project is due at a certain time.” The facts argue
otherwise. The inordinately high attrition rates (e.g., the graduation rate for CSU Northridge is 45% of all students, dropping down into the teens for African Americans and Latinos, and single-digits for athletes)
make for a compelling argument that procrastination is a straight line to
failure, waiting until the last minute comes from doing everything and anything
except handling business when it should be, that being under the gun is
absolutely the last thing a first in the family to go to college, first year
college student needs when entering the new territory called higher learning –
this being a place the polar opposite of the diploma mills where just being
present was enough to guarantee social promotion to the next grade. It didn’t
matter that you could neither read nor write, that you couldn’t do a math
problem if it called for computing beyond fractions. As long as you were quiet
and didn’t raise any confusion, you had a ticket to ride to the next level.
The
successful, determined student will look at those prototypes of Silvia Gomez,
Cecil Thompson and Donyetta Grinnard and will recognize himself/herself/friends who are
struggling carrying the same or similar baggage. The student who plans and prepares
to be around for the marathon run that university life constitutes not only will take
heed, but take advantage of the support network that has been developed and
provided by the University through Departments and programs such as the Pan
African Studies Writing Center, and the University Learning Resource Center among
others. It is a safety net designed for students at-risk to fail. There is no
room for what the ancient Greeks called hubris
– “the sin of false pride.” When one enters the university, the choice has
always been clear: you learn what the pitfalls have been for others and then
avoid them, or fall by the wayside.
No student
need fall into that trap. Keep in mind that college should be “fun” years, a
time when you make friends and acquaintances that will carry you through your
professional career and lifetime. When viewed as an opportunity to “correct”
many of the bad habits and misdirections acquired during one’s adolescent and
teenaged years (and for many, beyond that), the bottom with life management is
that by following nine (9) steps related solely to the numbers of hours in the
week it is possible to reclaim control of one’s life and destiny:
- Start with the fact there are 24
hours in a day.
For the entire week, this amount to 168 hours. Those full-time students
who would follow the 9-Step are to note that their work week extends from
Monday through
- Allow oneself six hours of sleep
each night regardless of whatever may or may not take place. A rested body accustomed to a
regular schedule always functions better than the abused one. When you
subtract 30 hours for sleep (i.e., the six hours for Monday-Friday), you
are left with 106 hours. One strong recommendation here is to eliminate those 2-3 hourlong
naps taken three and four times every week. There isn’t any time for sleeping one's life away!
- This step is centered on
coursework and study preparation time. Here, you factor three hours outside of class for
every unit you are enrolled in. As explained earlier, those three outside
hours are designated for reading, writing, homework, research, tutorials,
group and individual projects, counseling, conferences with professors and
the like. For the student enrolled in 12 units, this amounts to a total of
48 hours altogether. The student now has, after this step, 58 hours
remaining.
- Taking care of one’s meals and
nutrition is obviously part of the 9-Step. For students, eating properly is one of the
most abused steps given the fast-food era we now live in. The temptation to make
it through the school year living off MacDonalds,
Burger King, Krispy Kreme,
Church’s Chicken, pizza and soda might be good once a week but is
definitely not recommended as full-time fare – it’s neither nutritious nor
good on a struggling student’s budget. In allowing two (2) hours daily for
meals, this makes it possible to prepare and eat breakfast, have a light
lunch, and then have a decent dinner each day including Saturday.
“Prepare” includes cooking, washing and putting away the dishes. Taking
control of one’s life includes one’s home environment – eliminating the
sink that has been filled with dirty dishes for the last 3-4 days, so much
so that mold is forming on the edges of those dishes as they rest in
oil-slicked dishwater from last week. Poor kitchen sanitation is an
invitation to vermin of all sort, not to mention
the disgusting looks for friends, visitors and visiting relatives. With
those 12 hours set aside for meals, one now has 46 hours remaining.
- The great majority of collegians
must work, either part-time or, in extenuating circumstances, full-time
hours. Unlike those
students of the 1980s and 1990s who could work a larger number of hours
because of lesser demands, such is not the case today in the Information
Age. Students are urged not to work more than 20 hours a week during the
semester. Furthermore, make certain you have arranged for “time off” near
the end of the term so as to properly ready yourself for those final
examinations and term papers. If you factor in 24 hours a week for a
part-time job, then you are left according to this particular 9-Step with
26 hours.
- Commute time, the time it takes to
get to campus from home, to travel around campus to classes and offices,
and the time spent during the day commuting to one’s part-time job also
has to be accounted for.
