If it makes your life more fulfilling, or will in the future, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t.
Like most college students, I have a lot on my plate. My days start at 4 a.m. when I turn off my phone alarm and start getting dressed in the absorbing dark of my dorm room for rowing practice. By 5 a.m., we’re on the water, off again by 6:45, and then hopefully back in my room by 7:20 to get ready for the day. I have either class or work in the English Department on campus from 8 until noon, then I have about 45 minutes for lunch with a friend before I have another class from 1-2:30. After that, I either have work or symphony rehearsal until around 5, before I head for my afternoon workout for rowing which takes me up until around 6:30 most days. I find dinner somewhere with a friend or on campus, and then I have until 7—9:30 to shower, practice cello, piano, or singing, do actual homework, write essays, read for classes, write for The Odyssey (it’s currently 9:20 as I write this and I really should be working on an essay due tomorrow), and maybe sometimes relax before I’m hopefully in bed by 10 so I can get hopefully get 5.5 hours of sleep. This is all on top of whatever else happens to be anything extra for the day, like work meetings, team meetings, shopping, laundry, or actually seeing or talking to my friends. Most people tell me I’m doing too many things.
I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to do absolutely everything that I do.
And that’s OK.
It’s not an uncommon predicament. Almost all students have some stitched-together schedule with way too many things to do and are overwhelmingly stressed. Another thing most students have is a high level of stress. Stress over grades, performance in athletics, and trying to balance everything in their schedule. It makes sense. Stress has honestly become a state of mind among college students, and people seem to be stuck in it. More students than ever are reporting being stressed frequently, with a large cause being a lack of time to do all the workload that school requires, on top of any extracurriculars at all.
Yet, despite being absolutely full to the brim in my schedule and pushed over the limits of how many hours exist in a day, I am not stressed. There’s a difference between being stressed and feeling stress. Being stressed is a pattern and continuing trend of feeling stress, whereas stress is what you feel occasionally before a big performance or test.
So the question is, how? How do you avoid being stressed?
The answer lies entirely in your mental approach to life and the activities you choose to take on. The problem isn’t too much stuff; it’s the wrong stuff. The real key: If it makes your life more fulfilling, or will in the future, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t. So many people do things they don’t want or need to do. So many people do things because they think that they’re expected of them, or that they’ll be letting people down if they don’t. Or, alternatively, people don’t take things on that they want to because they’re scared they won’t be able to keep up or handle it.
Looking at the big picture, our lifespan is relatively short. Like, minuscule. We don’t have a lot of days in our life, and even less time that we can or should afford to worrying about what are, in the end, really trivial matters. By nature, the present moment consumes our life and our choices. However, it’s really important to look at things long-term. Decide whether or not this thing that you think you have to do is really that important, especially if it isn’t making you happy or fulfilling your life. We make so many decisions based on what other people want from us and want us to do. Doing a sport that you don't want to anymore? If it isn’t making you happy, don’t do it anymore. Part of a club you feel obligated to still be in? If it isn’t fulfilling your life, don’t do it anymore. Fill in that time with things you enjoy. Our life is short. We don’t have time to waste doing things that don’t make our life better.
By no means am I telling you to eschew all responsibilities. That would just be foolish. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, but in the pursuit of being able to do things that you want to do, or that will make your life more fulfilling later on. For example, I work so that I can earn money to get through college. I deal with difficult or uninteresting classes, so that later on I can make take interesting or important classes. However, I also use most of my time to do things that make my life full and happy. I row because of the immense satisfaction and fulfillment I get out of the physical and mental challenge. I do symphony because it gives me a creative outlet and I love the cello. I write for the Odyssey so I can further my goal of being a journalist. All of these take a lot of time and effort, but don’t make me stressed because they’re the right things.
I don’t have a lot of time at the ends of my days; in fact, I almost never have any. However, after a long day of doing everything that there is to do, I find myself without stress, because nothing I do drains away from my life. If you can excise yourself from the things that take from you without giving, and replace them with things you love, you will find yourself a lot less stressed as you lay in bed at night. The problem isn’t too much stuff; it’s just not the right stuff.
That’s what college is all about; doing the right stuff.
