One of the most invaluable skills you can have, both professionally and in your education, is time management. It’s a buzzword, sure—but for working adults returning to school, mastering time management is crucial. The bottom line: college is different. As a non-traditional student, you’re used to juggling multiple roles. College professors will support you, but they won’t hold your hand like high school teachers might. If you’re taking multiple classes, don’t expect the syllabi to prevent papers, projects, and tests from overlapping. Then, of course, there’s the added challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities.

Know Yourself

Self-awareness is key to effective time management. As a non-traditional student, you benefit from maturity and a deeper understanding of how you operate best. Recognize your strengths and work with them. If you’re an early riser, schedule your classes and homework during those peak productivity hours. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to managing your coursework. Everyone works differently, so figure out what feels right for you and be flexible when needed.

Prioritize and Focus on the Now

This sounds obvious, but it goes beyond figuring out what’s most important. You also need to consider how quickly you can complete a task and whether it's better to spread it out over several sessions. Due dates matter, but should you break up your work by task or by time? That’s for you to decide based on your work style. Don’t wait until you're overwhelmed to prioritize—start at the beginning of the course and adjust as needed. Remember to factor in everyday responsibilities and downtime as well.

Manage Stress

Letting stress overwhelm you will slow you down and reduce the quality of your work. Stay calm and keep your focus. This season of juggling work, school, and life responsibilities is temporary. While it might feel long and tough, it will be over before you know it. Keep an even mindset, and don’t let stress detract from the experience.

Avoid Multitasking

It’s well known that multitasking often leads to poor results. So, avoid it. Keep work separate from school. Don’t overlap family time with homework. Focus on one assignment at a time, for one class at a time. Constantly switching gears won’t get you the results you're looking for.

Delegate When You Can

Being a non-traditional student doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone. Don’t hesitate to rely on friends, family, or coworkers for support. Delegating tasks isn’t about shirking responsibilities; it’s about building a support system that allows you to succeed by focusing on what’s most important.

Take Breaks

Pushing yourself to the brink won’t benefit you in the long run. Schedule time for yourself and take short breaks during study sessions. Even a 10-minute pause can help you refocus and recharge. Prioritizing your mental health is key to overall success. Adjusting to college life as a non-traditional student will have its challenges, but it’s just that—an adjustment. Don’t overlook the changes in your life, and never underestimate the power of solid time management skills. You can succeed, and you will succeed.

Simply skating through college and getting the work done isn’t anyone’s idea of a great college experience - traditional student or otherwise. If you just want to tread water and get a piece of paper in the end, maybe college isn’t for you.

As an adult learner, it’s safe to say you probably want to thrive and grow during the course of your college career.

It cannot be understated that adult learners have a leg up on students entering college straight out of high school. You have maturity, you have professional and life experience, and you have the skills needed to juggle it all.

When the road seems long and unending, remember: you were made to excel and to achieve much.

Keep in mind some of these basic tips:

Seek a Balance

Rest is an essential part of the human condition. Everyone needs it, everyone benefits from it. Seek and establish a balance between work, school, family and friends.

Don’t get sucked into the vortex of research papers, tests and studying. The better able you are to shift gears, the better you’ll feel and the more you will accomplish in each of your roles.

Be Prepared to Feel Overwhelmed

College is a season of character building. There’s a lot going in your life right now. Expect to have moments where it seems a bit too much. As odd as it might seem, be prepared to feel completely unprepared.

The trick is knowing that you’re not the only one feeling that way. Every single college student has felt that way on more than one occasion. Focus on the horizon and ignore the waves
around you.

Become an Expert on Course Requirements and Due Dates

Your professors will give you all the details you need to be successful for the semester. Memorize the syllabus. You’ll be saving yourself a lot of heartache if you know what you need to do to communicate you understand the material.

Knowing when you have papers due, presentations, and test dates seems like a no-brainer. And it probably is. That doesn’t mean it isn’t something you just might overlook.

However you choose to organize yourself and your calendar is unique to you. If you have to write it in a planner, that’s fantastic. If you have to send yourself faxes from the future, even better. Do not forget due dates and find yourself scrambling the night before.

