You’ve been up since 6 am catching up on readings. Class starts at eight; compulsory volunteer work begins at two; a gym session and a club meeting afterwards. Then, you have to put your cat to bed before nine. Maybe you’ll get to your assignments after the dishes and a quick sitcom on Netflix. Maybe.
You must feel like the class clown trying to juggle all your responsibilities. A work-life balance means different things to different people, but if you want to be the best version of yourself, you’ll need to find a way to do everything that matters to you without speeding to a crash.
This guide will help you troubleshoot what’s making your life feel lopsided and provide a series of suggestions for solving your dilemma.
You don’t have time to read the whole post? No surprises there. Read the summary here.
Table of Contents
Why is a work-life balance essential?
Balancing school, work, relationships, and hundreds of other responsibilities is a recipe for a stress salad. A healthy amount of stress boosts productivity and motivates you to get things done. However, for most of us, our daily stressors are overwhelming.
Constant stress can lead to a list of adverse effects, including but not limited to:
- A weakened immune system
- Emotional dysregulation, including irritability, anxiety and depression
- Poor attention and concentration
- Sleep disturbances and changes in appetite
- Decreased productivity
- Strained interpersonal relationships
Chronic work or academic stress can lead to burnout – a combination of extreme exhaustion, cynicism, and decreased effectiveness. While stress usually occurs periodically, burnout is long-standing and difficult to escape unless one identifies and manages it effectively.
Before you continue, read this post about recognising burnout and how to prevent and manage it.
Build a Personal Toolkit for a Work-Life Balance
Values are the fundamental rules by which you live your life. They’re what you deem important and subconsciously dictate your decisions. For example, you’re less likely to work late if you value quality time with family and friends. Conversely, if you prioritise your career, you’d easily sacrifice your social life.
When your values and actions are misaligned, you begin to feel uneasy. Internal conflict is exhausting and drains energy that could be used elsewhere. That is why the first exercise in building balance is to bring your values to the forefront of your awareness. Write them down, familiarise yourself with them, and make sure your behaviour corresponds.
To ensure your actions correspond to your values, set goals that transform you into the person of your dreams. To do this, you must understand yourself deeply. Here’s some extra reading to start the process:
- How to make Self-reflection the Key to a Better Life
- Set goals the right way
- Make your goals a reality
Next, let’s identify why you’re life is feeling unbalanced right now.
Troubleshooting: What Is Unbalancing Your Life?
All Work and No Play
The Problem: Heavy Academic Load
Whether you’re in a dense academic programme, stacking up courses to decorate your transcript, or re-taking a failed class or two, an overwhelming academic load is usually the number one culprit in an unbalanced student life.
Let’s be realistic. There is a near-zero chance that in your academic career, you’ll be able to attend every class, submit every assignment on time, do all your readings and have a healthy personal and social life. (Unless you’re the perfect student and superhuman. In which case, good for you. Keep going.)
Something will have to give. If you don’t efficiently arrange your calendar, your carefully built academic castle will collapse, causing catastrophe and many tears. Planning is essential.
The solution: Prioritisation & Time Management
Your course syllabi and a calendar or planner are your best friends. Review them to determine which subjects require more time and emotional resources. Write down your exam and assignment due dates. Check whether any of them overlap. That way, you can schedule additional time to complete them.
Another way to mitigate stress is to prioritise the most beneficial readings and exercises. Choose readings that will help with class participation or homework assignments. If your assigned reading is too long, find a shorter version, such as a video or audiobook. If you’re still overwhelmed, focus only on the content that will help you complete graded assignments.
For a more thorough look at planning and organising your academic calendar, read this article about creating an effective daily schedule to help iron out any planning problems.
Help! My Wallet is Eating Itself
The problem: Financial strain & part-time jobs
School is expensive, and for many students, a job may be the only thing keeping them from destitution. For others, a part-time job can be a productive break from the books, a way to meet new people and get a foothold in their careers.
