Being busy can be fun when you’re well organized. While it can mean back-to-back meetings and classes, it can also mean constantly surrounding yourself with interesting people and exposing yourself to new ideas. And if there’s one thing GW students love, it’s getting a ton of experience that makes that much better of a resume.
But being too busy can also lead to an avoidable burnout; that is, having so much on your plate that you can hardly handle it. And that is not something you want to suffer from your freshman year. The trick is to find a balance and really only take part in activities and organizations that you find meaningful and are interested in. Take it from someone who did way too much her own freshman year, and is only now, in the second semester of her junior year, really understanding what it is that she loves to do.
As a Georgia native, coming to GW was a bit of a culture shock but I was happy to finally be outside of the southern bubble I grew up in. I was ready to dive in headfirst: join a bunch of student organizations, participate in protests, get a job, and become best friends with all my professors. And at the beginning, it seemed so possible, so attainable. I was one of the highest achievers at my high school, close to the top of my class and excelling at most of what I did. But the catch at a school like GW– so was everybody else.
Most kids that go here aren’t from D.C., or even Maryland or Virginia– they’re from all over. And they were usually the best in their class. Now, they’ve all come to the same school with the same goals and mindsets, believing they’re ready to conquer the world.
I joined a multitude of organizations. I took a full course load. I spent my weekends exploring DC with my new friends. Soon enough, it became too much for me. I was falling behind in some classes, unable to keep up with assignment after assignment, paper after paper. I hadn’t even written a ten-page paper prior to college, and I was deeply confused as to how people could write that much about a single subject. I pulled the first all-nighter of my life.
This may not sound all that bad. It’s normal, one might argue. It’s completely normal for college freshmen to make drastic changes to acclimate with the demand of a higher-education institution. And those people may be right. But for me, my mental health soon began to deteriorate. I lost interest in my classes, lost interest in keeping up with the meetings of all my organizations. My passions and mental well-being suffered, reflected in my grades.
Freshman year had left me burnt out. It took receiving grades I wasn’t happy with and being bored of things that used to spark joy in me for me to realize that what I was doing needed to come to an end.
I took four classes both semesters of my sophomore year, and chose two organizations that I was really passionate about to continue being part of. Later I would go on to become creative director of one of them, and one the executive board of the other. I was doing less, but in a way I was doing more. More of what interested me, more of what challenged me to be a better version of myself. I got a part-time job doing social media for the School of Media and Public Affairs, something I still do and love every second of.
Now as a rising senior, I can’t help but feel a little sad it took me this long to figure out which aspect of journalism, my major, I wanted to pursue. But I have to acknowledge that, like many of my friends at GW, I was burnt out from doing everything. Some can handle it, and I applaud those individuals. But I think it’s time the GW community stops placing such high expectations on its incoming freshmen. First-years are naive, and a school like GW that attracts such overachievers should recognize a responsibility to communicate to those students that they don’t have to do everything.
My advice would be to attend the student organization fair and sign up for email lists that peak your interests. Keep some, drop the rest. Put your all into the few you kept, and you’ll soon reap the rewards of truly belonging in something that matters to you. And don’t take every required class all at once, nor be in a haste to graduate early, as many do. Rushing to terminate your college experience by doing too much all at once, is far from ideal.
Trust me. You’ve got time.