Finals season has a way of arriving before anyone feels even remotely ready for it. Suddenly every class has an exam, every professor has a deadline, and then it's test time. The easy thing to do is panic and cram, but research has always shown that last-minute, unstructured studying is one of the least effective ways to actually retain any kind of material.

What works is a plan. Increasingly, students are finding that AI is one of the fastest ways to build a plan worth following.

I hate turning down their deadline extension requests -- despite whatever creative excuses they come up with -- so, with input from my students, I've compiled a list of AI tools to help them stay on track.

According to real students, here are some common time-management pitfalls, along with my tips on how to remedy them by managing your time with AI.

An AI tool for when your assignment takes longer than expected

Pitfall: The work took way longer than you thought it would. 

AI solution: Ask Copilot to review your assignments and give you a time estimate to complete them.

One senior told me they spent six hours on reading materials they assumed would take them about one hour to absorb. Sure, that five-page excerpt might seem straightforward and easy to tackle, but students are often surprised that their expectations don't line up with reality once they get into the trenches. 

Microsoft Copilot, billed as an AI assistant that uses large language model learning to help you with a host of conversational queries, is great for getting a handle on how long the work might really take. Copilot is built into Edge, Microsoft's browser, and can quickly and accurately review web pages as you're looking at them. 

You can ask Copilot to review your learning materials, assignments and deadlines, then ask it to give you estimates on how much time it might take to complete and prepare for the work without having to copy and paste anything or have a long conversation with other text prompt chatbots.

An AI tool for when you're juggling school, work and life

Pitfall: Personal and professional priorities outweigh schoolwork.

AI solution: Ask Gemini for reminders about assignments and due dates and let it fill the calendar out for you.

Another senior said they often find themselves trying to balance coursework with the work that pays the bills, creating a scenario in which assignments can sometimes fall into the "out of sight, out of mind" mental cavern. 

Google Gemini, the company's answer to OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT, can help students remember to prioritize their schoolwork by integrating alerts into the set of Google tools they frequently use, like Gmail and Google Calendar. 

This does require you to give Gemini permission to access your other Google tools, but that only takes a second. Once you've let Gemini know you'd like to receive reminders about assignments and due dates, you can drop a Copilot-designed timeline into the chat, and it will do the heavy lifting of filling out the calendar for you.

An AI tool for when you're struggling with the coursework

Pitfall: Something went wrong, and you're just over it.

AI solution: Use AI chatbot Abby as a sounding board to review your feelings and suggest areas of improvement.

A graduate student brought up the mental impact of scholastic to-dos falling through the cracks as a major impediment to keeping their time management on point. The emotional domino effect of missing something when you're already overwhelmed can be deadly to your overall grade if you let IDGAF disease set in. 

Abby, an AI chatbot that aims to provide the comfort and guided introspection of a therapist, gives you a sounding board to review your feelings and find the silver lining in any poop-colored cloud. 

Early in the conversation with the tool, Abby will analyze your situation as you've explained it and provide some positive traits it identifies in you, as well as suggestions for areas for improvement.