That doesn’t diminish the time they take from your day or how draining they can be. A rare and ideal stress-buster would be a job with great colleagues, an ergonomic environment and reasonable wages – the type that only exists in daydreams. Instead, we have to introduce safeguards for our well-being in the workplace and, where possible, find alternative means to meet our material needs.
The solution: Fair work conditions, scholarships & grants
A healthy work environment
Uncertain expectations, a lack of autonomy, poor communication between colleagues, disrespect, and workplace bullying can all contribute to burnout. These factors are usually ingrained in institutional culture and difficult to escape, but self-advocacy and support among co-workers can go a long way.
Clear communication and community-mindedness are key. When managers’ decisions negatively impact you or the group, ask for clarity and transparency. Address grievances calmly and civilly when they occur. Encourage each other to take breaks. Learn to play on each other’s strengths and support each other’s weaknesses. You won’t change a rotten culture overnight, but small steps might make each day incrementally better.
However, if work is unbearable and your financial situation is the only thing keeping you there, it’s worth looking into other options.
Scholarships and grants
I’ll start by discussing funding opportunities for international students in the United Kingdom, as I am most familiar with those. The most prestigious and generally well-known scholarships include the GREAT Scholarships, Chevening Scholarships and Commonwealth Scholarships. Visit each page to familiarise yourself with their eligibility criteria and application deadlines.
Find A Masters has a great post about charities and trusts offering financial assistance to postgraduate students studying at UK universities. The eligibility criteria for most of these are far less stringent and can sometimes be surprising. You might qualify for one simply by being vegetarian!
If you aren’t based in the UK, don’t fret. The Anonymous Hope Fund is a non-profit organisation that empowers people from low—and middle-income countries. One way they do this is by providing research grants and scholarships to allow people to continue their education. Grantway is another valuable portal for finding scholarships, grants, and fellowships. It has a database of global funding opportunities. All you need to do is select your country and browse the options.
Lastly, Studyportals has been indispensable throughout my educational journey. Though not necessarily a funding portal, the site has comprehensive information on where to study, what degree to choose, and potential funding. It even offers its own scholarship.
Careers Don’t Build Themselves
The Problem: Your CV won’t embellish itself
These days, finding a job is like participating in The Hunger Games and convincing sponsors to keep you alive. You have to be impressive. You have to perform so the people holding your future in their hands keep looking. Hence, your lengthy list of societies, leadership positions, volunteer work, and awards.
And it can feel fulfilling, to an extent, until you find yourself on the kitchen floor crying from exhaustion and despair.
The Solution: Community building & Finding a mentor
Community building instead of networking
Some say cracking the job market is more about who you know than what you know. Yet, only a privileged few are born with the right connections. Most of us have to put ourselves out there in uncomfortable ways to get noticed.
Networking feels transactional, and the price is our dignity. It’s more about the superficial things you can do for each other than genuine connection. An alternative way to think about networking is community building. Instead of participating in activities to bulk up your CV and show recruiters what you think they want to see, choose projects that connect you to like-minded people. The key word is mutuality.
Be interested in others beyond what they can do for you. Give your time and resources to what matters, and you’ll see that energy returned. Ask for help when needed, and offer your help to others where you can.
Speaking of building communities, why not join ours?
Find a Mentor
A mentor is slightly ahead of you in your field – someone who is still in touch with the type of problems you’re facing but would have the experience and maturity to help you navigate them. They support your growth, motivate you, and point you towards beneficial connections and resources.
Rather than overwhelm yourself with programmes, societies and competitions, they can cut through the clutter and tell you where to invest your energy to move forward while preventing burnout.
If you have questions about where to find a mentor or want to connect to one of our team, drop us an email or visit our Instagram or Discord server.
Culture Shocks & Loneliness
The problem: You’re far from home
Moving away from home for school is tough. In most cases, it’s the first time you’re on your own, and you have to build a support system from scratch. You don’t know where anything is. It’s a mad dash between classes and admin offices. Everyone is trying to invite you out or entice you to sign up for their club. You still can’t be sure one of them isn’t a cult.
