Unit 2 Portfolio
Abundant Work or Lack of Time?
Academic stress among Syracuse University students is the result of a lack of time management skills, but mainly due to overly demanding coursework that varies severely based on majors. My research is focused on determining how college students are being treated within Syracuse University. I want to know if students struggle because of a lack of time management skills or because the enormity of work being assigned is unattainable. I believe that it is a mix of both that causes excess stress within people's lives. As a college student, I understand how endless work feels, and I think it has a large part to do with people's majors. I created a survey to gather data on local college students and their personal opinions on the topic. In addition to this, I conducted an interview with a current college student.
Source Analysis #1:
"Time-Management, Google-Survey" by Adriana Stoltman
My first source is the survey I created on Google Survey to gather real-life data on my campus at Syracuse University. The people that I reached out to were mainly other people in my classes, as well as friends with other majors. The genre of this is a public survey/questionnaire. My results found that people with majors that were within STEM categories found that their coursework was very intense, and they had over 10 hours worth of time spent on homework a week. This is contrasted by majors such as business and communications, which stated that their coursework was moderate and they had a greater amount of screen time than homework time. Overall, I found that majors play a large role in how people feel about their coursework. It is also easier to understand how students use their time when comparing their screen time to that of time spent on homework. If the screen time is greater than their homework time, there might be some evidence to suggest that their stress is in part caused by time management, while if homework time is significantly larger, there may be some evidence to suggest that their coursework is much more demanding. This relates to the larger argument that the stress of these students is caused by their demanding courses rather than time management. Some people stated that they spent over 9 hours a week on homework, just to catch up in their classes. This source does a good job of capturing the feelings/ opinions of many students at Syracuse University. I do wish it asked more questions about where the students' stress comes from rather than assuming based on the numbers.
Source Analysis #2:
"If Students Designed Their Own Schools..." by Charles Tsai, Posted 2014
This short YouTube video delves into High School students investigating their own learning conditions. In Massachusetts, they created this alternative program with about 9 High School students who get to decide how they want to learn, with most of the time no input from adults. The genre of this is a short documentary. This program is called the Independent Project, and it runs only for 1 semester, which is divided into 3 parts, and it only has one rule: design your own learning. These students get to create a weekly question, which they then create a presentation for to teach the class, alongside their semester-wide project that focuses on a personal endeavor. I feel like this learning style really pushes students to take action on their own learning rather than just doing what they're told. The director of the program stated that she wanted to "Stop trying to move every kind of human being through the same gate". I think this really reinforces the idea of individualized learning and was very convincing to hear the many accounts from individual students who were in the program. I think this relates to the larger topic of students' stress by highlighting what students would change if given the freedom. This gives a clear representation of how students would improve school systems to still foster learning while balancing their time. I think this video explains the concept that standardized schooling fails at, which is engagement. If a student doesn't want to learn, they cannot be forced to. I think this source would have felt more reliable if they had given more information about the context of this program.
Source Analysis #3:
“Stanford Research Shows The Pitfall of Homework” by Stanford Report, Published 2014
This is a condensed article that explains how an abundance of homework can lead students to develop physical health problems and disrupt their overall quality of life. In this particular study, they used a sample group of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing schools in California. They found that students in these high schools averaged around 3.1 hours of schoolwork each night, which is about 15.5 hours a week, excluding the weekends. This, combined with extracurriculars and outside school commitments, can cause extreme stress for students. Denise Pope, an education scholar, argues that “any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development.” By not assigning busy work and only giving students things that will help them grow, it would limit the amount of time they would be spending on schoolwork. This study found that an excess of homework can reduce its effectiveness significantly. The benefits of homework begin to plateau after 2 hours of consecutive working time. This emphasizes the fact that a higher quantity of work does not mean more learning. This relates back to college students who have many professors who do not communicate with each other regarding homework hours. This study found that 56% of students would consider homework as a primary source of stress in their lives. In these personal surveys, they also mentioned that homework led to sleep deprivation and a lack of social time. This article looks at homework through the lens of students rather than that of time management. It focuses on the negative effects happening and the students' feelings about it. I think the audience of this article is teachers who want to remind them to think about their students' external lives and well-being when choosing how much work to assign. This source feels reliable with its well-explained statistics, but it could have been better if they had gotten some teacher perspective as well.
