College is the best four years of your life, right? Well, maybe not.
The stress of college is only getting heavier and heavier as students continuously add more and more activities to their schedules. Whether it be internships, where so many students will fight for big named companies with only a few spots open, extracurriculars, sports or clubs; they all add up to the stress.
Extracurriculars are great in so many ways: friend making, de-stressing, a nice break from your schedule, and a great resume builder, but it can be very stressful too. With extracurriculars, we are all trying to get high ranking positions because we love what we do, but it also looks great to future employers to say you managed a club, or edited published work, or organized events for large audiences.
With internships, big named companies go a long way, especially when you already want a job somewhere in that company. It’s a foot in the door, it’s networking. It’s important.
But that’s the thing…students are too worried about building the perfect resume instead of remembering to make this the best four years of their lives.
Students are constantly searching for a way to stand out, to brand themselves, and to find ways to guarantee they land their dream job. Plus, we are all juggling a full course load. We are not reminding ourselves to go hang out with friends or family, to go out and see a movie or a concert, to take an afternoon or morning off and just do something like read a book, sleep in, or talk a walk.
As students, we are so focused on the future, and for some of us, it is far away. For others, it is too close for comfort. However, no matter how far away or how close it is, taking a moment to just breathe, an hour to scroll through social media, a day to just relax once and a while is so important too. Being burnt out does not help anyone, least of all you.
All of us pay a lot of money to attend college; remember to have fun too. Taking one afternoon off won’t kill you, even if it feels like it. And if you’re like me, you’ll feel guilty about it, but you have to know it’s worth it too. Then, after your break, you go back to work and you keep reaching toward that perfect resume, but learning to have fun and not be so career driven all the time goes a long way too.