Category Archives: Journalism

Urgent Action Required to Alleviate Housing Crisis Mired by Pandemic

Originally published January 28, 2021 for Beacon Media News.

By Brianna Chu

The pandemic has exacerbated many of the struggles of our unhoused neighbors; the search for shelter and employment has become ever harder.

Single mom Rosemary* worked two jobs pre-pandemic, renting a room for herself and her toddler in a house with seven others. Each of the tenants worked different jobs and hours, so despite the numbers, the living arrangement worked, since they weren’t all at the house at once. However, once the pandemic hit, the house quickly became a difficult place to cohabitate. One person played music loudly during the day, disrupting those working, and she couldn’t retreat to the outdoor space to work—the Internet connection didn’t reach that far. 

Rosemary managed to move back home to her parents’ house over the summer, where she was able to save money despite working only one of her jobs, since it wasn’t physically possible for her to take care of her young child with both of her previous jobs. While living with her parents helped save on rent and food costs, the experience was strained and uncomfortable; her parents looked down on Rosemary for being a single mom and often made her feel like a burden. “I remember them asking me, ‘Why can’t you pull yourself up by the bootstraps?’ …Well, I was able to handle it when I had more jobs and could take [my child] to daycare.”

Towards the end of the summer, she was able to contact a friend who could rent her a room and quickly prepared to move out; but the offer suddenly fell out when the friend’s landlord unexpectedly revealed they were planning to sell the apartment instead. Rosemary spent a month searching for a new place to live, eventually finding Door of Hope, a Christian organization that provides transitional housing and other resources, with the goal of ending the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence and abuse. Door of Hope also provides its tenants meals, and their normal housing period of three to five months has been extended to nine months in response to the pandemic. 

Photo courtesy of Derek Story on Unsplash

Rosemary and her toddler have their own room, and everything else is shared. The two now live in a house full of other single moms, which Rosemary is finding to be a great experience, as she can learn how other single moms handle raising their kids. Despite the rollercoaster journey she persevered through in 2020, Rosemary reflects sagely about the entire experience: “My parents live in a big house and are well off, but they’re miserable…When you’re homeless, you understand what’s truly important; and I look at my [child] and know I have everything I need.”

Rosemary’s experience with housing insecurity is one amongst thousands of others just in Los Angeles County alone. The 2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Counts, initially published June 12, 2020, revealed a 12.9% increase in homelessness in Los Angeles County between January 2019 to January 2020. However, this number doesn’t take into account the countless who have since likely fallen into homelessness or housing insecurity as a result of income loss from the pandemic. According to the Los Angeles Controller’s Office, the unemployment rate in Los Angeles County was 15.1% in September 2020, though the peak unemployment rate, rising above 20%, was recorded in May 2020. 

A May 2020 paper from UCLA’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy suggested that an “optimistic assumption that only one tenth of households will experience homelessness leads to an estimate of 36,000 newly homeless households, including about 56,000 children”, though author, Professor Emeritus Gary Blasi, writes that “a reasonable estimate is that at least one third of those households at very high risk of being evicted (365,000) will become homeless, with no source of income.” Based on the ‘reasonable’ estimate, “we can expect to see the unhoused population of Los Angeles County grow with the addition of at least 120,000 evicted tenant households, including 184,000 children.”

The California-wide Project Roomkey, aimed at providing shelter for single adults experiencing homelessness who are at high risk for COVID-19, has been a collaborative, multi-organization effort. In Los Angeles County, Union Station Homeless Services (USHS) has partnered with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), working on the frontlines to get folks off the street and into hotel rooms, especially those at highest risk for COVID-19. Project Roomkey has been able to offer every person three meals a day, accompanied by a temperature check and verbal check-in with a nurse. The University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine contributed to Project Roomkey by sending a team of doctors to provide medical care, and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health provided mental health specialists, especially to help with the isolation. LAHSA reported that “efforts to protect the most vulnerable people from COVID-19 led to the rapid sheltering of 6,010 people since the March Safer at Home order (4,056 through Project Roomkey, 1,708 in Rec and Parks shelters, and 246 in trailers)—and a goal to move 15,000 of the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness into housing.”

