A few weeks ago, our blog post was about saying no to your friends every once in awhile and staying in. It definitely had great advice, and I figured to cover the whole spectrum, I’ll discuss the opposite: saying yes every once in awhile.
Let me start out with a little disclaimer: this post is not saying school is unimportant.
It might come across that way, but I sincerely do not mean that. School is absolutely important. It’s hard to get a good job lately without a solid education, so you definitely should care about your schoolwork and make sure that you give it the attention it deserves.
However… it is not the only important thing.
They say that college is the best time of your life. When you are applying to colleges, everyone and their mom tells you that college is the best time of your life, and you should enjoy it before you join the DUN DUN DUN real world.
But you won’t recognize it as the best time of your life if you don’t get out there and explore said life.
Yes, homework is important and yes, you need to get it done. But if there’s an event you want to go to on Saturday night, work on your homework until you have to get ready, and then go enjoy yourself. You have worked hard all day and have the right to enjoy yourself. You will have all day Sunday and possibly some more time later on Saturday night to work on it more. If you have the time, definitely do not stress.
Again, I’m not encouraging procrastination. This is the essence of time management: doing all the necessary stuff on your to-do list while also making room for all the stuff you want to do so you don’t go crazy.
When I recommend something like what is described above, there are some people who are flabbergasted that that would even be suggested. One person actually said to me, “College is about growing up and putting aside your hobbies and frivolous stuff for important things.” There are so many things wrong with that statement that I have to make a list.
1) I consider “growing up” and “maturing” to be two different things. The phrase “growing up” brings to mind the image of a young boy skipping down the street, then suddenly BAM he’s holding a briefcase and he’s an adult. Most of us have hit our maximum height by the time we start college. So you have some maturing to do in college, but not much more growing to do.
2) This statement makes it seem like adults can’t have fun, like adults aren’t allowed to enjoy themselves and have hobbies and make plans and go go-carting because they’re in the world of taxes and bills and careers. Adults frequently have fun. My parents like to go golfing. I don’t get it, but hey, they enjoy it, they have fun. And once you retire, you can literally have fun all the time.
3) Hobbies are not frivolous. If it is something you enjoy doing and it doesn’t cause any harm to yourself or others, then it is absolutely worth your time. (If your hobby is something dangerous like doing drugs or lighting stuff on fire, however, I do suggest investigating other activities to occupy your time. You might enjoy those things, but considering the likelihood of hospital visits, maybe look into something that can’t easily kill you, like knitting or juggling or stalking celebrities on the internet.)
4) Who says homework is the only important thing?
5) College is not about pushing aside hobbies and letting them accumulate dust and cobwebs; it’s about learning how to make time for your hobbies amongst other things. It’s all about time management. There are countless articles online to teach you about time management, many of which can be found on a Her Campus page. If you have worked on your 6-page essay for a while and you only have a page left to do and plenty of time to do it, then take some time for yourself. Watch some Netflix or work on that puzzle chilling on your coffee table. Make sure you come back to the paper, though, because again, you don’t just have to make time for your hobbies, you have to make time to finish your work as well. You have to manage your time. (THAT’S WHERE THE PHRASE “TIME MANAGEMENT” COMES FROM. HAS YOUR MIND BEEN BLOWN? Go pick up the remnants of your mind, I’ll wait here.)
Schoolwork is not the only important thing in your life right now. Yes, hobbies might not be critical to your future. Sure, you can stop doing them altogether to make room for work. But let me tell you one thing that can not be dropped for homework: your friends.
Your friends are important. They deal with you and all your baloney and if you are constantly cancelling plans with them because you put other stuff over them every single time, someday you’re going to be looking for people to go have a celebratory drink with and you’re not going to find anyone. You’ll be lonely and miserable, and diplomas are too hard to use as tissues and cats scratch you if you try to wipe your tears on them.
It’s kind of like when girls drop their friends to always hang out with their boyfriend. I don’t care if your boytoy’s a hunk, a hunk of burning love. You need friends to talk to about him and how cute he is and if you keep dropping your friends and putting him first, you won’t have any friends to giggle with besides Ben and Jerry, and trust me, dairy products are just not the same as friends. It works with schoolwork as well.
Another reason why your friends are important: human interaction is kind of a big deal. I know in the olden days, some people never left their houses out of fear for scarlet fever or giant moths or the trolley. (I don’t know much about older times, can you tell?) But nowadays you can’t avoid it. Milkmen aren’t a thing anymore. You have to go to the grocery store and buy your milk. You need to know how to be an active member of society.
For example: when it comes time for you to find a job after college, there is so much more they look at than just how you did in school. You know how colleges don’t just look at high schoolers’ grades, but also at their extracurricular activities and essays? IT’S THE SAME WITH JOBS. I have a friend who interviews people for his company and he says that he only half pays attention to their grades. He wants to see how the person acts. If you seem comfortable and easy to talk to and they can imagine seeing you around the office, you’re more likely to win the job than if you just hope your grades will get it for you. You could be the smartest person in the world, but if you can’t make eye contact and don’t know how to make friends because you stayed in your room and stared at your textbooks all day in college, they won’t invite you to sit at the cool table called Paycheckville.
I don’t want to sound chastising or insulting. You can honestly live your life however you want to. But I’m seeing so many of my friends disappear because they don’t know how to handle all the parts of their life and it makes me sad. Not just for myself because I’m losing a friend, but for them because they’re losing this amazing time of their life.
If you don’t manage your time between work and friends and hobbies, later on in your life, you’ll look back and wonder what happened. You’ll wonder why people told you college is the best time of your life when to you, it just looked like a bundle of stress. It’s because the best time of your life flew past you while you sat in your room studying. You didn’t take the time to find the adult you truly are, to find the real you. You didn’t take advantage of all the stuff you can learn outside of a classroom and textbooks and that’s time you won’t get back.
So I hope you’re finding this post early enough in your college career to learn something from it. I know I should have said this stuff to certain ones of my friends a while ago, but I’m doing it now for you so you don’t have to end up a 40-something with no fond memories and a piece of paper with your name on it that says you learned some stuff in a university. Yeah, that diploma’s important, and so is the schoolwork that will get you there. But get out sometimes and discover who you really are, because that’s one thing you will never find in a textbook.