When people give you life advice, they tend to include “say yes!” When opportunities arise, you are supposed to take them, because saying no you will mean you miss out on something incredibly important. To some degree, this is true, and I am incredibly grateful for this advice. But it is incredibly important to balance this with being able to say no. Sometimes at a highly competitive college, there is a great deal of pressure to say yes to absolutely every opportunity that comes your way.
Some of the truly best advice that I received was to wait 24 hours before I said yes or no to all of the different opportunities that arose. If I really want to do something, I generally still want to do it after I’ve waited 24 hours. However, if it’s something that I didn’t really want to do, but felt I needed/or was pressured into doing, waiting was always worthwhile.
I love being able to do so much at college. Saying yes to doing theater at college has been one of the most worthwhile experiences in my life. Writing, both for HerCampus, and our student newspaper is so incredibly rewarding. But I have also had to decide to take care of myself, and not do other things. I really strongly wanted to join a sorority this year, but I ultimately had to decide to not do it, largely because going through recruitment with all the other commitments I had made would have been a great deal too taxing. Even though it was a hard decision to make, looking back, I know that it was the best decision for me this semester. I have a lot going on, with a decently busy academic schedule, and trying to add one more thing would have certainly been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Learning when to say yes, and when to say no is a great skill (that I’m still figuring out!). Time management is a very important aspect of life that people tend to forget when championing “say yes” to everything. What I’ve learned by making some very different and large commitments is that it is only fair, both to yourself and others, to only make commitments that you can fully participate in and enjoy.