As your academic year unfolds, you have so much on your mind. You will encounter questions such as: Have I chosen the right major? Should I rush a sorority or fraternity? Is a campus job in my future? Is my GPA representative of who I am? The issue underlying all of these questions is what students for years have told me is the most important challenge they face as an undergraduate, that is, time management. How can you turn the time you have available into a friend and not a foe?
Each academic year, as I would greet a class of new students, I would ask a pretty simple question: how much is 24 times 7? Obviously it takes a few seconds to do the arithmetic in your head but most students finally arrive at the right answer: 168, the number of hours in a week. It has always struck me that “24/7” is a well-known catch phrase, but very few people ever think of the multiplication.