Project Roomkey daily nurse check-in. | Photo courtesy of Los Angeles County

Project Roomkey is a temporary program, however, meant to alleviate the worst of the pandemic for as many homeless folks as possible; and now they are starting to transition Project Roomkey to Project Homekey, or Recovery Rehousing. USHS offers a rapid rehousing program similar to Project Homekey, for which their Interim Director of Project Roomkey, Lorena Ruiz, worked pre-COVID 19. 

Union Station has been working not only to temporarily house as many people as possible through Project Roomkey but also to find them permanent housing. Ruiz was able to share some stories of a couple of gentlemen whom Union Station had recently been able to rehouse. On one of the first few days of the program’s implementation, a composed, dignified gentleman, who appeared at first to be in his 60’s, approached a Project Roomkey coordinator onsite. This gentleman, Oscar, surprised the coordinator greatly by revealing himself to be 90 as he was being registered. He was swiftly moved into a hotel room and matched with a care coordinator; and recently, he even moved into his own unit. 

Oscar in his hotel room. | Photo courtesy of Los Angeles County

Another anonymous gentleman in his early 40’s had recently become homeless right before the pandemic, finding himself sleeping on a bus bench, unable to find work. He had no phone number, no address, no way to even get to interviews. Shortly after the pandemic began, he was approached by an outreach worker for Project Roomkey and moved to a site. He was eventually connected with a care coordinator for Recovery Rehousing. When he spoke with his coordinator, he told them: “All I need is an address to give to employers so I can get a job and a safe place to sleep.” Having a stable source of food and shelter allowed him to focus on employment, and he was already so proactive in searching for employment that his care coordinator didn’t need to spend as much focus there. Early in December, he had found a unit that was affordable for him and signed his lease, and was able to spend the holidays in his own place. 

While these three individuals have been able to find housing, there are still thousands who have not, and there is a lack of resources, support, and programs in place to address this crisis. However, we can all help to end homelessness: by volunteering, donating, and educating ourselves and others. 

The LA Times collated a guide of volunteer opportunities over the holidays; and while the festivities are over now, these organizations could likely still use your time and aid. Right now, you could also volunteer your time by calling some folks and easing the isolation of lockdown by having a conversation with someone, and there are plenty of organizations in need of drivers willing to drop off groceries and essential items. 

If you are a homeowner with a spare room or back house/‘granny flat’ that you are willing to rent out, Union Station always wants to partner with property owners. This direct partnership helps to protect both the landlord and the tenant.

Of course, donations are always very welcome: whether it’s a recurring online donation, gift cards to stores like Smart and Final to help with food purchases, or in-kind donations of essential hygiene products, household items, and food. 

A final valuable step we can take is to educate ourselves and others on homelessness and become advocates for societal change. Union Station has an educational series and action guide called “Changing the Narrative”. There are currently two Changing the Narrative webinars, which you can watch here and here. The series and guide explain how and why housing first works, and explore what barriers there are and why they exist. 

We have seen the pandemic exacerbate and highlight many of the pre-existing problems, from the ever-increasing wealth gap between the lowest-income and highest-income populations, to the strain on and limits of our healthcare systems, to racism towards BIPOC. Taking the time to educate ourselves and work to reject the norm of homelessness fits into the theme of the pandemic for many—a hard, long look at our society and what we believe in and value.

*Name changed for privacy

Afterword: This was the first article of the series that I worked on, and I felt the urgency and importance of the topic the most serious, so it is the only article of the four that includes a call to action at the end.

Remote Learning Highlights Importance of Social Connection for Students

Originally published January 14, 2021 for Beacon Media News. Since then, the Washington Post (March 13, 2021) and Teen Vogue (August 28, 2021) have written articles on the same topic, conducting similarly focused interviews, though the latter focuses on how schools will handle mental health going into the 2021-2022 school year.

