In today’s day and age it isn’t odd for people to work and study at the same time. With recent findings showing that 70 percent of of full-time college students are working. With how expensive school is, and how exclusive scholarships are, it’s more or less a necessity.
With this situation more or less normalized, it’s also become normal for people to do homework in every free time, including when they’re at work. ( I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written a paper in between making milkshakes or crammed for a quiz at the register, only to go home and do more work)
Today, I wanna talk about why that just doesn’t work.
Throughout the first few months of the semester, the scenario above was my reality. I did homework at work, and did homework at home and I spent more time at work than I did at home. I even did my homework on the bus to work sometimes. It worked in that I managed to -just barely- turn everything in. I thought what I was doing was what I was supposed to be doing even as I went from class to work every day and had absolutely no breaks.
Eventually though, it all started catching up to me. I found that I couldn’t really focus at work and was more tired than usual after a shift. I started dreading just sitting at my desk because I only associated it with school. I was mentally drained from not allowing myself to do anything for fun and then depressed about how my entire life was working on things for one thing or the other, and then I was drained from being depressed. My ability to do things like cook for myself and do self care began to suffer.
It was then that I found this article and it really made me think about some things.
While the article emphasizes setting boundaries between work and home, ( specifically with work from home positions) I realized that I could apply it to my situation with school and work.
I started setting boundaries by reducing the amount of times I would study at work. Work time was for work and when work wasn’t busy, it was for catching a break from work. Of course I still had times when I had to cram, but just setting that boundary of “for the most part I’m leaving the books at home” made such a difference. Suddenly I wasn’t too tired to cook, eat, and even do some homework after a shift. I wasn’t as mentally drained. Having that rule of “work space is work space and studying space is studying space” made such a difference I was still able to turn in my work and felt better after it all.
The second thing I did was cut out time every day specifically for work. This isn’t always doable, as the workload in college is…well, insane. However, if you aren’t incredibly strict with it it can still make a huge difference. I had time set out to work on homework and time set aside for something as simple as a nature walk. I set times where I would prepare food ( no matter how much homework I had done by then)
Setting time aside when I wasn’t doing homework meant that I had time to recharge. It meant that I was in that much better place to do my school responsibilities without feeling like it was never ending. It allowed me to take care of myself which in turn meant I could get done the things I needed to get done. And it’s something that I recommend to everyone.
At the end of the day, your body is the only one you have, and it’s the one you rely on to do everything that you need to do. If you let it fall to the wayside everything you do will follow suit.