CASSANDRA NEHF
Staff Writer
Senior Scott Smith started out the spring semester on a high. He landed an internship at Dreamworks Animation Studios and just got engaged to his girlfriend, Sarai Small. However, all of this combined with his other responsibilities of school, work and serving as an SLA, difficulties arose. The hours quickly added up.
“I got sick after the second week of working,” Smith said. “No one else was sick at the time. It was just being exhausted and not having enough sleep, eating poorly and always being on the run. The worrying, just that kind of lifestyle, I feel like it was what made me sick.”
While taking a sick day and actually having time to study and get the work done that he needed to do, Smith had a revelation: “I was like ‘Wow. This is what I want my senior year to be like. This is how it’s supposed to be, to have enough time to do what I need to do,’” he said.
Smith decided to quit his internship.
Ask most any student on campus, and they’ll tell you they are busy. With Songfest season here, which requires participating students to attend practices almost every night of the week, the strain is more apparent than ever. Many students take it too far, and end up compromising mental and physical health, as well as the success of the very endeavors they are striving to juggle. It’s a common plight.
“I’m amazed at how much students do apart from their scholarship,” says Great Books professor, Dr. Paul Contino. He reads off the activities in which his students are involved in. Some are nannies. Some are athletes. Some Jumpstart team leaders or members of theater. “I think students are busier now than when I was in college, busier than ever before.”
Freshman Ryan MacGregor ticks off his commitments. On top of 18 units, he is in Jumpstart, SGA, Concert Choir, cast in the upcoming opera, “The Crucible,” and on weekends, he works at Calamigo’s Ranch.
“The only time I have free time is in between classes, an hour here and an hour there,” he said. “And that might be about five hours a week total I have free.”
When hiring students, Volunteer Center Coordinator Ashley Nolan is careful to ask about other commitments and activities. Some still slip through the cracks.
“I’ve had some students that retreat. They don’t talk about it, they don’t come in for their office hours or come to meetings. There are other students that are very extroverted, and they’ll just walk into my office and break down, and say I’m over-committed and too stressed out, I’m overwhelmed.”
The problem is widespread, and when you look at how tired these students are, the question of why students do this to themselves rises.
“There are a number of students who do as much as they can and I don’t know if they recognize what they are doing to themselves,” said David Christy, a staff member at the Pepperdine Counseling Center. “They want to be involved in everything.”
Smith agreed: “I think it was because I only saw it in terms of scheduling,” he said. “I was just seeing, ‘Oh, I have free time here, I could work during that,’ and I never saw it as taxing emotionally. I had time for it, but its not the time that matters, it’s the energy.”
For incoming freshmen, this can be especially problematic.
“I think college is a breeding ground for over-committed students in a way,” Nolan said. “When you arrive as a freshman, what do we tell you? Get involved, find your place, try things out, and from there it just progresses.”
MacGregor’s situation illustrates this perfectly.
“At the beginning of the year, I wanted to make lots of friends,” he explains. “I took on all these things, and I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into until it all started conflicting.”
For some students, it is just a case of wanting to do more than they can handle. But for some, there are deeper issues. Strong emotional reasons sometimes underlie the surface problem of over-commitment. Smith pinpoints fear as a motivating factor.
“We convince ourselves that we need to do all these things,” he says.
“They are afraid of what might happen if they don’t and they can’t allow themselves to see a life without it. We are testing our ability to take on so much stuff.”
What, then, is an over-committed student to do? Many are just barely keeping themselves together. The first step is prioritizing. Often times, that means cutting something out.
“We’re fallible, limited human beings,” Contino said, “so we can’t be in two places at once and we can’t get by without sleep. Every mature person has to sometimes ask herself or himself, ‘Do I have to cut back on some things?’ and to say ‘No’ to some things so I can say ‘Yes’ to other things.”
Smith did just that in choosing to leave his internship.
“What was taking the most amount of time?” he asked himself. “That was the internship. What was I not getting paid for? Internship. What was keeping me from doing other things? Internship. It was my newest commitment. That helped me realize I had taken on too much. I had crossed the line.”
An issue that some students face is they simply can’t find an activity to drop.
“If there are things you can’t cut out without falling back on a responsibility or a commitment you made, I think you persevere for that semester and make it through,” Nolan said.
Even after cutting activities from students’ schedules, there may still be a lot left. It is important to manage that through organization.
“Organization is huge. I write down everything. Like I have notes all over my desk. Do this, do that, what time is this, what time is that. I’m looking at the calendar constantly. And then when I have things conflict I have to go and confront them and make arrangements so I can miss this or miss that and then I have to choose what’s more important.”
Having a system to keep track of current demands, stress, and anxiety may help. Students who don’t use calendars have typically have a myriad of thoughts which makes it easier to forget minor details.
In the midst of all this planning, it is important to take care of the matters of health. Contino said he often sees students who are not.
“I get concerned when I see students not taking care of their bodies,” he says. “You have to eat right. You have to sleep. You can’t get by without sleep all the time. There’s a reason why we’re built that we need eight hours of sleep.”
“Sometimes I think we focus too much on our responsibilities,” says Nolan. “When we get stressed out, we really need to look at our schedule and ask, am I getting rest, do I have time to sit down and eat at a table. Do I have time, even if its only 20 minutes, to talk with a friend. I think if you try to infuse those healthy aspects into your day it really helps with trying to cope in the long term.”
Beyond solving the immediate problem of having too much to do, students should work on the mental processes behind the problem. Keeping a healthy attitude can help with perspective and balance.
Smith’s dad reminded him that he knew his capabilities and he is the one who can ultimately determine whether he is up for the task.
Ultimately, the trick is striking a balance between responsibility and personal well-being.
03-01-2007