Working with time management strategy – working on empathy
Key words
AR action research
ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Spld. Specific learning differences
Is it procrastination?
Delivering time management strategy in 1-2-1 study skills sessions, I have a repertoire that I can reel out, one by one. Week after week, checking in with the student, is this working? Conducting a bit of evaluation alongside the student, to pinpoint what exactly works for them. Does any part of this activity work for you? any elements at all? experiencing variable successes, successes that sometimes can be built upon.
And sometimes, I experience complete failure. There comes a point with some students that the tank is finished, nothing left in there and I’m left with a struggling student who is painfully overwhelmed and sometimes cannot even begin a single task as it’s all become too much to fathom.
Even with my undergraduate self, leaving everything to the last minute, I could still get coursework in. Recalling that time, I was failing in undergrad year one. I had no concept of self-directed learning upon arriving at university – (I’m using my subjective reality as my benchmark as I seek to find empathy for students struggling with their barriers to effective time management). Upon discovering that I was failing everything in year one, insight emerged that I had to sit down and get on to drafting coursework – and then I passed. Easy.
How differently I experienced my poor time management from the students I support in my role. How difficult to understand why they can’t tackle their entropy.
How can I get in these students’ shoes, know what they feel, and how to help them?
Everyone procrastinates, human commonality – but sometimes with students I support, it’s more than procrastination, it’s paralysis.
A memory emerges of a conversation with my son about time.
Memory 1 – story of procrastination
2023 – My son’s in prison on remand, awaiting a sentencing date. I asked him, ‘have you written to your sister yet? I believe she’s written to you’.
He replied, ‘no, not yet’.
‘What do you mean? She’s written to you, she’s waiting for a response. Do you have paper?’
‘Sorry, sorry’, he apologised.
‘Tsk, c’mon, write her a letter’.
‘Mum! I’ve got the paper, I’ve got the envelopes. Every morning I wake up and I see pen, paper and envelopes on the table and I think, today I have to write to her. But I, I, I just don’t’
‘Well, why not?’, I asked with exasperation.
With more exasperation, he responded, ‘Because I don’t have the time!’.
We laughed at this and I ended with, ‘You got lots of time’
Is it a story of procrastination? A heavy sense of so much time, overwhelming time. Again, paralysis.
Memory 2 – another story of procrastination
1996 – Sitting in my parents’ basement spare bedroom, one baby on my lap and a toddler in my sightline, there was to my periphery, a thick chocolate milk sinking into the light beige carpet. Who would clean this up? It was certainly urgent. It was staining the carpet. The quicker the better to clean it was obvious.
Perspiration was mingling into my eczema covered body, stinging. The baby’s sweat was stinging. Sleep deprived, holding my undiagnosed ADHD baby and keeping an eye on my active toddler, the cleaning job seemed impossible. It was definitely stained by now. How would I make it up the stairs to find a cloth? Where would I put the children safely? Which cleaner to use? To locate the cleaner without my mother noticing? Possible, but improbable. Maybe later.
Next day, the milk stiffening into the carpet. No one had noticed. No one else but us had used the room. By now it would take a strong heavy-duty cleaner. One probably existed somewhere. In the garage?
Day three. A solid dry muck of a stain staring reproachfully at me. I began to feel emboldened. It had gone so far: my disrespect for my parents’ carpet; my slatternly attitude. My flight was in a couple of days.
Final day. Bags packed, only outstanding task was the stain. To hell with it. I’ll be on that flight with 2 babies in a matter of hours and that stain will be well behind me.