By Brianna Chu

When school districts were forced to close as COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. last March, students were thrust into an entirely new world of learning. I spoke with four students from elementary school to high school—Altadena Arts Magnet School students Kaidyn Taylor, a fourth grader, and Harry Daniels, a fifth grader; Chandler School seventh grader Vaughn Cross; and Gabrielino High School junior Emily Casciani—to get a snapshot of what school has looked like for them this past year.

While the students learn at different paces and various levels of difficulty as the grades increase, crossovers in experience abound. All four of the interviewed students cited the inability to easily communicate with teachers as one of the main challenges of learning from home. There is more limited dialogue between students and their teachers, since the primary time they spend with their teacher is with the entire class. While teachers do sometimes have designated online office hours, commonly on Wednesdays, there are impediments that come with the solely virtual connection. Kaidyn, for instance, had dealt with the difficulties of not being able to “figure something out but my teacher’s working with somebody else” during the normal in-person school term; however, the biggest problem for her is that “usually, I ask one of my friends for help,” she explains, “but [now] I can’t do that, either.”

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Another significant challenge, especially for Vaughn and Emily, who have higher online workloads, has been maintaining focus and “attention while looking at a screen; it’s much harder than being engaged in a classroom where you can see things happening, watch your teacher, experience the experiments firsthand,” in the words of Vaughn. He uses science as an example: while the experiments have been modified to be reproducible at home, he feels that the experience isn’t quite the same as it would be in school with his class and teacher there.

Archana Basu, clinical psychologist and instructor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, describes: “Children generally learn well when actively engaged and in environments where they feel safe and socially connected. While there’s a lot that one can do online—I think there’s been a huge surge in innovation and adaptation—remote learning requires a level of sustained attention and emotional regulation that is a very big demand, developmentally, for kids in middle school and younger.”

Maintaining or creating those social connections has been the most striking challenge for all the students. Whether “it’s talking to friends or having time to talk to a teacher, you can’t just go outside and say, ‘hey, do you want to do this later;’ you have to type on the computer and it takes a long time to respond,” notes Harry. 

Getting used to online learning has been complicated for Vaughn, since he switched schools over the summer. He finished his second semester of sixth grade learning at home as a Saint Mark’s School student, and the pandemic certainly factored into his decision of which middle school to attend going forward. Consequently, one of the main factors prompting his choice of middle school was whether he already had friends there. As a new Chandler student, socializing with his classmates hasn’t really happened at all for Vaughn, either. While he’s been able to get to know more of his class individually while completing group projects together, Vaughn comments: “You can only get to know people so much when working on projects. I can say I know them, but do I really know them as friends? On a personal level?”

Even during the school day, recess, lunch, and during after-school arts or sports activities also constitute valuable time for students to spend with their peers, but none of the students I talked to can currently participate in most of their previously-attended extracurriculars: Kaidyn and Harry have been unable to play any of their sports; Vaughn can’t join Chandler’s band or orchestra; and Emily hasn’t been able to continue cheer or speech and debate, though she is still working on her Girl Scouts Gold Award and has joined the Associated Student Body at Gabrielino to be more involved with her school community. 

Lack of socialization with friends and loved ones has significantly impacted children across the country. A report published by the Center of Disease Control on November 13, 2020 compared the number of mental health-related emergency room or emergency department (ED) visits among all pediatric visits in 2020 to 2019. EDs are “often the first point of care for children’s mental health emergencies,” and the report found that “beginning in April 2020, the proportion of children’s mental health-related ED visits among all pediatric ED visits increased and remained elevated through October. Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health-related visits for children aged 5–11 and 12–17 years increased approximately 24% and 31%, respectively.”

