ARTICLE SUMMARY

If you have always looked at the A-students and wondered how it is possible that they can do all their school work, get A’s in all their courses and still have a social life, then read this article!

No matter how much you choose to take on in college, be sure to find a balance between your school work and your own personal life.

I do realize that this advice will be met with plenty of protest, especially if it is mid-term, a time when students find their loads increasing along with their stress levels! So, how do you find balance when it seems like (or, at least feels like) everything is supposed to be due, like, yesterday?

Before I give you some advice on how to find balance in college, let me enlighten you about one important point about the sort of stress college life can create.

You can’t put a price tag on the skills you’ll gain

I’m not going to lie: working your way through college will be tough at times – nobody ever said it would be easy. That said, you should be pleased to know this because challenges (and, overcoming them) is what defines us in the end. College is a great place to grow for this very reason. It’s the challenges that are presented, which mould students and help them becoming better in the end.

Take my example. I used to feel ‘trapped’ at times, when I was caught up in a rut, as I call it. I liken those times as periods of pure misery. There was so much work to be done and I couldn’t simply just blow it all off and do whatever I pleased. It had to be done. But, you know what? That pressure helped me fight off the urge to procrastinate. I had deadlines and they had to be met, regardless of how ‘trapped’ I felt. The demands also helped me to work effectively under pressure and it taught me how to handle a heavy workload. I also learned the value of never giving up; seeing through my frustrations in order to achieve a goal. These are valuable skills that are not assessed on your transcript, nor are they written in any fine print during the application process!

Frustrations aside, how do you suppose these valuable skills (all, by-products of being a college student) serve me today? Learning how to beat procrastination is extremely valuable in the ‘real world.’ That is, the mental process that you have to put yourself through in order to beat the urge to delay your work is very useful and the skill helps me tremendously today. What about knowing how to deal with emotions of being frustrated – and moving through them – so that goals can be accomplished?  Would this skill serve you well after college? I would say so. And, what about being able to work well under pressure? In the real work, things can get pretty ugly very fast. If you can handle the typical stresses of everyday life, that will be a wonderful skill to have and it will separate you from those who succumb to pressure. I could go on, but you get the idea… I rest my case!

Embrace everything college life has to offer – yes, even the ugly side!

How to find balance in college

So, how can you beat the pressure (no matter when it hits)?

If you have to work, then you must. There’s no question about that. But it doesn’t hurt to have certain tools in your arsenal available to you. For instance, utilizing a good study system will help decrease your workload so that you can accomplish more in less time (read Easy-GPAbooster for more about this as well as the section on university study skills). It would also serve you well to know more about how to handle stress in college. Even when you must work at times and give up on some of your efforts to find balance (as you normally would on a typical day without all the stress), a good study system will help you to find instances of balance during these stressful times. So, you won’t go that social function but you can head over to the gym for a workout, couldn’t you?

Lets say that deadlines aren’t looming, however, and yet the stress is still upon you. What then? In thinking about balance, remember that a huge part of college life is having fun as well as being able to excel in your academics. Socializing and mixing with people and getting involved in other activities is also all a part of the learning process and necessary for your growth. To not do all of this would be like hoping to pass a bunch of classes that you skipped out on all semester long. In the end, you would fail those classes and you would have to repeat them. Well, the same applies to your socialization and extra-curricular activities. If you skip out on them during college, the lack of skills that will manifest as a result  of your choices will catch up with you later in life. Trust me on this!

So what’s the solution?

Allow yourself (and, I use these words deliberately – allow) to date and have romantic relationships, go to parties and functions, make tons of friends, get fit and be active… Do all the fun social things that everybody typically does. All of these pursuits will take a huge load off and will help you in your socialization later on in life.

One word of caution: know where to draw the line. Balance is all about getting it all done and indulgence in any one area is simply not a part of the equation.

While the struggling students toil away, trying to keep up, the top 5% of students do what I’m suggesting above. That is why they can have it all. While the struggling students look down on them (with envy), the top students simply follow a good system and stick to it. Finding balance is a part of that system.

A system you can use

If you want to learn more about a good study system, pick up a copy of my book Easy-GPABooster. In this book, I lay out an easy, step by step system that you can follow to achieve the results you want out of your entire college experience.

Put the advice laid out in this article to use. You will notice a difference soon enough.