A Diagnosis Of The Utilization And Management Of The Graduate’s Spare Time

Time is one of the most valuable resources, which is of particular importance to graduate students, as the ultimate goal of post-graduate education is to seek a means of livelihood and to realize the self-creation, self-development and self-realization for the educated, both requiring planned time management. The utilization and management of spare time has become more and more important for graduate students with an increase in productivity, statutory holidays and graduate enrollment in recent years.The definition of graduate students’spare time is time other than learning and research activities involved in post-graduate training programs which consist of course learning, dissertation writing and participation in mentor’s research projects. Generally, graduate students take classes in the first year, write dissertations in the last one/two years and do researches from time to time, leaving much spare time available. How to optimize spare time has become a tough issue for graduate students. The utilization and management of spare time may be dominated by personal ideas, mentor’s instructions, school’s arrangements, family need or surroundings. How much spare time graduate students have, how they spend their spare time, whether they have a good planning of spare time, what factors their planning depends on, what differences male/female graduate students and master degree/doctoral candidates have towards the utilization and management of spare time......these problems are to be delved into in this dissertation.This dissertation employs the form of questionnaire to acquire original data of the utilization and management of graduate students’spare time, and builds an analytical model according to Dr. Huang Xiting’s time management theory. Questionnaires are sent to and received from graduate students both on campus and online with a total of645pieces, among which620pieces are valid. Measures have been taken to ensure the validity of questionnaires:diverse respondents from various academic institutions with different majors are considered; a reliability and validity analysis is done. The results of analysis show that the utilization and management of spare time of male/female graduate students and master degree/doctoral candidates is highly different; improvements should be made by graduate students to optimize their spare time.This dissertation is divided into five parts:Part One is introduction, which discusses the backgrounds, purport and methods of this research.Part Two is literature review, including the definition of spare time, time management theories and relative researches at home and abroad.Part Three puts forward assumptions according to Dr. Huang Xiting’s time management theory, elaborates the design of questionnaires, and analyzes the original data’s reliability and validity.Part Four analyzes the original data from questionnaires, finding that male and female students have great difference in utilizing and managing spare time, and the attitudes of master degree candidates and doctoral candidates towards the utilization and management of spare time are highly different too. This finding proves that different solutions should be proposed to different groups as to how to optimize one’s spare time.Part Five is conclusion and outlook, which stresses that graduate students should optimize their utilization and management of spare time. Measures such as improving graduate students’understanding of time management, strengthening mentor’s instructions on spare time and creating a suitable environment for graduate students to manage spare time reasonably might be helpful. This dissertation could help graduate students to recognize the importance of utilization and management of spare time, and also provide a reference for students who are interested in the research of time management theory.