Research On The Spare Time Management Of Freshmen Of University

Time is one of the scarcest resources. Inability of managing time properly means inability of managing other resources. Also time is one of most important factors the university has to concern about, it has great significance to the university students. The accumulation of knowledge and the improvement of their competence is achieved through attending classes and engaging in all kinds of after school activities. The freshmen have just come out of the tense high school life strictly following the prescribed schedule and into a university life enjoying abundant spare time. How to manage the time has become the most important problem they have to face. Also how to make good use of their spare time to gain knowledge, work to their potentials and develop their personality is important to their future success either on the campus or after graduation. While higher education institutions also have to plan the students' time, and work out a complete arrangement for it. This paper has chosen time management as the research topic in the hope of shedding some light on the understanding of time management in the campus life for the university students and for the educators.The paper is comprised of four parts. The first part is the introduction, raising the research problem and explaining the research background and the significance of such a study, defining the key words such as extracurricular time, time management and reviewing the literature concerning time management.In the second part, the author, after analyzing the data collected from the questionnaire answered by 700 freshmen students of 2006 and from the interviews of these students, discloses the reality of time management of the university freshmen from the six perspectives of amount of extracurricular time, application of the time, recognition of the importance of leisure time in the university life, extracurricular time management and the factors that influence the use of time, the necessities of instruction on extracurricular time management.Then in the third part, the author further analyzes the problems concerning students' time management: the students have abundant extracurricular time but this time is often occupied by all kinds of other educational activities. The students share some sense of time management, but they tend to overrate themselves and lack the ability of managing their extracurricular time. The author explains the reasons that cause these problems in this part.The fourth part gives some suggestions concerning training on time management, including increasing communication between students, improving students' extracurricular life, and instructing on the strategies concerning career and life planning and on the smooth transition from high school to university education.