Here’s a short list of my pre-college experience over the summer, which involved me planning out my entire college experience in my notebook:  

Step 1: Make friends  

Step 2: Maintain a high GPA  

Step 3: Join one of the thousand clubs that Penn State has to offer 

Step 4: Don’t forget about family and friends back home  

Step 5: Socialize  

Before getting to college, this seemed like a solid list to me; I thought it would be a cake walk. Here’s how it would work out: my roommate and I would get along which would lead to us making friends with the girls on our floor (Step 1 accomplished); I’d work every day after classes till dinner, after which I’d go out with my friends for dessert or laser tag maybe (Step 2 and 5 simultaneously accomplished); I’d walk to class while talking to my friends or family back home (Step 4 accomplished) and over the weekends, I’d engage in club activities (Step 3 accomplished). I swear I had it all mapped out.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out quite this way.

Instead, here’s what happened: on some days my classes end late, so I don’t get as much time to work. I have club activities 4 days a week (for 2 hours each day) and not just on the weekend. I find it difficult to keep any contact with my friends back home; I talk to my parents every third day, and to be honest, it’s been hard making friends. Essentially, my plan didn’t work out, and when I thought about this, I was confused as to why. I mean, in theory, it made perfect sense. So, what went wrong?  

 The Balance.

Our basic human nature craves productivity and rewards. We always want to be doing things that bring us satisfaction. More often than not, this results in us biting off more than we can chew and finding it hard to balance things. For instance, in my case, I spent more time than I needed to working and going for club practices when I should have been out making friends as well.  

In the bigger picture, being able to balance all these aspects of our life is crucial. Especially with the rigour and fast pace of our lives in college, striking a balance (in my opinion) is the best way to make sure you get everything done. This advice (like all my others) is cliched. But its cliched and preached for a reason. And that’s because being organized and balanced is effective in ensuring maximum productivity.  

Barring the productivity and satisfaction one could gain from a balanced life, psychologist John F. Christensen points out that being unable to balance, and work and social life could have negative effects on our health. As career driven/ goal-oriented animals, we focus on our work more than we do on our health. This could result in an early burnout.  

So now what? What can we do with just knowing that we need to strike a balance? Instead, how do we strike one? Let’s get the obvious ones out of the way: be focused, don’t procrastinate, prioritize tasks, make a schedule/ own a planner. However, I think the best way to strike a balance is focus on doing what you love at the moment. Why? For starters, an important part of striking a balance is that you remain productive with the tasks you are doing on hand. If you can’t remain productive in the said task, the purpose of being balanced is lost. On the other hand, if you do what you feel like doing, then you’ll be sure to finish it to your maximum satisfaction and without distraction. I realize that there are some tasks that you’re never going to want to do. For such tasks, use rewards to motivate you to complete them. If this method does work out, then maybe you’ll be able to achieve everything you want in a short period of time. It worked for me.  

I realize that this blog post gave advice that wasn’t what you expected. I’m basically asking you to just do things you love, and if that’s hanging out with your friends, then maybe that’s all you do. But in such cases, it is imperative for us to remain mindful of the choices we make. At the end of the day, we’re working towards achieving the most we can in the most productive way we can, and not striking a balance can only do use more harm than good.