Develop a Time Management System & Stay On Top of Assignments

When you’re keeping on track and making sure all your responsibilities are staying under control, you’re going to feel like you are thriving. Establishing a time management system will make your life as an adult student much easier and much more enjoyable.

Don’t allow yourself to be swamped by all the different things you have to maintain. Never put off what can be done today.

Get a Study Partner or Study Group

You don't need to make the trek solo to thrive in college. In each course, find a study partner or a small study group. You’ll develop lasting relationships with people that will benefit you (and them) in the present and the future. As a working adult, you understand the importance of networking and relying on others to help improve your own skills. Iron sharpens iron. Study groups make for a better student.

Thriving in college isn’t out of reach or a cheesy catchphrase. At Amberton, the faculty and staff want you to thrive during your time at the university.

Use all of Amberton’s student resources, lean on your fellow students and your family, and you will love every bit of your college experience.

As college educators, we know that teaching adults vastly differs from teaching children due to several key factors. It's important to recognize and address these differences so that we can effectively teach in today's college classrooms. Doing so will help us to engage better and retain our students, but more importantly, enable us to maximize student success and help them reach their academic goals.

Understanding Adult Learners in Higher Education

Life Experience and Motivation

One of the first things we need to understand is that adult learners bring life experience to the classroom. Even more so at the graduate level, adults come to the table with many life experiences, prior knowledge, and skills. They have a more extensive knowledge base to build upon compared to children. Effective adult education acknowledges and respects this existing knowledge and should try to leverage it in the classroom to create rich learning experiences. Also, adult learners are more likely to be intrinsically motivated, meaning they want to learn for personal satisfaction and growth, in contrast to children primarily motivated by external rewards. Adults often choose to learn or seek a degree because they see a direct benefit or relevance to their lives, careers, or interests.

Self-Directed Learning and Engagement

In contrast, children may not always grasp the immediate practicality of what they are learning. Therefore, assignments and projects that make a real-world connection help to draw them into the learning experience (Baumgartner & Merriam, 2020). Another critical aspect of adult motivation to learn is self-directedness. Mature learners are more likely to take ownership of their learning process, set their goals, and decide how to achieve them. Your course design and assignment selection should encourage and support this autonomy. Consider giving them options and customizing assignments based on career-related projects or work in the community. Active learning solutions tend to be very well-received in this regard.

Accommodating Diversity and Challenges

Adult learners are diverse and have distinct learning preferences, needs, and backgrounds. College educators should provide various learning opportunities to accommodate a diverse range of choices while also recognizing differing cultural backgrounds. A very important point to consider about adult learners is the unique challenges they face outside of the classroom in pursuit of their degree. They often have busy lives with work, family, and other responsibilities, and this necessitates that we, as instructors, engage them with empathy, compassion, and flexibility, recognizing that they may need to balance their studies with other commitments. Since students have a wide range of choices in higher ed’s competitive marketplace, we can increase retention and persistence by engaging them in this way.

Relevance and Feedback

Consider your course design and content. Are your materials and content relevant and up to date? Mature students are more likely to engage when they see the immediate relevance of their learning. As mentioned, since our students often bring personal experience to the classroom, good instruction can build upon this knowledge and encourage peer-to-peer learning and collaboration (King, 2017). Also, students appreciate constructive, specific feedback and assessments that help them gauge their progress and show where improvement is needed. Timely feedback is crucial because it allows learners to adjust before the next assignment, increases efficacy, and builds confidence and motivation. When students do not receive specific or timely feedback, they begin psychologically disengaging from the course and feel helpless, which leads to dropped courses and even transfers to other institutions. Lastly, in most cases, it’s best to avoid hiding future week’s content. Instead, students should be allowed to see all the material and assignments to plan how they approach their studies and balance them with outside obligations. Doing so both reduces anxiety and supports student autonomy.

Student-Centered Approach

The differences between teaching adults and children necessitate a unique approach to higher education. As instructors, we should recognize and respect our students' diverse backgrounds, motivations, and learning preferences and allow that to inform how we teach. Ultimately, this student-centered approach creates a learning environment that fosters student success, confidence, and critical thinking, which eventually helps them achieve their personal and professional goals.