At Mount Holyoke, the second most common response to “how are you” is some variation of “I’m tired.” (The most common is probably “good” or “fine.”) As we get closer to exams, a commonly heard statement is, “I just want to take a nap.” This is especially true in the library, where seemingly all of our population sleep and study during exams. Because Mount Holyoke is incredibly academically rigorous, I’m not too surprised by these statements. Even on a good day, the amount of schoolwork we have can be intense. Yet despite our heavy academic loads, Mount Holyoke students are always willing to add more onto our plates with extracurricular activities, where one can practice leadership skills, pad their resumes, develop friendships, and do all sorts of fun and interesting activities.
While writing this article, I started chatting with a couple of my friends, joking about how I am probably the worst person to write an article on work-life balance. My past three years here have consisted of heaping as much responsibilities onto my plate as is humanly possible. I accomplished so much, met so many people, and had so little sleep. In retrospect, my time here so far has been amazing. Yet on a day-to-day perspective, each day sucked, and I would not want to do it all over again. I was sleep deprived, stressed, and I consistently backed out of social events because of, surprise, sleep deprivation and stress.
One thing I used to do when it comes to my extracurricular activities is fill up every free slot in my calendar with something. It got to the point that I’m busy with “something” from 8:35am to 10pm, Monday to Friday. I asked myself everyday, “where did the time go,” as I speed-wrote my papers at three in the morning. I was so busy trying to get to my next meeting and cramming for classes that I did not take time to have a life. My priorities were way out of wack; my health was so low in my priorities list that I was sent to the hospital in my Sophomore year due to exhaustion. Junior year wasn’t much better either, but I don’t want to take up this entire blog post with my personal narratives. My goal here is to illustrate what good work-life balance does NOT look like.
Now that I am a senior, I can look back and more or less see where I went wrong. Luckily, I still have time to live it up before I graduate. So, here comes the “do as I say, not as I do” portion.
1. Have a defined priorities list that contains health, happiness and academics at least in your top five.
2. Don’t try to fill in all the empty spaces in your calendar. Having time mapped out visually is deceptive; it seems like you have a lot of time, but that space between classes is barely any time at all and could be better spent on self-care.
3. Do extracurriculars, but also try to join clubs for the fun of it and not take up extra responsibilities unnecessarily. It may take up an hour or two of your week, but you’d be enjoying yourself. (Her Campus is my “fun” club!)
4. Be with your friends; go to raging parties and have quiet evenings of just hanging out.
5. Keep a well-maintained agenda. The feeling of ticking off completed tasks is pretty sweet.
Lastly, take lots of photos and put them up where you can see them. Seeing happy memories is like reliving them again, even if it is for a split second. You will be glad to have these photos to look back on years later.