Look at the syllabus

Know what's coming, in school and in life

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of my Heart Radio.
Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to look at the syllabus literally if
you are a student, and metaphorically if you are not.

(00:25):
By knowing what's coming up and what we will be
responsible for knowing, we can plan our time in a
far more rational fashion. Looking back, I've realized that I
am really lucky that I did as well in school
as I did. It took me a long time into
college to realize that teachers often distributed a syllabus at

(00:49):
the start of the year, and that this was a
useful document. If I thought about it much, then I
probably just viewed it as a way to know what
was assigned week to week or see when the term
paper would be due. Only several years in did I
realize that I could look at the syllabus at the
beginning of the semester and plan out my reading and studying,

(01:11):
making sure I understood what would be expected of me
at any given point. I could plan my time to
make sure that the heavy weeks had the space to
absorb what they needed to, or that I worked ahead
during lighter weeks. Now perhaps you were a better, more
organized student than I was. But as we go into

(01:32):
back to school season, I am continually amazed at how
many people don't look at what is coming up and
make a plan to deal with it. We don't look
at the syllabus. For instance, we might know vaguely that
there is a big work deadline in November, and also
that one of our kids will want to visit college then,

(01:53):
and another will have a big sports season, and Thanksgiving
is going to happen in there too, so a lot
of our colleagues will be requesting addition all days off.
But we wait until November to acknowledge all this, and
then we see this all crashing down and inevitably drop
the ball on something now. To be sure, we don't
want to spend our lives thinking about upcoming logistics. In

(02:16):
a recent episode, I mentioned remembering that things won't be
perfect on day one. You do not need to solve
all problems ahead of time. That said, there is a
difference between recognizing that you will be able to solve
things as they come up and not even knowing what
is coming up. So take some time each week to

(02:38):
think about your life holistically. I like to plan on
Friday afternoons, I look at the upcoming week. My primary
goal is to plan the next week, but then I
also look forward in my calendar over the next few
weeks too. If I see, for instance, that I'm going
to be giving a speech on a topic I have

(02:59):
not spoken about before, and I'm off from work for
three days the week before that speech, well best to
give that speech sometime before the vacation week. Otherwise I
am going to feel crunched. I'll either need to work
on the speech during vacation, which is kind of problematic,
or I won't do a good job. That's not a

(03:21):
good idea either, and the scenario would be entirely avoidable
by thinking about what's coming up and planning ahead. In
any case, if you are a student, do yourself a
huge favor and look at the syllabus. Don't let this
take you sixteen years to figure out. Do it now.

(03:43):
Look ahead, get a calendar for the school year and
write down when assignments will be due and what you'll
need to read each week, and figure out when you
can plan these things in. Look at when anything big
is happening in your personal life too, so you can
figure that out. If your cousin's wedding is the same
weekend as a big paper, it's going to be due

(04:04):
on Monday. That doesn't mean that you either need to
skip the wedding or do a bad job. You just
have to work on the paper ahead of time during
a lighter week so you will get to do both.
And if you are an adult who is not in school,
you can look at the syllabus metaphorically. Take some time

(04:25):
this week to review what is coming up in your life.
Some stuff might be in your calendar already and some
stuff you just know because it always happens that your
work is busy in the beginning of February. If you
know this, you can plan ahead. If you see that
your child's musical at school is also during the first

(04:47):
week of February, you know that you'll have to juggle
your busy season stuff and push things forward a day
or two, or you'll need to work ahead. Either could work,
but when you have a plan, you can get to
everything you want to do. That makes work life balance
feel far more possible. In the meantime, this is Laura,

(05:12):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Hey, everybody, i'd love to hear from you.
You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at

(05:32):
Before Breakfast pod. That's b the number four, then Breakfast
p o D. You can also shoot me an email
at Before Breakfast podcast. At i heeart media dot com
that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.

(05:56):
Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio. For
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