College for some students is a place of all play and minimal work. For others, though, college is a land of opportunity, and the students feel as though they must be involved in anything and everything in order to land their dream job.
If you see yourself as the overachiever on campus, then you understand how to live on a day-to-day basis. You plan out your week and that’s about all you can plan because you are constantly running between classes and meetings. You get so caught up in the moment that you forget the big picture. College, while it is crucial to take advantage of the opportunities on campus, is not only a place but a lifestyle for a period of time.
Four years. That’s the typical time spent on a college campus for most undergraduates. Four years compared to a person’s entire life may not seem like a lot, but the moments spent within college can help shape who a student is, so why waste any time?
For those who see college as a place to become a leader in almost every organization offered on campus, maybe it is time to look back and see if your many roles on campus are things you really want. When students take on too much, the stress tends to build up in extreme amounts and meltdowns can happen nearly weekly.
When you start to question if you’ve taken on too much in your daily schedule, it’s time to do some reevaluations. First, you must find what, throughout your college career, means the most to you. If there are some jobs and/or organizations that you feel do not take priority, perhaps it’s time to focus on yourself. It’s OK to not do it all.
What is important to remember in college is to stay busy, but also have fun. Future employers are not looking for someone who is burnt out from the amount of extracurricular work they have done as soon as they walk through the office doors. Employers are looking for someone who keeps a healthy balance in his or her life.
A healthy balance is how you can prove that you can have fun, but also take your time in college seriously. So, it’s OK to go shopping with your friends rather than trying to plan an entire event for 300+ people, and it’s OK to go do the things that you’ve always wanted to do. If you have a passion for traveling, go travel! If you have a passion for drawing and writing, then draw and write! These moments are just as important as being involved in extracurricular activities.
So, don’t think that the world will fall apart if you are not in the best national honors societies and/or the president of 40 different clubs on campus. Find what is important to you and stick to that. Take this time to really build on your passions, and then build a career around what you love. Besides, isn’t that what life should be about?
