How many times have you heard the phrase “Work Hard, Play Hard” or even “Work Hard, Play Harder”? It is quite easy, however, to get caught up in the play hard mentality to the point where you are scheduling all of your fun activities and then trying to find extra time slots to cram your homework into. I had my 21st birthday recently, believe me, I understand.
Lately, I haven’t been putting forth the necessary efforts to be the best version of myself academically. Then I realized that my classes, along with their additional readings and homework, were not holding as much priority in my life as they should. The fun extras were taking the main stage and the scholarly efforts were filling in the background.
As fun as all of our extracurricular activities are, they are just extras. They are fun and have provided us with friends and creative outlooks. We need to remember that we came to this fabulous university to be students first, so the majority of our waking hours should be spent on school.
Did you write in your college application essays that you worked and strived in all those younger years of schooling just to play hard now? Or did you write those essays trying to convince top-notch schools that your dream to become a doctor, engineer or teacher was so great that you would do anything to achieve it?
Already amidst the struggle of midterms and papers, studying is not always the most fun thing to be doing. Studying and working hard, however, will one day prove to have been the most rewarding. I’m sure one day you’ll be much more proud of that degree on the wall instead of the amount of television series you’ve finished or mug night mugs you accumulated. You can still have fun outings and rewards for studying. The studying should just be done first, and maybe not while on multiple forms of social media.
It is not a time to get down in the dumps about studying and slush and responsibilities. It is a time to strap on your snow boots and amaze yourself with just how productive you can be in a day. Maybe you’ll even realize that doing the reading for your class can help you succeed; crazier things have happened. Then at the end of the day when your brain feels a little mushy and tired, you can reward yourself with your Netflix, or ice cream, or hanging out with friends wherever you please. The reward will be even more satisfying then. Or at least that is what I’m telling myself as I try to read a 300-page book this week.
Good Luck, Buckeyes.
