In September of 2018 I decided to take a leap of faith and go back to school to get an MFA in Game Design. I don’t have a background in games, my undergraduate degree is in music performance, but I’ve always loved games and when I found DePaul’s MFA in Game Design program I knew this was the path I needed to take.
This may sound ridiculous, but when I enrolled in graduate school I did not expect to be challenged by (and greatly struggle with) deadlines. Without giving the wrong impression about my overall self-confidence, deadlines have never really been a problem for me. Most of my career before going back to school was as a corporate copywriter: deadline city. If I was used to meeting tight deadlines literally every single day then surely I’d be able to handle following a syllabus and staying on top of things in school.
These are just a few of the thoughts that mocked and bludgeoned my consciousness as I fell into panic, disbelief, and about 60oz of cold brew while frantically pulling my first all-nighter to finish a project for school.
What happened?
The short version of “what happened” is that learning to program for the first time is hard and I grossly underestimated how long it would take to make my gleeful little fish character do literally anything I wanted him to. It can also be really, really time-consuming to learn a new skill and I had somehow managed to forget that. I’m still not a great programmer, but I did quickly learn a few very valuable lessons from my first few weeks of graduate school, the biggest was: give yourself more time than you think you need. I also learned the very, very scary effects of sleep deprivation and made it a priority to do my best to work on my sleep habits.
However, even the best time management in the world sometimes isn’t enough. Life happens and there are responsibilities that will take time away from you no matter how carefully you plan and how much precious time cushion you give yourself.
So, now what?
Ask for More Time: A Memoir
In the final weeks of Spring Quarter 2019 I was dealing with a lot of “life stuff.” I’ll leave it at that, but the relevant tidbit to extract here is that I was really only getting 2-3 hours a week to complete all of my assignments, projects, and try to be a functional human. I was taking two classes that I really enjoyed (probably my two favorite classes to date) and was really frustrated that outside responsibilities kept taking me away from focusing on school. Remember that thing I said earlier about sleep deprivation and how I’m doing my best? Spring 2019 was not a shining example of my “best” sleep habits. Despite the amount of life happening around me, I managed to get through most of the quarter.
With a week left before my final project was due, I opted to go to a short social outing with my cohort. I felt really guilty and really stressed about not having enough time for my project, but I knew self care was important and that it would be good to see my classmates. Maybe they’re going through this, too. The professor I had to submit said final project to ended up being at this social outing, and we had a conversation that I will be forever grateful for.
When I mentioned where I was with my final and what I was hoping to accomplish, he strongly suggested I ask him for a deadline extension.
“AND ADMIT I COULDN’T HANDLE SUBMITTING THE PROJECT ON TIME?” my Inner Saboteur yelled.
He went on to explain that being able to accurately assess that you need more time for a project to meet its full potential is more important than meeting an arbitrary deadline. I was starting to feel like maybe I could feel comfortable asking for an additional few hours. It was then, when I was starting to dip my toes in the water, that I got pushed into the pool.
“Did you know that first generation students and students from less-privileged backgrounds are less likely to ask for extensions than students who have parents with backgrounds in academia?”
No, I definitely did not know that. He continued on to tell me about a study that found that students who don’t know the “unwritten rules of college life” feel less like they can ask for extensions on deadlines.
Offer Your Students More Time
We’ve gotten through a lot of exposition here to make a pretty finite point: sometimes students need more time and won’t feel comfortable asking for it. This isn’t a catch-all, there are probably students who have adequate time and just need some time management mojo, but it’s also possible that students are dealing with more external noise than they may be comfortable being candid about.
As an undergraduate I was feeling burdened by an overloaded semester and asked a very kind and understanding Music History professor for a 2 hour deadline extension on a paper. Even though it had been years, and even though I know I used every second of those 2 hours, I still sometimes felt guilty about that request until very recently.
The thought of asking for an extension on a final literally did not cross my mind and would never have seemed like an option to me. My professor saw that I needed the time and strongly encouraged me to ask. When he sensed that I was still uncomfortable asking for time, he backed up his suggestion with evidence and research. This really helped me to feel like it was okay. I’ve never had an instructor go out of their way to suggest I take extra time for myself and extra time for my project. I’m extremely grateful this instructor did and even more grateful for learning that if you really need the time, and you’ll use the time, it’s okay to ask for it.