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

And it is in this realm of interaction that video games are winning the pandemic. It’s not just kids that sent the sales of the Nintendo Switch and the newest Animal Crossing skyrocketing this summer—adults in spades went on to sell both the game and consoles out as the game became a method of interaction and online friendship. Online co-op video games of all kinds have become the clear winner for virtual connection for kids of all ages during the pandemic. Harry’s mom Aimee Daniels acknowledges that their rules on video games had been more strict pre-pandemic—“video games only on weekends”—but have become more lenient recently as it’s now the primary way for the kids to interact and even just catch up outside of the classroom, as Harry uses his in-game chat to speak with his friends. Kaidyn and her friends like to call each other and play Prodigy, an educational math game. Mom Jessica Thomas was happy to sign her daughter up for Messenger Kids so Kaidyn could interact more with her friends. “As adults, we [often] don’t think about just how difficult it is for the kids as well,” Thomas says. She definitely sees the difference interaction has, even with her youngest, who’s one. On the days he’s gone to daycare, she’s noticed he’s in a good mood and is ready to go to sleep at the end of the day; but after being home for two to three days in a row, he’s cranky all day. Emily calls and connects with her friends through FaceTime, and they sometimes play online games like the recently popular Among Us together. And in her case, through these games, her social circle actually grew as she met friends of friends whom she had heard of but hadn’t really spent much time with before. 

While both kids and parents—and not to mention teachers, too—are inundated by the extra mental and emotional strain of learning and working from home, ultimately, safety is of the utmost concern for all parties. Emily remarks: “I would like to go back [to school] as soon as possible, but I’m afraid of health concerns that would ruin the experience I once had; if it’s harder to be in person for students and teachers, it may not be worth it.” She’s hoping publicity and usage of the vaccine increases, for everyone’s safety—and her concern isn’t misplaced. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health reported the highest spike in the average number of cases per week Los Angeles County School Districts in December 2020. 

Graph from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health

COVID-19 has affected Emily’s college search, too. Unfortunately, she hasn’t been able to visit the schools on her list, but she has also been changing her list based on how she’s seen different states and schools handle the pandemic. She is undeterred in her desire to attend college, though; her parents have told her about how formative college was for them, and she wants to be able to experience that, too. 

However, whenever she does return to school in-person, Emily feels that the biggest change will likely be “gratitude for being able to see people and have people helping me in person, [and happiness] for what I have in comparison to what I have now [in lockdown].” All of the students eagerly await the day it is safe to return to their classrooms and meet and be reunited with their classmates; but for now…maybe it’s okay to cut the kids a little slack for all that time spent playing video games. 

Afterword: This wasn’t the original direction I had planned to take this article; in the research I had been conducting prior to the interviews, I was focusing on the statistics relating to reported COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County schools. However, as with all stories, the real direction comes from the people. After talking to all the students, I realised the real story here was mental health, and the tremendous toll the pandemic was inflicting on kids. And of course, then WaPo and Teen Vogue got onto the topic, too! Kinda cool how it feels like I beat them to the punch 🙂

Pandemic’s Impact on Child Care Pushing Working Women to the Limit

Originally published January 7, 2021 for Beacon Media News.

By Brianna Chu

Single mother Lisa* is a teacher who also tutored students before the pandemic started. Her young daughter Joanna* is not quite school age, so she isn’t currently juggling both online teaching and online learning; but Lisa had been sending her daughter to daycare during the week so she could work. After the pandemic hit, Lisa was unable to both teach and tutor. In their particular circumstance, they ended up having to stop going to their local daycare due to a combination of concerns over illness, financial strain for both their family and the daycare center, and some not quite above-board practices on the daycare’s part. 

Childcare centers, most of which are small businesses, are struggling to keep afloat amidst managing the costs of staying open while addressing the increased health risk and the dwlinding client pools. Despite the $3.5 billion distributed under the CARES Act to bolster the child care industry, only a fraction of daycare centers nationwide have benefited from federal funds intended to help these small businesses survive. The decline of the industry puts both parents and the small businesses in a difficult situation.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Lisa initially found spending more time with Joanna a joy. She had been volunteering with the preschool-aged kids at her church in preparation for her own little one getting older, and she loves children of all ages.”Trying to ensure [Joanna] is quiet or sleeping while I teach can be a challenge,” she says, “but sometimes I show my daughter the videos or material that I’m teaching.” However, while they love each other very much, Lisa notes that it’s still important to connect with others, too. The emotional pillars she had relied on—like the friends she could visit with and the church and single mom groups she could attend—have waned since the pandemic began. Lisa knew that as a single mom, she needed support; even pre-pandemic she had joined several single mom groups and mothers’ Bible studies at church. 

