All right, so you did the research, aced the interview, and landed an internship for the semester. Great! Having an internship is an amazing way to spend your semester, but let’s not forget that you also have other responsibilities. For the most part, in addition to interning you also need to have a full schedule of classes, keep up on your extra curricular activities, and maybe hold a weekend job. Sounds like a lot? I hate to say this but get used to it. Adding an internship is a big responsibility and managing your time is crucial for surviving the semester. After all, having time management skills could be the difference between having a balanced semester and a total mental breakdown (I would know from experience).
Let’s begin with the basics, organizing your schedule to accommodate for all of the tasks you have to complete. I suggest creating a to-do list or buying a day planner, it helps me to be able to see what I have to do at each and every moment of the day. Start off buy filling in the “have to” things, which would be your internship, your classes, and your job. These are things, which should already be scheduled into your life, and all other tasks can be worked around them.
Then move on to your “should do” things, which are homework and club responsibilities. These are things that you shouldn’t drop from your time (because your grades and the people in your life depend on you doing them), but when you do them is a bit more flexible. For me, I tend to work on my homework and extra-curricular activities after my internship, classes, and work are done for the day, and this sometimes means staying up until the wee hours of the night to finish an assignment. Having an internship will make you realize that there are certain things in your life that you just don’t have the time to dedicate your full attention to anymore, and I suggest only participating in a few activities that you can fully commit to.
Lastly it is time to schedule in those “want to do” activities, like going to the gym, hanging out with friends, going on dates, etc. Now I know that given other circumstances, these are things that we would like to put at the top of our to do lists, but having an internship means making some social sacrifices. I am by no means saying to get rid of these things completely, because even with an internship, I still had the time (maybe not the energy) to have a social life. It is all about creating a balance for yourself and really getting ahead of your time. Procrastination is not an option when you have a full schedule and for your sanity, I would recommend learning how to manage your time before it comes to bite you in the ass later down the line. I have learned personally what happens when you put too much on your plate and I suffered (in nearly every aspect of my life) because I didn’t know how to manage my time properly. And I am sharing my tips and tricks because I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else. Because when you do learn to manage your time effectively, you will have an incredible semester and become one step closer to being an adult in the real world.