Getting More from Students’ Assignment & Leisure

Students’ quests to save time for courseworks and leisure are interesting. If one is to take a deeper look and put each in exhibition, would it be invaluable to point which is healthy, which is destructive, wasteful, or which is good under certain periods of time and instances?

Of course, one may argue that it’s just a waste of time and resources – what’s the need of such assessment in the first place?

• Relationship. Looking at students’ coursework assignments and common leisure activities, observers may be able to pinpoint any existing or non-existing relationship between the two. The catch: relationships always have its dynamics. While relationship cannot be easily tweaked for improvement or advancement, dynamics have that possibility (for tweaking).


• Patterns. A focus on all of students’ leisure activities and assignment can do wonders in identifying and establishing patterns. Such pattern-look out can permit students to create a streamlined pattern that effectively combines two without tarnishing the experience of leisure and scholarly work.
  
  For example, in the instance of a student’s leisure activity that consists of reading fiction books (e.g., novels), what viable coursework activities could be patterned next to it? Reading fiction usually activates or stimulates imagination – and that lively imagery can do wonders with courseworks that deal on reflection and analysis. Doing just that may sound like ‘hitting two birds with one stone’ – the birds being the assignment and leisurely fiction-reading, and the stone being the maintained pace of imaginative thinking.


• Weeding out. There’s great potential in weeding out unproductive habits by assessing the courseworks and leisure activities in tandem. How many are guilty of procrastination? How about performing activities that usually lead to procrastination? Everyone knows that famous habit, but few could tell how it manifests or, which activities directly lead to it. This procrastination-scene is just one of the many assignment and leisure habits that need to be cut; perhaps, assessment of the two activities can do works for this need.

It could be observed that the two activities – coursework and leisure – are not divided or weighed by priority. It is because these two are important tasks, the other may be prioritised less or more, yet what holds is the significant contribution that each makes for the students’ well being.

Nowadays, work-life balance is constantly rallied. Students may soon get there; so before they do, they may have some similar taste of it as early as higher education. What is stressed here is not to necessarily deduce leisure or add courseworks; in fact, that need not be the case if students can do well with balancing the two tasks.

Despite the obvious difference of each task, both have the same objective – advancing students’ growth.