Luckily, some of the single mom groups still meet online, and the pair have still been able to attend church; they can continue to attend because theirs implements social distancing and appropriate mask-wearing. Joanna loves going to church and being able to see other kids, too, so it’s important for them both. 

Lisa is looking forward to being able to go to Disneyland with her daughter once the pandemic is over—she had wanted to take Joanna there for her birthday, since she adores Minnie Mouse, so that’s one of the big things she wants to do once it’s safe to go out again.

Like Lisa, many working parents across the country are now juggling work while caring for young children at home. From June through November 2020, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation conducted a series of surveys on the pandemic’s impact on childcare. Two of the overarching conclusions? The pandemic has caused two-thirds of working parents have to change their childcare arrangement, and the majority have yet to find a permanent solution. Furthermore, up to 75% of working parents have children under the age of six staying at home with a parent during work hours, and only 10% are using childcare centers. 

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Altadena Arts Magnet School parent, Jessica Thomas, is part of the majority of working parents with a young child at home. Working full-time from home, for her, highlights the importance of the work-family boundary and balance; nobody has a schedule or routine anymore. Instead, it’s a constant juggle between helping her kids with school, taking care of her toddler, and managing the increased home upkeep now that everyone is home all the time. For the most part, her school-aged daughters study and learn from their respective bedrooms, but will sometimes work in the living or dining room when they need some extra comfort. Thomas ends up without a break from working when her kids are done at the end of the day, completing work that she had meant to finish during the day but had to put aside to attend to her kids’ needs.

She had been able to occasionally take her one-year-old to daycare, especially on days when she had to go into the office in person for some reason, which brought welcome respite to both her and the girls and provided him with time to socialize. Unfortunately, their daycare closed early, two weeks before Christmas, because one of their staff members tested positive for COVID-19. As a small practice, they had to shut their entire facility down for at least two weeks, and since they usually close for the week of Christmas anyway, Thomas spent three weeks without any childcare options for her toddler.

Despite how challenging she’s found it having all the children at home as she works, Thomas would much rather have them home than have them return to school if it’s not safe. She points out that having and raising kids in general is an exhausting endeavor, regardless of whether they’re at home together or she’s in the office and they’re at school. At school, her kids would go to all kinds of sports practices and were involved in lots of extracurriculars, so they were often at different events until seven or eight at night. “Even though it’s [been] hard,” she reflects, “the time I’ve able to spend with the kids has been a good thing that’s come out of this.” She is, however, definitely looking forward to taking a vacation—literally any vacation—once the pandemic is over.

*Name changed for privacy

Afterword: I was really happy with how series of statistics-supported human interest stories turned out. I’m reposting them here to my own website as part of my own portfolio, and because one of my pieces ended up being ahead of a trend, which I am gratified to see.

Professionals Find New Ways to Rapidly Adapt to Survive Pandemic

Originally published January 21, 2021 for Beacon Media News.

by Brianna Chu

COVID-19 has swiftly made its presence known in every aspect of our lives, but especially so in our work lives. The pandemic has forced countless businesses to adapt or perish, and many have been unable to maintain their workforce sizes. Young graduates are stuck in an ever more competitive and punishing job market, as they must now compete with thousands who have been laid off from their previously held jobs and also have joined the search for employment. According to the Los Angeles Controller’s Office, the unemployment rate in Los Angeles County was 15.1% in September 2020, though the peak unemployment rate, rising above 20%, was recorded in May 2020. By July 2020, the two biggest industries hit were the accommodation and food service industry, which had lost approximately 73,902 jobs at that point, and the information industry, which had lost about 53,506 jobs. 

Map and graph from the Los Angeles Controller’s Office

However, while the overall landscape remains fairly bleak, the new working conditions have led to the acquisition of new skills or new career avenues for some.

