College presents us with the thrilling opportunity to shake our bad habits from high school and indoctrinate a new way of living. I am now in my third year and I am just starting to really live out my work hard, play hard type of fantasy. Not saying that playing hard is the way to go, but there is a balance (keyword balance) that I know every college student should find before they go haywire with either too much work or too much play. So here is a guide to finding that balance between you as a scholar and you as a social animal.
- Find what Works for You
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Firstly, I cannot stress this enough…find what works for you! You can be inspired by someone else’s routine or study/social balance, but everyone is different. Stick to what works for you and ride with that.
Balance starts with time management. It is vital that you manage your time wisely and not spend copious amounts of time on TikTok like I am sure we all did, including myself, over the past seven months during quarantine. Time management begins with identifying “time wasters” and from that set goals.
- Incentivize your Study Habits
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By identifying the activities that take you away from finishing your work, you can use those as rewards for finishing your work. It is a win-win situation to set time strictly for homework/ study and use the things that would normally distract as an incentive to finish. So you now get the best of both worlds, and all of your work is done!
- Prioritize Your Needs
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People manage their times very differently, so whether you like strict time restraints or loose to-do lists, it is beneficial to have an idea of what you want to accomplish within the day so you can stay organized and have time for real life. Prioritize your needs for the day and live based on that.
Cut out time to take care of your mental and physical health. Too often college students forget that without setting time to fulfill our physiological needs, grades and relationships will suffer the costs from things like a lack of sleep, forgetting to eat, or not drinking enough water. Prioritize time throughout the week to do things like meditate, exercise, and spend time with yourself.
- Work with Friends
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When you are not spending time with yourself and want to see friends, it is important to coordinate timing with your friends. Joining a club or making a study group can fulfill both needs of being studious and social. With clubs and study groups it also keeps you organized and on a schedule which will be beneficial when trying to maintain that balance.
Once you find what works for you, you will also discover that anxiety over school/work will go down too. The skill of balancing school/social is something that will be applicable for the rest of your life and can begin now.