Balancing school, work, and a social life can be draining to your mental and physical health. At UMass Boston, a large part of the community commutes and typically has a job that helps to pay for school or housing, so many of us know this struggle. One of my favorite things about UMass Boston is the dedication that the students each hold. We are each on our mission toward graduation, which adds on even more anxiety for seniors who don’t know what their next move will be. It’s a stressful time to figure out where you’re going to live, work, and survive. We are all eventually going to be looking for the answer to the dooming question: what happens next?
If you’re like me, then you can’t enjoy much until you know whatever deadline that’s looming over your head is met and completed. Procrastinating just adds more stress to the assignment and makes you feel even worse about it. If I have something due on Saturday night, I won’t be able to do anything during the day on Saturday because it’s stressful knowing I have something I’m responsible for getting done very soon. The best way to avoid dealing with this is to try to avoid procrastination, which is something we all struggle with. However, I have noticed myself getting my assignments done before there was a time crunch on it, and I ended up feeling less anxiety over it.
If you can buy a planner and force yourself to write in it daily, it can be a really helpful tool in allowing you to divvy up your time in each day for various assignments. Let’s say you’re working all weekend, but you have a paper due on Monday. You should use your planner to see that you won’t have adequate time to do the assignment on the weekend, which may cause you to feel worried at work, since you’re stressed about a paper you won’t have time to do. Instead of feeling this way, you should work on the paper during the week when your workload won’t be so busy. As more assignments come your way, you’ll be able to fit in scheduling on your planner, depending on when you will have the free time to work on whatever is due next.
By planning ahead with your assignments, it can allow you to have your weekend to yourself! Dedicating your attention to your schoolwork during the week frees up more time on the weekend to spend time with your friends, like you actually want to. Plus, you won’t have to be thinking of assignments you’re responsible for or what’s due next because you’ll be fully prepared.
It’s okay to feel tired and burnt out, as many people feel that way and you’re not alone. If you find yourself stressed out and unhappy, maybe you should reevaluate what’s most important to you and what you’re willing to sacrifice. Mental health is always going to be most important, and if you need to take a break to focus on getting better in that aspect, you should. It is so much better to have less on your plate so you can do more with what you are dedicated to, rather than spreading yourself thin. I used to take five classes while working two jobs, and after dropping a class during two separate semesters, I decided to save myself the money, time and stress. It’s expensive to pay for a class that you won’t receive credit for. Now that I have more time to focus on my four classes, I do much better at handling my workload and my grades have improved significantly because of it. It’s important to take steps toward a healthy, happy life.