The thing about college is, balance suddenly becomes the hardest thing in the world. Don’t get me wrong, high school is a bit chaotic too (I’m lookin’ at you, senior year!), but college is all of that on double the steroids. It was definitely a lot easier then because you had a parent reminding you in one ear to feed yourself and a teacher demanding in your other to finish your homework. In college, you’re not as lucky.
When you’re living in the dorms, it becomes up to you to take care of yourself—and let me tell you, it can be pretty hard. I find that some nights I’m awake until 3 AM while other times, I forget to eat. There’s also the other part of college that I still to this day struggle with, and that’s opportunities. Now, that probably sounds confusing and weird because how can you possibly struggle with things that are supposed to be good.
Well, let me put it this way: imagine you have the chance to join this club you know you’ll definitely enjoy. Obviously, you join it, right? Well suddenly you realize there’s also this other new organization that sounds fun too and will definitely look good on resumes. And let’s not forget this new program that your professor just announced that could help you make great and helpful connections. Then there’s this huge amount of schoolwork you got going on with your other classes. One opportunity has suddenly turned into a never-ending list.
What ends up happening is we tend to decide between two pathways. It becomes the “Well, I should take all of them because I should take every opportunity I can get,” or the “Let’s stick with one, I can’t possibly do more.”
Neither is right or wrong. Problem is, each can wind up hurting us. If we take every opportunity we’re given, we’ll find ourselves feeling like we’re drowning in too much work and soon end up becoming that person that pulls three all-nighters in a row and passes out (that’s actually happened to a friend of mine and trust me, she agrees you don’t want to become that).
If you end up sticking to one, you might feel guilty that you’re wasting all this time and money at a school you feel you aren’t using to your best advantage. Or in my case, you feel less involved than your friends because it seems like they’re doing so much more than you, so you think you should too. But here’s the thing, you don’t have to overwork yourself. You don’t have to overcommit to things. You don’t have to feel guilty for doing too little or not doing enough. You can say no.
Our lives as they are, are already chaotic enough on their own. We can’t let ourselves make it even worse with feelings of guilt that we don’t deserve. If that means joining only one club or only taking one extra project from your professor, go for it. If it means being able to balance a couple clubs without feeling like death then go for it.
Opportunities are great, they’re literally defined in the Oxford dictionary as a “set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.” But too much of anything—even something good—can be bad.
So let’s learn to be okay with letting ourselves have a schedule that lets us breathe and commit only to clubs and projects that make us smile. Adulting isn’t all that great, but hey, some of it is worth having. We’ll still be the kids we are, but we’ll learn to balance that with the adult we’re becoming.