Throughout high school, I remember a popular dilemma my friends and I faced: choosing between having a social life, getting enough sleep, and obtaining good grades. The joke was that it was only possible to choose two of the three options.  However, though the problem resonated with us back then, college adds another dimension of options to choose from and makes you realize that college life is much more complicated. This was specifically brought up in my conversation with a good CMC friend, Julie Kim, over dinner. What struck me about our conversation is the similarity in our learned lessons, despite having different experiences throughout college. More specifically, we talked about how our four years at CMC, including our semester of study abroad, taught us to understand how to best balance everything.

What is the best way to divide your time between academics, work, friendships, family, social events, working out, extracurriculars, and sleep? The short answer is there is none. Coming into college, it is hard to learn that there are limitations of time when opportunities are nearly endless. Attending an exciting social event, studying for a difficult midterm, and applying for a potential summer internship all add value to your college career. However, though all these activities add value, no one said anything about having the time to do it all (and do it well). Time-management and prioritizing become some of the best lessons learned from college. Both Julie and I learned to stop trying to “do it all” and instead prioritize time for the activities demand the most attention first and then allocate the rest of our time to the other activities.