By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.
The benefit of a typical college schedule is that you have chunks of time between classes each day.
Top-performing college students utilize these blocks of time strategically.
In other words, top-performing students use their time between classes in ways that stressed-out students with lower grades do not.
In this blog post, I’m sharing 21 productive ways to use your time between college classes. The following ideas can lead to better grades, increased learning, decreased stress, and maximized career readiness.
If you go back and read that again, those are some pretty solid benefits.
And if that sounds like a big promise, it is.
However, I’m not advising you to follow all 21 ideas at once. You’ll have a different schedule each semester with varying lengths of free time between classes. Therefore, choose any of the following strategies that make sense for your situation.
21 Productive Ways to Use Your Time Between College Classes
You can complete many of the following ideas in small chunks of time.
For example, if you only have a 15-minute break between two courses, you could certainly do ideas #5, #10 or #20.
If you have a larger chunk of time between classes, try ideas #2, #4 or #9.
If you have a full day off from classes each week, you can use many of the ideas below. Or try these strategies I designed specifically for no-class days.
1. Prime for the Next Class
Priming is an effective but underutilized learning strategy. Priming for your next class means exposing yourself to the material you’re going to be taught just before your professor teaches it.
Here is my full tutorial on how to prime for a class. Don’t be intimidated by the strategy. You can sufficiently prime for class by reviewing your previous day’s notes or skimming upcoming readings or topics you’ll be covering in the next class. How do you know what your teacher will teach in the next class? It’s on your syllabus.
2. Fix Your Notes from the Previous Class
I say this all the time: a notetaking system has two parts. Part One involves capturing your notes and Part Two involves fixing those notes. Top-performing students don’t skip Part Two.
When you take notes during a lecture class, they’ll be messy, incomplete, and contain information you wrote down but don’t understand. This is normal. But we can’t leave our notes this way. Use 5-15 minutes between your college classes to go back to the most recent notes and clean them up in the following ways:
- Clarify concepts you don’t understand
- Fill in missing information
- Consider typing your notes if you hand-wrote them
- Make connections between ideas from different parts of your notes
- Re-organize your notes
- Rewrite your notes into a two-column format so they become easier to study from (like this)
3. Get Ahead on Your Readings
A secret of high-achieving college students is that they don’t wait until they’re assigned to begin their readings. They look at the syllabus, see what’s ahead, and get started.
For example, if you’re assigned chapters one through three in your literature class, you can get a headstart on chapters four or five. If the next night’s sociology homework is to read an article, read the article now (between classes), even though it’s not technically going to be assigned until tomorrow.
4. Go to the Gym / Go for a Walk
Moving your body is one of the greatest things you can do for your focus, mood, and motivation. And that’s not even mentioning the health benefits. Walking is wonderful and I suggest people who are able to walk do so whenever they are given the opportunity. With that said, there’s also a physical need for intentional exercise that raises your heart rate. Unless you’re walking very quickly on an incline for an extended period, casually walking around campus doesn’t exactly fit the bill. I suggest doing both.
5. Do a Brain Dump
If you haven’t jumped on the brain dump bandwagon, you’re missing out. Brain dumping is a quick and practical strategy that can decrease stress and overwhelm, as well as clarify tasks that you need to do. Here is my brain dump strategy.
6. Make Study Resources
If you’ve watched any of my YouTube tutorials or you’re a student inside SchoolHabits University, you know I regularly remind students that making study materials is a separate process from studying those materials.
Making study materials before you begin studying sets you up for highly focused and effective study sessions when the time comes.
Use your time between classes to turn your notes into flashcards, make active recall study guides, or design your own quizzes from previous worksheets and practice questions.
7. Work on Your Essays
College students are always writing something. Even my clients who are pre-med and engineering majors are expected to write papers. Again, my strongest advice is to not wait until these things are assigned. In college, everything is on your syllabus and you can begin those assignments at any point.
8. Organize your Digital Assets
Organization is a hot topic here on the blog. In this post and in this podcast episode, I’ll share 100 organization ideas for students. link
If you want a quick win, head into your digital organization system (likely OneDrive or Google Drive) and do a quick search for untitled documents. Spend a few minutes reviewing these documents. Either delete them or give them proper names.
Now is also a good time to create a digital file naming convention to use going forward. A naming convention is a standard way to name files, no matter what they are or what class they’re connected to.
The most common naming convention for college students is [name of assignment] + [name of class]. For example: Instances of Patriarchy in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Early British Lit.
9. Meet with Professors During Office Hours
If you’re not meeting with your professors during office hours, you’re missing out. Not only do you miss a massive opportunity to learn better, but also to form connections with teachers. I can’t state this strongly enough: teacher connections matter.
