Balancing Academics and Social Life

Staying disciplined without missing the moments

A social and academic balance is a necessity while being in school. In my opinion, failure to balance can lead to burnout or a reduction in academic production. We are young, you are supposed to have some fun. Your high school and college years are prime times to make core memories. Especially in college you have the freedom to live your life as you please.

Circling back to the balance, however, you do have academic responsibilities too. Within this blog I will discuss how I am able to maintain a healthy balance that allows me to thrive academically and socially. 

A big thing for me is always ensuring that my brain does not burn out. I accomplish this through having “brain on” and “brain off” time. “Brain on” time is where I focus on academics or tasks that I must complete. “Brain off” time is the opposite where it is anything nonacademic or task purposed. For the most part these last full days, besides Thursdays and Fridays, unless my workload gets hectic where I may start the day with my brain on and then transition to brain off time.

Schedule wise there have not been many weeks where my brain is not on from Monday through Wednesday. Starting the week off strong is important to me and I definitely like to get ahead of stuff so I can have more brain off time on the weekend. Thursdays are a bit of transition day where I get through my classes and then usually shut off my brain. This is done to give my brain a break after three days of academic rigor. It may sound a bit strange to some people, but it certainly goes a long way in stress and pressure recovery. I usually hang out with friends on Thursday night. 

Friday the brain is back on where I try to finish a decent portion of my work. This is incredibly helpful for the weekend so I can wind down a bit while reducing Sunday’s academic pressure before the start of the next week. Once completed my brain goes off until Sunday and I usually hang out with friends at night. Often times Friday is when there’s stuff going on around Miami so I like to go out and about. 

Saturday is usually a full brain off day. This works very well for me. Focusing on academics each day for an entire week is a lot. Taking a step back and relaxing for a day does wonders in brain recovery for me. I will usually go somewhere or do something substantial that is non-academic. I have definitely made core memories on Saturdays. It is a day where I am usually quite stress free and have no worries. 

Transitioning to Sunday my brain will turn back on. With portions of the work done on Friday, Sunday is not usually an extensive academic day unless my workload is a ton. I use this day to complete anything that is left and also prepare for the week coming up. It is definitely a great opportunity to ensure the following week starts off on the right foot. This is also when I clean and do laundry. It is basically a reset day after academics are done.

 
All in all, that is the full week recap of my brain and how I am able to balance social and academics. It is always important to handle stress in your brain. There’s no better way to do that than taking a step back and making core memories with your friends. There will always be bumps in the road but finding balance for yourself is crucial. It took me some time, but I found my balance and am thriving both academically and socially. I hope this can help you too.