College professor Ruth* lost her normal hours and had her entire teaching system upturned in March. Like many educators, she was abruptly forced to switch to online after a four-hour crash course in remote teaching. As a result, she struggled to teach her last semester of the 2019-2020 school year. Over the summer, she launched herself into professional development courses. “A lot of life is waiting for something to happen,” she says, “but I figure I might as well do something while I’m waiting!” She turned to as many online courses as she could access, not only about teaching remotely and human connection, but also on equity and inclusion, as George Floyd’s murder during the pandemic re-shone a spotlight on the systemic inequality throughout the country. She took time to consider: “How do I fit into this culture?” 

The time and energy Ruth dedicated to learning and growing over the summer paid off. She is confident and enthusiastic about her class’s progress this year. Her focus has been on trying to incorporate more connection in her teaching; with all the time everyone is spending staring at their screens, it can be hard for anyone to feel seen and recognized as people. She encourages them to discuss freely and emphasizes to her students the importance of their mental health, especially now: asking them to journal or find a trusted adult to confide in if they’re struggling emotionally, and offering herself as a listening ear. Overall, she’s been impressed with how well her students have been handling the circumstances, too—she teaches in the dual enrollment program, where high schoolers take her college-level course and earn credits before they even get to college. 

Courtesy photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Ruth knows that online learning may be the norm for a while, so as she’s been adjusting to it, she has also been considering how many of the skills and techniques she has recently implemented can still be used even after the pandemic ends. 

For Danny Estrada, the loss of work in his normal job became an extrinsic push to take the plunge into pursuing his passions as an artist. He had been working for years as a concierge at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills. When the pandemic hit, he immediately knew that things weren’t going to go well for the hospitality industry; and sure enough, he has been furloughed since about the middle of March, like many others. 

Unlike others who may not be so lucky as to have a fallback, though, he had an idea of where to turn without his usual means of employment. For eight or so years, he had been cultivating his skills as a crêpe paper artist. In the past, he had briefly considered pursuing his artistic hobby professionally but hadn’t had the time or confidence to do so. Now, comfort couldn’t take priority: he didn’t have a choice. In his words, the situation was “do or die.” Los Angeles as a city has its fair share of outdoor vendors, so in the first few months of the pandemic, he worked up the courage and filed the appropriate paperwork for a vendor’s license, bought a pastel pink bike with a basket to be his stall, and headed out to the streets to share his flowers to the public—to whatever response they would receive.

Uflorya’s storefront | Photo courtesy of Danny Estrada

And he has indeed received validation for his years of work honing his craft as he has taken to the streets of Old Town Pasadena, selling his beautifully realistic paper flowers out of the basket of his bike. When we spoke, he was in the midst of completing a sunflower project for a client he met on the street. “In a way,” he muses, “the pandemic has been a blessing for my art, though it obviously hasn’t been for the general public.”  

But the past few months haven’t been all sunshine and roses; he’s had some frustrating days, too. His bike has fallen over, spilling hours of labor onto the concrete, and he had to purchase a sign when he realized that some people didn’t realize he was selling anything. Estrada now has a pink umbrella for his storefront, too, and a name for his business: Uflorya. 

While he once made the journey out to Venice to try and sell his flowers on Abbot Kinney Road, he has found that his hometown of Pasadena is the ideal location for him. Old Town Pasadena has good foot traffic and is a particularly fitting locale, as the city itself is tied to a love of botany: what could be more fitting than selling lifelike paper flowers in the City of Roses and the home of the Rose Parade? 

A close-up of Estrada’s artistry | Photo courtesy of Danny Estrada

As sales rose, he dedicated more time to learning new techniques and added more flowers to his repertoire, capturing the delicate petals and vibrant colors of peonies, roses, daffodils, and the distinctive California poppy. He tries to be out on the streets five days out of the week if he can, but he is getting to the point where he is probably going to need extra help to keep growing his business so he can pursue it as his primary—and for the foreseeable future, only—source of income. He’s excited and grateful to be able to bring his art to people and to have received such positive feedback. “Especially during these dark times,” he adds, “I hope my art helps bring energy and adds happiness to people’s days.”