Source Analysis #4:
Personal Communication, Diya Desai (College Student at Syracuse University), March 22, 2026
This is a personal account from a sophomore in college at Syracuse University about their workload. Each question subsequently gets more in-depth about her personal workload and how she feels about it. She explains that she does a good job keeping up with her assignments and balancing out her work. However, when she does start to get busy, she explains that her social life is the first thing to diminish. This shows that academic pressure can affect social well-being as well as mental health. While her major plays a large role in her workload, her time management skills are the primary factor, she explains. This interview implies that stress is an accumulated thing rather than a constant factor in her daily life. Diya has a self-awareness of her limits and what works well for her as a sophomore in college. This source was very helpful as it gave the perspective of another student who has a good work life balance. I think she is reliable because she has firsthand experience participating in college level courses and having to manage her time effectively. Overall, this source points out that it is subjective to the individual student on how they manage their workload and how it impacts their lives.
Source Analysis #5:
This is a research paper that looks into the correlation between time management, stress, and academic achievement in students. It looks at it through a medical lens and gives information on how students’ health is affected in relation to their workload. This source explains that academic failure is often attributed to non-academic characteristics, which require different forms of intervention. The author goes into detail about how stress is often “negatively associated with students’ readiness, focus, and performance, while positive stress helps the student achieve maximum performance.” This source depicts stress as something that is not completely harmful in certain dosages. However, they also explain that excessive intensity of courses does affect productivity in the long run. I think the audience is other scholars who are researching time management because of the higher vocabulary and formal writing on statistics. This relates to the idea that pushing students through challenging coursework is not a completely harmful thing, and it can help them grow. Overall, this paper explains the negative connotation of stress and emphasizes that students need to learn how to manage their time properly to perform better. This source is very reliable because it is peer-reviewed and thoroughly analyzes all data collected.
Source Analysis #6:
“Time Management” by Tom White, Stories From School, 2011
This source is a personal narrative that looks at time management from a teacher's perspective. They go into depth about the amount of time they have outside of school to get done with work. They give a visualization of the 17 hours they have after a school day to sleep, eat, and do miscellaneous tasks, which leaves them with very limited free time. He states that out of the few hours of time he has, he “could easily spend all of them on [his] students.” The author goes on to emphasize that he must balance his free time and time to work, just as students must learn to do. This extra work he does outside of school is not something that he gets paid for, but rather his “contribution to society.” This narrative gives important context on what teachers are also going through on a daily basis. They also have to find time to balance their personal lives with school work and lesson plans. It is important to look at the issue of excess homework and time management not just through the lens of the student, but also that of the teacher who thoughtfully plans out the lessons. This was a reliable source because the author is a teacher recounting his daily struggle between free time and working. I found this source helpful in shifting my perspective as a student from that of a teacher. Overall, this source leans into the concept that work is something that is too balanced and not something that ever really decreases. There will always be something that requires attention, but it is up to the specific person to manage that.
Through analyzing these numerous sources, I have found that people must learn to balance their coursework, but teachers should still stay aware of how their students are receiving the work. There must be a dedicated balance between working and free time in order to succeed academically. It depends on what works for each student and also the type of coursework related to their major. So, to answer my initial question of whether primary stress was caused by lack of time management or excessive coursework, I would have to say it depends on the person. Some courses are going to be more intensive than others, and some people are gonna be better at managing their time. However, 5 hours of homework crammed into one night would feel more painful than 10 hours of homework spread throughout the week. Overall, homework is a necessary tool for growth that teaches students how to manage their responsibilities along with their personal lives. Through my research, I found that this is an important skill that is better developed earlier in life because there will always be work that needs to be done by certain deadlines. All of these sources provided different information and perspectives that helped to shape my research.
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