If one lives in the campus dormitories, it still takes time to walk,
skate, ride a bike, or try to drive and then find
parking (not a good idea!) in the morning before class. A good rule of
thumb is to allow two hours daily for commute time although, for some, the
time will be much longer if they’re driving some distance, or having to
ride public transportation. That ten hours per
week reduces the time available now to 16 hours. This doesn’t include time
spent visiting relatives which can be done on the weekends unless one is
looking at an emergency situation. But the point here is that a conscious
effort is being made at managing and accounting for how your time is being
expended. That is what matters.
- Personal hygiene is obviously one
of the steps to be attended to.
This includes showering/bathing, doing laundry (unless you’re fortunate
enough to have cajoled Mom into doing it while you’re in school. Don’t
expect that to last throughout one’s college years, however!) Figure one
hour per day, a total of seven for the week including two hours for
laundry on Saturday mornings as you take the step to be neat, clean and
hygienic in class, around friends, at work, and certainly in your
domicile. You now have nine (9) hours remaining.
- This is the most problematic step
for students because it does fall across all seven days of the social –
Social and Entertainment Time.
Students today have access to so many diversions ranging from television
to cable to VCRs and DVDs, computer games and the like. Television
includes the soaps, talk shows, sports, the reality game shows. Ours is a
time where students spend so much time on entertainment, and in a city
like
- The final step is dedicated to
Personal Time – time strictly for oneself with meditation a key factor
here. This is
also time for taking care of business matters such as bills, going to the
Post Office. You have, with this one hour remaining for Personal Time
after those first eight steps, nothing left to draw upon but if you live
within your means you will be able to manage. More than that, you will
learn to start liking yourself and college.
As this article makes clear,
life management is not simply a matter of setting sail and gliding off into the
sunset. A griot once said, “If you don’t know where
you’re going, then any road will get you there!” This bit of wisdom is
certainly applicable to those of us who haven’t taken a hard look at how our
time is being spent, or taking into consideration the importance of having the
time to do things right. In closing, I urge all students to realize very early
on that time schedules, like anything else, are never arbitrary. Each one of us
is an individual with our own needs, dreams, ambitions and hopes. If you
achieve 80 percent of the 9-Step that you have develop and applied to yourself,
then you are well on the way to a stress-free, comfortable and prosperous life.
The key here
is discipline – discipline of the mind, and those impulses saying “rush
out and get it now” rather than taking a moment to measure the situation,
consider and weigh the options, set priorities and engage in good
decision-making. In making those decisions, realize that yours is the freedom
to sleep late, be late to class (which carries over into being late to work),
not clean your room (which translates into poor relationships with roommates
and/or parents letting you continue to live in their home), stay out late at
night every night of the week in trying to make all of the social rounds
(perhaps the surest way to guarantee a quick end to one’s collegiate life).
All of these
are the choices that are yours to make, whatever they may be. Keep in mind that
regardless of the road you chose to travel in life, there are people your age
who are making the right choices – who are determined to take and maintain
control over their life fortunes.
What about you!
Discussion Questions:
1)
How
does Professor Scott describe time management? Do you agree or disagree with
his description? Why or why not?
2)
What
advice would you give Silvia in helping to better her situation? Take into account her personal situation as well as her academic courseload in framing your respond. Give evidence to support your advice to this young lady.
3)
For
Cecil, what would be your words of advice? Look closely not only at that $1200 a month apartment, but his 16-unit courseload which this young man put together while being a "late" enrollee, picking any available class during the first two weeks of the semester. How would you do give this advice so as not to
offend him, letting this young man know what the stakes are and that he really needs to take action rather than waiting on the sky to fall in upon him?
4)
What
changes in her lifestyle and plans would you give to Donyetta? Be specific,
understanding that in her own way this young lady who seems so sure of herself
is really on a fast-track to no where.
5)
Professor
Scott writes of people “reclaiming control” of their lives. For most students
who see college as an independent experience (i.e., being on their own), what
does gaining control mean for them? Be specific.
6)
Cite
what you see as five (5) major reasons or causes for students not having
control of their time and, consequently, getting into trouble at school and in their personal lives.
7)
List
five (5) areas of personal concern for you after reading this article with
respect to being in control of your time, and your interactions with others. As
you do so, state why these areas stand out to you.
8)
Respond
to the 9-Step Life Management Program by profiling yourself at this time. Look
at the courses you are enrolled in, calculate the study hours required – go
through each and everyone of the nine steps. Provide a
step-by-step response in answering this question.