Balancing Your Social Life, College Tips

College life is not all about studies and excelling in your academics. It is also a chapter in your lives where you have the opportunity to hone your social skills and acquire life experiences that you can later on use in your adult life.

However, life was not created to be made easy. There will be challenges along that way that would make it difficult for you. With a lot of things going on at school, work and your social life, having balance seems to be a luxury.

But in reality, balance is possible. Here are some tips to keep in mind to find balance in all aspects of your college life.

Create a Schedule

As boring and monotonous as it may seem, a schedule can keep you on track of the things that you need to do and complete on a daily basis. That’s why most college students, even adults use planners. You basically have no excuse on not having one.

You can keep a notebook or a premade planner for your schedule, use your Google Calendar, a phone app or stick a planner on the wall. It only takes a few minutes to write everything down to commit to tasks you need to accomplish in a day.

Creating a schedule also helps you identify areas where you are slacking off as well as areas where you need to prioritize.

Which tasks need your attention the most?

Which activities need to be done now?

What activities or events can be pushed through to be able to accommodate the more important ones?

You can juggle your schedule according to your needs and based on the demands that require your time and attention.

Set Goals

Your life, even as a college student, needs to lead somewhere. You need to achieve something at the end of the day, the week, the month or the semester.

Setting goals, together with time frames helps you get your mindset on track. Write down the goals that you want to achieve at the end of the semester. As you go through your school year, you will eventually add up more goals on your list. Having everything written down makes it easier to manage your time to achieve each one of them.

Writing down the things you need to do and want to achieve also makes the goal more official. It is harder to ignore something that is written down on paper. Posting your goals in areas where you can constantly see them can certainly help. Post them on your study table or on your bedroom wall to keep you motivated and on track.

Make Social Plans in Advance

As much as you would like to prioritize your studies, you should also take time to breathe and enjoy your young adult life.

You’ll be so busy once you graduate you won’t find time to enjoy the small celebrations. However, to keep balance between your studies and social life, you should plan your social activities ahead. Your studies still and should always come first.

Setting your social plans in advance gives you time to attend to all your other priorities beforehand. By doing so, you’ll be able to have enough time to finish your classes, deadlines and other class requirements first.

On top of this, you can easily adjust your work shifts as well as family responsibilities to attend to. You’ll get to fully enjoy your social plans if you know that you are done with other priorities. Imagine attending a concert with an essay still due for tomorrow. Be responsible and finish all your priorities before having fun.

Be Disciplined

Lastly, it takes discipline to be able to stick to these three practices. Having balance is a continuous process; an everyday challenge even adults face in their lives. At times you’ll find yourself in control. However, there will also be several moments where you would feel that you are drowned in responsibilities and tasks. That is how life really is. You just need to deal with it and use these techniques to make college life a bit easier for you to handle.