Balancing school and friendships may seem easy on the surface. However, it gets challenging as school becomes more demanding and our friends’ needs evolve. It is normal to feel like you give more time to one than the other. But the best balance can be obtained by planning your time.
Sometimes we find ourselves giving away our social or academic away due to poor timing and planning. Your social and academic lives are equally important, and thus, you should find a way to allocate an equal amount of time for all of them. Being distracted by friends can affect your studies, while limiting your asocial life can cause loneliness and burnout. So here’re tips to help you find this balance.
Carry Out Joint Studies
Friends not only offer emotional support, but also they can be instrumental in helping us achieve our goals. Therefore, it is essential to keep them close. One of the best ways to keep your friends closer is by creating a study group or conducting joint studies. In addition, you can organize library days, form a book club or hold group discussions.
Having your friends as your study partners will give you the motivation n to study, and you will still keep them close and spend more time together. You can also help each other out with assignments to reduce the need for seeking paper services.
Create Schedule
Creating a schedule helps you keep up with some aspects of your life or activities that you could have otherwise ignored due to lack of time. When creating your schedule, ensure you spare some time for your social life. Then, you can use the break in the schedule to find your friends and bond with them.
Once you plan your schedule, you will not feel like your social life is eating into your academic time since every activity will be spelled out. Sometimes we might feel guilty hanging out with friends while we have pending assignments. However, learning how to stick to your schedule would be best.
Create Healthy Friendships
Overbearing friendships can cause stress and anxiety since you constantly feel pushed to do things you do not want. So ensure you find friends who understand and support you. For example, a good friend will not feel bad when you take a rain check on a meet-up to complete a pending assignment. A healthy friendship involves helping each other in and out of school and understanding each other’s limits. So if you feel your friends are overbearing, it is time to create new connections.
Join a Club
Joining a club helps you broaden your social circle with like-minded individuals. Finding a club that carries out activities you love will help you meet people with similar passions, and it can be easy to relate. For example, joining a math club will help you sharpen your mathematical skills as you make friends and socialize. In addition, school clubs often work around a fixed schedule, which will help you easily fix it in your planner.
Seek Professional Advice From an Academic Advisor
Sometimes finding the balance can be overwhelming, especially if you are under pressure from school. If you notice that you are struggling, ask for help from a professional academic counselor. They will help develop a suitable schedule that will favor your social and academic life.
Failing to find a balance will be detrimental to the different parts of your life. Staying in school without friends can sometimes cause loneliness and depression, and sometimes giving too much time to friendships can derail your studies, thus the need to find a balance.
Self-Discipline
Through self-discipline, one can prioritize without being carried away. Also, self-discipline means working within your limits so that you do not give in too much to friendships or focus on studies that you forget about the social aspect. Therefore, it will be much easier to take charge of your relationships and studies simultaneously.
Take-Home Point
Students often find it difficult to incorporate studies and entertainment into their schedules. It often feels like socializing hurts academics, and focusing on studies means limited to no socializing time. However, to eliminate such sentiments, it is essential to allocate time for everything.
Friends play a vital role in helping us thrive academically and socially. Thus, as much as you may want to focus on your studies, it is also essential to keep your friends close. Creating healthy bonds where you support and understand each other is vital to balance social and academic life.