*Name changed for privacy

Afterword: I was really happy with how series of statistics-supported human interest stories turned out. I’m reposting them here to my own website as part of my own portfolio, and because one of my pieces ended up being ahead of a trend, which I am gratified to see.

Overly Dense Article Draft

Originally written 20 June 2021; edited draft published to HeySoCal 24 June 2021.

A Review of New Research on Study Skills and Time Management Benefits

By Brianna Chu

Most parents, students, and teachers will recognise the terms “study skills” and “time management.” These nonacademic skills have often been touted as the keys to improved academic performance. However, not all study strategies are built alike, and there may be more benefits to time management than simply academic performance. This review of two studies published this year summarizes new insights to these familiar terms and may help students and parents use the summer time to prepare and plan for a more effective and balanced school year.

Meaningful study engagement, not total study time, garners better performance 

Walck-Shannon, Rowell, & Frey (2021) refer to the “desirable difficulties framework” from Bjork and Bjork (2011), who propose that more challenging studying strategies promote improved long-term knowledge retention. In the past, the two researchers have differentiated between storage strength and retrieval strength; storage strength refers to how deeply entrenched the knowledge is, while retrieval strength refers to how quickly and easily accessible that information is. Bjork and Bjork consequently propose that greater storage strength delays the inevitable knowledge or information loss, and that some “desirable difficulties” in information storage strategies can better cement knowledge. Walck-Shannon et al. hypothesise that the use of more active studying methods, in which students do not repeat previous activities (such as simply reviewing notes or rewriting their original notes word for word) but instead engage with material in new ways, would result in higher performance on exams. The researchers emphasized a technique they refer to as “self-quizzing”, or self-explanation. This learning strategy involves students asking themselves “how” and “why” questions as they learn material, building their own connections between previously learned knowledge and the new information they have been presented. 

Within Walck-Shannon’s et al.’s introductory Biology class, students used twelve strategies most frequently, of which six were classified as active, five were classified as passive, and one was mixed (both active and passive). Active strategies included activities such as completing old exams, self-quizzing, paraphrasing class notes, and creating diagrams. Passive strategies included rereading notes, watching lecture videos, and rereading the course textbook. Of the top five most frequently reported study strategies, four were active, while only one was passive.

This use of active strategies by this class is not necessarily typical of most students: overall, they found that their Biology students used self-quizzing more often than students in general (75% versus 10.7% who self-test or 40.1% who use flashcards). Students report preferences for study techniques differently for one specific course than they do for a nonspecific course/studying in general.

Walck-Shannon et al. received feedback on study techniques from 424 out of a total class size of 623, and compared their study habits with their exam results. Unsurprisingly, the most common study strategy was to read over their notes or the lecture slides, a passive strategy. Four main strategies stood out: completing problem sets, self-quizzing, explaining concepts, and attending review sessions or office hours. The latter was considered a mixed strategy, as student engagement can range from actively asking questions to passively taking notes on teacher responses to others’ questions. 

Overall, they found that students who used all four of these strategies scored between 4-7.7% higher on average on both tests. While the rest of the most frequently used active strategies only correlated to higher performance on one of the two exams, Walck et al. found that the number of active strategies used by students positively predicted their exam scores. Students who used all six of the main active strategies scored anywhere from 11.1-16.1% higher than students who used no active strategies at all. In short, the more active strategies students employed, the higher their grades were.

Walck et al. also inspected Bjork and Bjork’s (2011) proposal that spacing out study sessions (as opposed to “cramming”) would improve storage strength, a commonly held concept. Interestingly, however, Walck et al. found no significant effect from the total amount of time students spent studying or any significantly better performance from students who started to study the furthest in advance of the exams. No student in their sample studied fewer than two days in the week leading up to the exams, and 64% of students began studying six or fewer days in advance of the exam. 

Less surprisingly, Walck et al.’s study confirmed the hypothesis that the more time students studied while distracted—for example, study time in which students multitasked, like scrolling through social media—the worse students would perform. Their students reported distractions during 20% of their total studying time.

