I Can’t Do It All

I am the type of the person who in high school was involved in a ton of things from athletics to academics. Coming into university I saw so many more things I could participate in. With the hundreds of clubs advertised during first week, there were lots of things that I really wanted to do. I joined things like debate club, a volunteer organization, badminton club as well as some academic clubs.

All of these clubs allowed me to get involved in some issues that I felt passionate about. I also met a lot of really cool people I still talk to sometimes -- even occasionally with my school work. Perhaps, I thought, I was making connections which just might pay off some time in the future. Some of our TA's have told us about this kind of connection being useful to them later on: introductions, advice on what to say in a letter or interview with a prof or an employer, or occasionally, just whispered into the ear of an influential person, a complimentary few words.

Some of my friends regret not getting out more and being more involved. They look back at the first year and only remember going to class and partying. Not exactly something to write home about, in my opinion.

But soon I had a problem. I realized that there just weren't enough hours in the day for me to do everything. Work for my classes was beginning to suffer as well. In addition, the lack of time for myself just wasn't there, and I was missing it badly -- things like reading a magazine article, hanging out with friends for no particular reason. I know myself too well: that's a fix I need on a regular basis, and if I don't get it I start having withdrawal symptoms. Of course, the first thing to go had been my sleep, because there were too many things that had to be done before the next day. Worse, I became so burnt out that for the first time in my life even when I did go to bed I wasn't sleeping well; this made me tired in class which added more stress, because I couldn’t focus. It was a downhill spiral.

In the end, for my own sanity, I had to compromise. Sadly, some things had to go, in favour of the ones I wanted to truly put in the time for. This meant I dropped two of the clubs I'd joined, which immediately meant more sleep for me; that's what I needed the most. There's something called "sleep deficit", which took me several early nights to get over.

Now, near the end of my first year, I have learned that it is possible to be involved in the many things that I want to do. But I have to be sure that first, I can actually do them and second, given the 24 hours we have in a day, they are the things I want to do the most. So I shall see and hopefully it will work out.