Chapter 2 Summary References
2
Successful college students manage their time well. They plan their semester, weekly, and daily
schedules to allow sufficient time to prepare for classes, complete assignments when due, and
study for exams. Contrary to the beliefs of many students, scheduling does not eliminate flexibility
or stifle creativity. Instead, developing a schedule helps you deal with unanticipated events— lastminute emergencies and unexpected opportunities. Planning also provides you with quality time
to enjoy social, recreational, and family activities without guilt or anxiety over academic
obligations. Practicing time management puts you in charge of your time, instead of letting time
control you.
Early in the semester, you may not feel that you need to organize and manage your time because
your professors are covering introductory material and the amount of course work you are
assigned does not seem to merit the effort of setting up a time-management system for yourself.
You will find, however, that the pace of your courses will accelerate rapidly and that multiple
papers, projects, and exams will be scheduled in the same week or even on the same day. If you
do not have a plan to manage your time and handle multiple successive deadlines, you may
become overwhelmed and unable to do your best.
In this chapter, you will first learn how to develop individual semester, weekly, and daily
calendars. You also will learn strategies that will help you build your college vocabulary using
words that describe time. Next, you will identify and practice locating topics in reading selections
about time management. Finally, you will focus on writing complete sentences and learning
strategies to help you distinguish among sentence fragments, runon sentences, and comma
splices in sentences dealing with time management.
Successful college students are motivated to succeed. They want to succeed, and so they set
realistic goals for themselves and manage their time effectively to meet those goals.
Motivation in an academic context involves both discipline and determination. Motivation is what
enables students to get on task and to stay there throughout the semester. Motivation is the
difference between earning an A and earning a C in a course, between being prepared for a class
and showing up ten minutes late . . . or not at all.
Although you might like to believe that motivation is innate, that good students are simply born
with it, motivation is actually a habit that can be learned and perfected through practice. Changing
the way you think about assignments, setting goals that address your competence, managing
your time, choosing good role models, and creating a system of rewards for yourself can help you
get and stay motivated throughout the semester.
In this chapter, you will learn about and explore the campus resources available to provide the
support and help you need to do your very best this semester. You will also read about getting
and staying motivated this semester while learning about main ideas in your reading
assignments. Finally, you will practice writing effective paragraphs that can help you with your
writing assignments.
Learning Objectives
After completing Chapter 2, you should be able to demonstrate the following skills:
1. Understand the purpose and process of developing semester, weekly, and daily calendars, and
be able to create semester, weekly, and daily calendars.
2. Understand the importance of using word structure and context clues and maintaining a word
journal to expanding your vocabulary.
3. Use Internet resources to improve your vocabulary skills.
4. Locate and formulate topics in college reading selections.
5. Understand the essential elements of sentences and what constitutes a sentence fragment, a
run-on sentence, and a comma splice.
6. Distinguish complete sentences from sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and comma
splices.
7. Use the campus library, faculty, counseling, and tutoring resources to help you succeed.
8. Use computer resources to help you find the information you need.
9. Identify stated main ideas in college readings.
10. Formulate main-idea sentences from implied main ideas in college readings.
11. Draft unified paragraphs that include the essential elements of paragraphs.
12. Use a checklist to proofread your paragraphs for mistakes.