Finding the Time for It All

I recently got the newest issue of Games World of Puzzles magazine.  While I have read the articles and started on the puzzles, I have yet to try and solve the contest, even though it is one of my favorite types.  My schoolwork is just taking up way more time than I thought it would.  During my undergraduate days, I don't remember having this much of a problem in scheduling my time so.  On the other hand, graduate school level work is supposed to be at least a little harder.  In my defense, I only took four classes my last semester.  Two of them were studio art classes, so they had almost no homework.  A third class was a low level core requirement; it also had little extra work.  Even my fourth class was an overview of modern short stories.  Not that much work there either.  This semester has me reading thirteen novels (eight by Herman Melville, and all but one is maritime) and various shorter works of fiction, poetry, and essay.  Let's not forget online discussions, which I am totally unfamiliar with.  Anyway, here's the lowdown on the contest.  It is another Coded Crisscross puzzle.  The puzzle is a grid of interlocking words, but not to the degree of a crossword.  Each letter is replaced by a number.  The object of the contest is to determine what the thirteen words are, and then send in what they have in common.  The thirteen words are an entire set belonging to one category, which has no other members.  I usually start solving it by writing down the clues in a separate list so I can try many different possibilities out without damaging the magazine.  I then do a frequency chart, counting out many of each number there are.  The most frequent one are usually the most used letter, namely 'E', 'T', and 'A'.  The next step is for me to try out some of these letters in the clue words and see if any patterns emerge.  I have yet to perform this next step.  It would only take me an hour or two, at most if I am lucky, to do this.  I have yet to start, because I just don't feel that I have the time, with all the other non-school related work I'm also doing.  This is one reason why these posts are so much shorter lately.  Anyway, I hope to find the time soon.