Prioritize

As a student, time is a valuable thing. Balance things like social lives, academics, and health become our greatest challenges, especially for us college students. We are constantly moving, always wanting to be with our friends, but then we struggle to fit in our homework and sleep. Sometimes it is the other way around; we forget to be social because we are too focused on our academics. In my opinion, the problem is knowing our priorities. I, personally, struggle most with remembering where my priorities lie. These past few weeks I prioritized my social life, and then I struggled to finish studying and ended up losing sleep and sanity in the process.

It is clear to us all at some point that we need to find balance. The top priority for all of us should be our health. Lack of sleep actually weakens our immune system and makes us more susceptible to illness. Being in school already puts us in an extremely germy environment, so a weakened immune system is just asking to be put to the test. Being sick leads to lack of focus, less energy, less time spent with friends, and eventually could lead to the inability to attend classes. In case you didn't pick up on it, the point I'm trying to make is your overall health directly affects every aspect of your life and could put you behind. If your health starts declining, you should cut back on the social time and focus on completing your homework earlier in order to get enough time and rest to recover.

Our next priority should be our education. We are in school for a reason, are we not? Not to mention the fact that we pay a lot of money for the educations we are receiving. It is not fair for us to invest all of this money in our futures and then throw it away by not caring. What we do with our academics now dictates our futures. Making the decision to sleep instead of going to class is a way for us to train ourselves to choose sleep over work. In the future, we may not get choices like these. We need to understand that these few years we spend in college have the potential to change our lives, for better or for worse. So rather than putting academics last, we need to put them towards the top of our to do list. It also helps to spread our work out. Cramming a day or two before an exam may seem like a good idea, but then you are skipping out on sleep and only getting in X hours of studying. What if we took 3 hours out of every day to study? Is 3 hours really too much? If you spent 3 hours on homework every weekday for 5 days, you would have 15 hours of studying done. More than you would get in one day of cramming AND you don't get the added stress! Then you have more time during the weekends to be social and catch up on sleep.

After health and academics, we can focus on leisure. If you are healthy and caught up (or ahead) on school work, why not enjoy yourself? Use the rest of your time to relax, spend time with friends, go to the gym, read a book, whatever you want to do! It is important to get at least a little downtime during the school year in order to keep a positive attitude. And honestly, if your friends really like you, they will wait until you finish everything else to spend time with you. Believe it or not, others do care about your health and education. It is okay to put yourself and your future before your social life.

Prioritizing our time sounds so simple, but we all know it is much easier said than done. But if we just remember these few things, we can make it simpler to balance out our lives and keep a healthy, positive outlook on life. I know these things seem repetitive, but I really hope it helped anyways. It is hard to remember where our priorities lie all the time, and that's okay as long as we think about why we are here and remember what it is we need to do to reach our end goal. Good luck to you all with managing your time! If you have any questions or comments about things I mentioned in this post, please contact me!

Study Hard,
Danielle Renee