Skip to content

Managing Time for Students

Effective time management will go a long way toward ensuring that you get the most out of your ICF experience. Despite the fact that iNeuron provides a schedule to ensure that things are done on time, you and your mentor should create a bespoke time line that matches your project requirements.

Period of Community Bonding

There's already a whole section in the guide dedicated to this. (It's that critical.) Make the most of this time by getting to know your community, setting up your development environment, and getting a head start on code development. This is the period when you get to know your mentor as well as the other students. Chat with them on IRC, ask them questions, and discuss project ideas, and be ready for the exciting voyage ahead.

Make a list of mini-goals for each week.

Setting short-term goals that you can discuss with your mentor is usually beneficial. Breaking down your project into smaller tasks can benefit in a variety of ways, including:

  • It gets you going!! You're working on a smaller, more defined task that's easier to manage.
  • Mini-goals assist you plan out a path to the end product you want to develop.
  • Smaller goals are less intimidating, and attaining one gives you the confidence to move on to the next.

Make it clear what you'll be doing with your time.

A weekly commitment of roughly 18 hours is required for GSoC. If you know ahead of time that you'll need to take a few days off during the Summer of Code, let your mentor know ahead of time and make plans to make up for lost time. You and your mentor have the option to add some flexibility to your 10-week programme; however, any planned breaks, etc., must be agreed upon by both of you.

Meetings with your mentor on a regular basis

You should absolutely, positively make sure you're communicating with your mentor on a regular basis through mutually agreed-upon means. It's critical that you and your mentor are on the same page about the project's status and goals. Your mentor is your most valuable resource, and you should make the most of him or her.

Code reviews should be done on a regular basis.

It's critical to do regular code reviews in order to stay on track. Don't be scared to request them as often as you require them. It's far preferable to request a code review after 10 or 20 lines rather than hundreds. You don't want to find out after writing a lot of useless code if your mentor tells you that you're doing anything incorrect.

Keep a journal to keep track of your development.

Keeping a progress log is an excellent way to keep track of your development for yourself, your mentor, and anybody else. It also comes in handy when you need to go back and evaluate a decision and figure out why you made it in the first place. Blogging is an excellent method to do this since you can get fantastic advise in the form of comments from individuals you wouldn't typically connect with, and it also puts you in the spotlight.

Taking care of the time zone discrepancies

Your tutor is almost certainly in a different time zone than you. Make sure you consider this when you're putting together your strategy. Any meeting schedules should include time zones, and UTC is frequently the ideal option because it is not influenced by Daylight Savings Time.

Always be ready for the unexpected.

The majority of the time, things do not go as planned. Make sure you have enough space to accommodate unanticipated adjustments. It's usually a good idea to set aside some buffer time in case you stray from your initial plan, since this will spare you a lot of agony and panic episodes.