It is difficult balancing school, volunteer work, and a job, but as long as you have everything scheduled and planned, it is easily achievable and very rewarding.

When Abby York started college, she had already begun to build a solid foundation in time-management skills. She was born in New York City and moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was three years old. During her senior year of high school, she participated in a college preparation program, which meant taking all her classes at a local college to gain transferable credits. The curriculum included a course that focused on learning how to manage time and set priorities. She credits that course with helping her learn how to manage time in her first year of college and beyond. But even with a solid foundation, Abby didn’t make it through her first year of college without a few time-management roadblocks. “Sometimes I just got overwhelmed with school and just wanted to work or hang out with my friends and would put my schoolwork on the back burner. This had some bad side effects. Once I saw the drop in my grades, I knew that I had to reprioritize and get back on track.”

One key to Abby’s success with time management is organization. “I use both paper and electronic organizational tools. If my computer ever goes down, I still have all my information, plans, and due dates in my planner, and vice versa, if I lose my planner, I still have everything on my computer.”

Abby recognizes that prioritizing is the key to maintaining her busy schedule and her sanity. “My first priority is school, second comes work, and then everything else—volunteering, exercising, friends, and family,” she says. “I find places in my schedule to fit them in every week. All these things are important and essential for me to be successful and happy. It’s like each piece of my life is a puzzle piece. If I don’t keep making sure that each piece fits, or if there is any piece missing, the puzzle doesn’t work and breaks apart.”

Abby recently changed her major from psychology to economics. She just returned from a semester abroad in England and is looking into transferring to a school more geared toward her new major. After college, she hopes to move to the East Coast, find a job in market research or finance, and possibly continue her education in graduate school. Her advice to other first-year students: “Take a class on time management and balancing all your priorities. It definitely helped me ease into college life and balance my life.”