There is too much glamour and newness for you to know where to direct your energy. It takes months to settle in, and even then, you’re still experiencing things that are so out of sync with how you grew up that they leave you unmoored. Homesickness, language barriers and cultural differences can drain energy that could have been directed elsewhere.
The solution: Find your community
Loneliness may tempt you to assimilate into superficial social circles that leave you feeling displaced. However, “Finding your people” can be a game-changer for your emotional and social well-being.
Where do you find them? Unfortunately, you have to go outside if you want to make friends. If you want to stay connected to your roots, see if your university has a society for your diaspora. If you want to know wordsmiths and poets, go to poetry readings and book signings. Find out where people like you hang out and then visit those places.
Again, a mentor can be a massive help in helping you navigate campus bureaucracy, meet the right people and settle into your surroundings.
Sometimes, introversion wins no matter what. In that case, find your online community. There are tons of online book clubs, cinephile circles, e-game enthusiasts, etc. You’ll find your place.
Social Butterfly
The problem: You only live once
Now comes the opposite problem. University is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You want to make the most of it. I’ve read somewhere that the friends you make in university will last you a lifetime. It makes sense to invest in them. Even if that means clubbing on a school night and running late for an exam the next day. Sometimes, your next dinner party needs more time and attention than your thesis. Also, don’t forget to put it all on social media or else, in the eyes of the public, it never happened.
Yes, a work-life balance means different things to different people. Who can call it wrong if you’re content with how you spend your time? But if unending notifications and unannounced visits drain you, and you’ve even considered cloning yourself to make time for everyone who demands your attention, something might need to change.
The solution: Set boundaries
Unhealthy boundaries include struggling to say no, making uncomfortable compromises, or feeling overreliant on others’ opinions. These could make you feel like you’ve lost control over your life or identity. The lines between what others demand of you and your safety and comfort blur.
Boundaries are crucial in every relationship. Rather than creating distance between you and your loved ones, they foster mutual understanding and prevent you from unintentionally hurting each other. If you find your loved ones are testing the limits of your comfort – whether physical, emotional or financial – communicate how you feel and why. Set time aside to talk honestly about how they are overstepping and how it can be remedied.
Summary
A work-life balance can mean a variety of things. Your priorities will depend on your values and goals. As a student, you have to juggle your academic obligations, relationships, financial status and emotional well-being. Finding the proper equilibrium is an uneasy walk on a tightrope, even if you’ve clarified what’s important to you. This post is a way to troubleshoot your problems and find what’s tipping the scale.
Your unbalanced life could be due to:
- A heavy academic load
- A part-time job or financial strain
- Overexerting yourself with extracurricular activities
- Being isolated and far from home
- An overactive social life with few boundaries
High academic burdens require time management and prioritising which tasks are essential and which can be slacked on. If your part-time job drains you, the organisational culture probably needs to change. If that isn’t possible, look at some of the grants and scholarships recommended in this article as an alternative way to fund your studies.
You might have taken on too many extracurriculars to bulk up your CV for the gruelling job market. Instead, try to connect with a community of people who share your goals and find a mentor. They can help you clarify what’s important in your career development and connect you to the relevant resources.
If your social life is at one of two extremes, consider whether self-isolating because of unfamiliarity or loneliness keeps you away from meaningful connections. On the other hand, if you are overwhelmed by social obligations, try to set firm boundaries to refocus your time and emotional resources.
Conclusion
Life is easily overwhelming. It’s no wonder many students struggle to manage all their obligations. However, a work-life balance is crucial in maintaining physical and mental health. Overexerting yourself in one aspect of your life inevitably leads to neglecting another.
That’s why a good work-life balance must be firmly based on one’s values, adequate planning, and the use of social/community resources.
Hopefully, this article has helped you troubleshoot some of your problem areas. If you have any insights or additions, feel free to leave them in the comments.