It's midnight, you haven't begun to study for tomorrow's exam, and you are avoiding your work while doing something irrelevant. Sound familiar? Lately, DePauw students have been admitting such issues to the guru of time management, Raj Bellani.
Bellani, the new dean of Experiential Learning and Career Planning, has recently brought his effective time management meetings to DePauw, and many students have been positively affected.
The meetings focus on Bellani's three principles for success: concentrated activities, intellectual environment and concrete tools for success. He urges students to concentrate their time.
"If you're studying, you're studying fully," Bellani said. "If you're procrastinating, it happens, but limit it to the best of your ability."
Bellani developed his time management program when he witnessed college students at other liberal arts schools who were smart and worked hard, but not to their 100 percent potential.
He also struggled with time management, and developed his own system out of fear of failure during his undergraduate years at State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo. He attributes his time management system to his later success in graduate school and pursuing his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.
He wants struggling students to find a constant intellectual environment that fosters success. He relates a good study environment to any other environment that promotes a specific activity.
"[It's] akin to a one's place of worship; you are there to pray and are among others who are doing the same, so therefore you can focus on that particular action," Bellani said.
Bellani helps students develop and alter their study habits, which assists them in establishing a personalized route to success.
Eric St. Bernard, a sophomore, heard about the meetings through the Posse Scholar Program. Bellani's focus on the intellectual environment worked for St. Bernard.
Bellani told Eric that he must not go back to his house to study because that was a place for social life and distractions. Instead, he had to stay in his intellectual environment in order to fully complete his work.
"I never thought I would be able to study for four hours a day, but Bellani convinced me that I can, and I have," St. Bernard said. "His formula is definitely successful."
Bellani's formula is simple: multiply the duration you are in class by two, and that is the amount of time you should spend on homework. So, for every week of class, you should be studying around 27 hours. Getting ahead in class work, as many students who have attended his meetings have done, enhances efficiency and successes.
Mateusz Kosciuk, a freshman, heard about the program through Bonner Scholars.
"The meetings urge you to change your lifestyle in order to get things done," Kosciuk said. "You have to accommodate this change if you want to see the effectiveness of the meetings."
Kaitlin Pickrel, a sophomore, heard about the program through her sophomore life planning class. She said that the meetings allowed her have better study habits in comparison to what she used to do.
Bellani told her to never read while lying down; you read faster if you sit up.
"Just a simple tip like this one has saved me so much time," Pickrel said.
The goal of the meetings is to lower the stress of academics for students, since it is such a key factor in everything else that students do. He has helped about 40 to 50 students with their time management. A student will usually meet with him once, absorb his tips and then see success.
"DePauw students are intellectually capable, more so than I ever was in college," Bellani said, "I just push them to be more efficient, which in turn equals a greater rate of success."