Dear Stretched-Thin Seniors,
Is anyone else at the point in the semester where they feel like they need an extra 10 hours in the day to get everything done? Okay, cool. I’m glad it is not just me who feels this way.
I, as well as many of you, were told that senior year is the time to say yes to everything. Saying yes to catching up with people from your freshman year hall, saying yes to every Senior Pub Series event and saying yes to every opportunity to go out on the Main Line.
We also are at the point in the semester where tests are beginning, and every professor has decided to assign six essays and seven group projects on top of the never-ending pages of reading and practice problems. Mixing these assignments with the expectation of obtaining the perfect social life has proven to be exhausting and frankly, impossible.
My entire life I have heard the phrase work-life balance. And until now, I thought I had perfected it. Study and work hard during the week to be able to have fun and go out on the weekends. So, what changed? Well, we did.
Although normal throughout college to go out on weekdays, senior year has proven to extend that invitation into every night. Opportunities to go out with friends seem never ending, with the justification being: “When else will we have this chance?”
To an extent, I agree. When else other than during senior year can you justify a tower from the Grog Grill on a Sunday night, or going to Kelly’s Taproom on a Tuesday? You cannot miss going to a formal with a friend, because there are only so many more times you will be at Platform Thirty.
As hard as it is, it is critical to remember that while these social scenes are exciting and new, the reason we have all these lasts as seniors is because we are students as well. Which is where the art of a work-life balance comes into play.
There are a few ways to begin approaching this ideal. For starters, while it may be fun to say yes to everything, it is also okay to know when you need to say no. We know ourselves best, and while there is a sense of fear of missing out on events, we have to put the wellbeing of ourselves first.
It is also important to continue to care about school. We are in the home stretch, but that does not mean we do not have to continue to push ourselves to achieve great things. For many, this can include senior capstone projects, research courses, semester long internships and other courses that will continue to influence our future endeavors.
There is also balance within our courses. One of the benefits to senior year is there is likely more flexibility to take courses that interest us or connect to our lives outside of the classroom, thus helping us to initiate a work-life balance. Whether it be taking those courses within your major that you have been eyeing since freshman year or taking an acting class because you may never have the chance to again, these courses help us discover aspects of ourselves we may not get to see otherwise.
Senior year is meant to be fun, it is meant to be nostalgic, and it is meant to be a year we will always cherish and remember. It is also the year that is meant to set us up for success, meant to push us to achieve new goals and meant to encourage us to dig deeper into understanding who we are and who we are meant to be, both inside and outside of the classroom.
It is a difficult balance, and by no means have I or others perfected it. It is a learning curve about finding the work-life harmony that works best for you as an individual. Do not hold yourself back in either aspect of senior year. Allow yourself to enjoy the hard work you have put in throughout your Villanova career and make the most of the last few months we have left here on campus.
With love always,
Lauren
