What is the main story?

This is Meredith Stewart. As a widowed mother to one adult child and one high school freshman, her schedule is packed. From working full-time as a grocery store manager, helping her daughter with homework and transportation, and keeping her house in order, she barely has any time for herself. She realizes that working as a store manager isn’t necessarily the most stable or gainful of employment, so she enrolls in a vocational training program at her local college to become a hospital coder. However, given the amount of responsibilities she’s juggling, keeping up with updates on assignments and other college tasks is difficult. Sometimes things slip her mind. She begins to feel overwhelmed at the requirements of her education combined with her duties as a mother and an employee and has a hard time organizing her tasks in any cohesive way.

This is Johnathan Ngyuen, a college freshman. The fact that college lacks a predefined structure combined with no education on time management make it difficult for him to budget his time appropriately. He frequently underestimates the amount of time he needs to spend on assignments and procrastinates because he feels overburdened. On top of this, he has to get a part-time job to supplement his financial aid, further straining his capacity. His stress compounds as he begins to miss assignments and deadlines.

Both of these people are merely hypothetical, however their stories are amalgamations of real people’s experiences. They are examples of a growing issue in the general educational population: a lack of the ability to plan.

As college students ourselves, we know how important it is to excel in school while also being able to navigate life’s responsibilities. To do this, one has to devote a certain amount of their daily hours to studying and also set aside time for extracurricular activities. This is where planning and strategizing come into the picture and led us to try to come up with some kind of solution: an event planner. Time management is one of the biggest issues that has plagued student success all over the world and an event and assignment planner is an essential tool that could help mitigate this problem.

Who are the communities in need of help?

Many students’ school lives are incredibly busy. In addition to balancing several courses and their workloads, they must also balance social obligations and earning money to pay bills. This disproportionately affects lower-income students. Due to these competing responsibilities, many things can slip through the cracks. The further students progress in their education, they have less time for other obligations. Around forty percent of all college students work thirty hours a week, and a quarter hold full-time jobs while being full-time students.  Twenty-two percent of students are also parents. People need to unwind and decompress from their many obligations at times, lest they suffer burnout. With all of this in mind their time can become saturated and hard to manage. These students would benefit from a method to help keep track of and organize their obligations.

What problems have arisen?

One of college students’ most pressing issues is time management and assignment organization. These students would benefit from having a method to manage their time. However, it is common for students to struggle to find time to learn how to plan or create planners themselves which can lead to them feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and frustrated causing students to be perpetually behind in assignments. Their exhaustion, unfortunately, then leads to other issues with catching up with familial/social obligations and work requirements while trying to catch up with assignments. Additionally, assignments can simply be forgotten by students.

When did the problem take place?

Time management is a skill that many students lack. This problem, unfortunately, becomes far more prominent when students attain their first real bit of independence as they transition to college life. Their responsibilities expand, coupled with unforeseen circumstances that can derail planning and execution. Most of these events happen in college and other institutions of higher learning. Students’ learning how to manage their time effectively would go a long way in helping them ensure success in their academic pursuits.

Where is the origin of the problem?

Time management is an issue that affects everyone from almost all walks of life, including students enrolled in some kind of vocational training or institute of higher learning. These students have to dedicate a large section of their time to studying for exams and completing assignments for multiple courses simultaneously. In most cases, these assignments have a strict deadline and keeping track of them is critical to the student’s success. Other contributing factors of apparent detrimental effects are poor study skills, family commitments, and misapprehension of the difficulty of certain assignments.

Why does this problem exist?

Time management may have become a greater issue as the idea of two hours of studying per credit hour became more commonplace. This disproportionally affects low-income and minority communities, as they tend to have to work in college to support their academic advancement. They are also far more likely to see downward trends in their grades as their work obligations approach or exceed forty hours a week.

We can lighten the load for these students, with an event planner. This will allow them to focus on assignments instead of having to constantly check and keep track of changes to assignments as well as deadlines for completion.