I Finally Found A Work Life Balance As A College Student
Starting college is both extremely exciting and overwhelming, but in a good way. It’s a time to start or try new things, meet new people and learn more about ourselves. One of the major components of the college experience is the more advanced-level classes. Everyone’s academic path at UCI is obviously going to be different with the all of the different majors, minors and life circumstances we are currently in. However, there is one commonality in all this variance.
This stuff is hard.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everyone is going to struggle severely. However, there will be difficult days and nights ahead. It is inevitable and that is simply okay! These difficulties are perfectly normal and anticipated. Although, there are ways to make these difficult, overwhelming times way more manageable. Everyone needs to figure out a good middle-ground between their academic work and personal life to make sure the two don’t become either too overwhelming or underwhelming. We just want to be “whelming” as much as possible! There are many ways to figure out one’s work life balance, so here’s a couple suggestions from my personal experience:
One way to make life more manageable is to establish a routine. Having a definite schedule or plan for a day can make the day's events more navigable. When I first started out at UCI, I had classes scheduled all over the place and was waking up and sleeping at different times each week. At first this seemed pretty neat — getting to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Ultimately, it didn’t last long because my responsibilities kept piling up and up and before I knew it, I was drowning in unanticipated due dates.
Following this ordeal, I decided to stick to a schedule during the next quarter. I committed to waking up at 7 a.m. and sleeping by 11 p.m. I committed to certain times where I would work on assignments, and times where I would rest and relax. I didn’t stick to this schedule all the time, but there was some variation here and there. Having that baseline plan to go back to made my life way more organized, cleaner and less stressful overall!
The next suggestion is one that took a long time for me to accept and adapt, but it is to manage a good work life balance, especially when you are taking a lot of classes. It’s really important to properly gauge what one is capable of doing, and do the best to not overestimate or underestimate it. The danger of overestimating is that the workload becomes way too overbearing. The danger of underestimating is that time that could be spent on college credits is just wasted. When signing up for classes, students usually take around 12 to 16 credits. At first glance, I thought taking 16 credits was an easy task but I was dead wrong. There were various other factors I hadn’t taken into consideration when I took 16 credits one time, such as the relative difficulty of my classes compared to others. My 16 credit course load demanded well over 60 hours of my time every week. It left no time for me to attend to my own life. By no means am I suggesting that 16 credits is not the way to go, but rather that it’s important to look into each class individually. Make sure to be honest with yourself and see if it more than what you can handle, and how it fits into your other classes, job, on-campus involvements, etc.
These two lessons are my key takeaways from my time at UCI. Thus far, I’m sure I’ll learn many more (I have no idea if that's a good thing or bad thing). Regardless of any situations going forward, as long as I am maintaining a good work life balance, I am confident that things will become more manageable!