Each of your professors has different office hours, so clarify what these are at the beginning of every semester. Post them somewhere you can see them. Add these office hours to your digital calendar.
No professor office hours? Go to your TA’s office hours instead. These are just as valuable.
10. Update Your Task Management System from Your Online Portal
Colleges and universities use learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas, Brightspace or Blackboard. This is obviously where you see teacher postings, get links to readings and videos, and ultimately submit your assignments.
But top students don’t rely on their LMS as their task management system. You need a task management system that lets you add your own tasks, such as studying for tests and working on smaller parts of long-term assignments. (I recommend a simple academic planner for this purpose.)
The time between your classes is a great time to pull assignments from your LMS and put them into your own task management system.
Pro tip: no need to copy URLs or extensive assignment details. If there are five readings posted to the portal, you would not write down the URLs to all five readings. Instead, you would list out the following in your academic planner;
Psychology homework: links in portal – readings #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
11. Organize and Update Your Digital Calendar
Use your time between college classes to organize or update your digital calendar. Look at the month ahead and add what needs to be added. Get a sense of what’s coming down the pipeline. Make edits to what needs to be changed, etc. This is a good practice to implement at least once a week.
12. Manage Your Email Inbox
Here is my full tutorial about email management for students. I also teach extensive email management strategies inside SchoolHabits University.
I’ve seen too many students miss important announcements and opportunities because they don’t check their email. Either that, or they check their email, but don’t know what to do with the information in there.
13. Attend an Event on Campus
At almost no other point in your life will you have the opportunity to attend presentations, seminars, shows, or other cool experiences at no cost or travel expense. Part of your college tuition pays for outside speakers and events on campus, and I highly suggest taking advantage of at least two of these per semester.
14. Update Your Resume and LinkedIn Profile
College students should have an updated résumé and a LinkedIn profile. Both of these should represent your current academic status, achievements, and work experience. It’s easier to make ongoing updates to these documents than it is to tackle them once a year and attempt to remember key information and achievements from the year prior.
15. Clean Your Dorm Room
Tidying and cleaning are two different activities. Both are important. I always advise my college students to tidy daily, but it’s just as important to clean your space. Here are my top tips for how to clean common school supplies and spaces.
16. Plan Out Your Study Sessions for the Next Test
The reason Idea #10 is so important is that study sessions are not assignments inside your portal. Planning these out is on you. If you have a test on Friday, you should plan multiple study sessions leading up to Friday’s test. Use spaced repetition. Once you understand the concept of spaced repetition, you can use my Free Study Planner Template to map out your study sessions.
17. Figure Out What You Don’t Know
This may seem like an odd idea, but it’s one of those things that top students do behind closed doors. They just don’t talk about it.
Successful learners are constantly taking a running inventory of what they know versus what they don’t know in any given class.
For example, if you’re taking an advanced math course and the material suddenly gets challenging, this is information you need to pay attention to. Top students do not ignore red flags of comprehension. Instead, they meet with their professor during office hours or find alternative ways of learning the material.
How do you figure out what you don’t know? Pay attention to the work you do in class and your homework problems: if you don’t understand something, highlight it or make a running list on a sticky note. Bring this list of questions to your professor or TA.
18. Do your Assignments
This is a no-brainer productive way to use your time between college classes. Even if your assignment isn’t due for a few days or until the next week, plug away at it.
19. Make a Cheat Sheet
Sheet sheets are incredible study tools. Not only do they help you learn the material, but they eventually become fantastic resources to study from. I teach you how to make a cheat sheet here.
20. Do an Admin Block
The life of a college student involves far more than doing homework and research. Because school is your job, you’re also expected to handle basic administration tasks.
Admin tasks include checking email, sending emails, making phone calls, doing errands, organizing materials, updating calendars, returning library books, etc. These admin tasks can accumulate and stress us out if we let them go for too long. They also impact our academic performance if we don’t do them.
A strategy I like to teach is to schedule an admin block at least once a week. An admin block is a designated time in your week when you complete all admin tasks in one sitting. I teach exactly how to do an admin block in the podcast episode episode below.
21. Check Out Your School’s Career Resources
Another underutilized resource on college campuses is the career center. Colleges have fantastic resources to help current students develop career skills, find internships, and explore job opportunities on and off campus. In my 20 years of experience working with students, I find the majority never think of using this resource. Mind-blowing.
Final Tips About Productive Ways to Use Your Time Between College Classes
The college experience is not all about studying and working hard without time for rest. It’s important to remember that the tips I share in this post can lead to MORE time for rest and relaxation. When we use our time intentionally and productively, we can handle our school obligations in a reasonable amount of time and then move on to all the other aspects of the college experience that are just as valuable.