These findings suggest that practicing problems, quizzing yourself while learning, and explaining the concept to yourself or others are key study skills to hone for better exam performance, especially for math and science classes. These strategies may still be viable for English and language classes, especially with regard to grammar or vocabulary. Students could also use self-quizzing and explaining concepts for history or social science courses. Walck et al.’s results also reinforce the importance of asking further questions, taking full advantage of office hours or review sessions, or even taking the initiative to contact a teacher or professor directly to clarify challenging concepts.

Less-considered benefits to time management practices

In their 2021 meta-analysis, Aeon, Faber, and Panaccio review the results of 158 studies on time management—from the 1980’s to 2019—to discern not just whether or not time management works, but also whether these techniques are productive and helpful. Concerns that time management mindsets can emphasize a “profit-oriented view of time that perpetuates social [and global] inequalities” and “an inability to enjoy the moment” have been raised by more than just academics, especially in the past decade.  

Aeon et al. found that time management had a moderate impact on both academic and work performance, though it seemed to be slightly more effective in academic settings. In an academic setting, time management had a greater impact on behaviour-based performance than results-based performance. In other words, time management skills more strongly affect productive behaviors like motivation and procrastination reduction rather than directly improving GPA. Good use of time management can help students organize their time to better study and complete tasks to better perform on homework and exams, for instance. 

The most unexpected result from the meta-analysis found that time management had a more significant effect on wellbeing than performance, either academic or professional. Aeon et al. record that the effect of time management on life satisfaction is more statistically significant than that of job satisfaction. From their review, the researchers have found that time management has most significantly affected previous studies’ participants’ sense of positive mental health and sense of purpose. These findings suggest that time management skills—like setting work-life boundaries, breaking up tasks into smaller goals, scheduling time to complete certain tasks, and deliberately integrating breaks and downtime into one’s schedule—can alleviate stress and improve mental health overall, not just improve work efficacy. 

A possible interpretation of the meta-analysis results could be that the purpose for which one utilizes time management strategies matters, especially when used for improving wellbeing as opposed to maximizing profit or optimizing the “grind.” However, concerns about a societal trend towards viewing time as money, and thus using time management as a tool for greater profit or its use to balance an increasingly (and even unfairly) complex workload in the digital world, are still founded and deserving of further evaluation. 

Takeaways

From Walck-Shannon et al.’s results, students might take the summer to consider what study strategies they currently rely on most and replace passive strategies with more active ones, like self-quizzing and explaining concepts to themselves and others. Distractions and use of social media while studying produce clearly detrimental effects on academic performance: thus, summer poses a practical time to find ways to minimize distractions while studying, like scheduling study sessions only for as long as students can remain focused or including dedicated breaks, before the school year begins anew.

Based on Aeon et al.’s review, encouraging students to decide on time management strategies that will help them organize their time—balancing academic and extracurricular activities to allow ample opportunities to complete assignments as well as enjoy some deserved downtime—could improve their mental wellbeing during the hectic school year. These time management strategies could include: buying a planner, setting and keeping to a consistent sleep schedule, strategizing the removal of study distractions, and setting goals for the academic school year and strategies to help achieve them in advance (perhaps making a note to set aside more time to study for more challenging subjects, and/or looking into a tutor for that specific subject, for instance). 

However, please do not spend all summer planning! Use those time management skills to also set aside time to enjoy being outdoors, spend time with loved ones, and relax before the fall semester. 

Works Cited:

Aeon B, Faber A, & Panaccio A. (2021). “Does time management work? A meta-analysis.” Public Library of Science ONE, 16(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245066

Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In Gernsbacher, M. A., Pew, R. W., Hough, L. M., & Pomerantz, J. R. (Eds.) & FABBS Foun- dation, Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (pp. 56–64). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Walck-Shannon EM, Rowell SF, & Frey RF (2021). “To What Extent Do Study Habits Relate to Performance?” Life Sciences Education, 20(1). DOI: 10.1187/cbe.20-05-0091.