Balancing school, work and a social life? Here are some tips for surviving college.

These days the majority of students find themselves trying to juggle the responsibility of being not only full-time students but also part-time workers to provide for themselves. On top of all of that, we are expected to and want to experience the social aspect of college too.  It may seem absolutly impossible to be in so many places at one time, which is why I wanted to share just a few of the things, i feel keep my cool, calm, and collected throughout my hectic weeks.

Today, I wanted to share a few things I do throughout the weeks to avoid getting burnt out quickly.

One of the main things I do to help prepare for my week is resetting. I know everybody says “Sunday reset,” but as someone who works every Saturday and Sunday, I find it better to do my reset on Monday. The key part of my weekly reset is to clean my room. Getting all of the laundry done, making your bed, and putting everything back where it belongs makes me feel so much more peaceful. I know everyone has different schedules and my process may not fit yours, but as humans, we need to find a few hours in each day to breathe.  Mondays usually include a coffee run for me as well. Some of my favorite coffee spots in San Marcos are:

• Joe’s Coffee House
• Summer Moon
• Mochas ad Javas
• Lampost

Another thing I find beneficial for preventing burn out is taking a few hours in the gym each week. I find starting my day with a run or some yoga just helps to kickstart my day. Working out is a very good stress relief and it is something er csn do absolutly anywhere. No one needs a state of the art gym to get active everyday. Youtuube is filled witht imed workouts that do not require any equipament and can be done from the comfort of your bed room floor. Getting outside and going for a nice 30 minute to hour long walk is also very relaxing in the morning. If you live in an apartment complex, you may have acces to a gym. Utilizing the gyms some of these complexs have is so covienient,

Another way to unwind from your day is to treat yourself to a little jight time spa routine. Having a relaxing end- of- day skin care routine can be soemthing you look forward to every night. This gives you a few minutes of reserved time at the end of your day to papmper yousefl, even if it is only for a couple of minutes.

Another thing I try to do two or three times a week is cook myself dinner. No, there is not need to go all out and cook yourself a five star meal, but someting as simple as a pre made cesar salad from H-E-B can be a great dinner. My roomates and I find outselves making quick and easy chicken cesear salads multiple times a week by air- frying chicken nuggets and chopping them up over a ceaser salad.

Hanging out with the people you like is super important as a college kid. You have to find a few hours during the week to unwind and just enjoy some conversation with your friends. If you are close with your roommates, a roommate movie nigh could be just what you are your friends need. You can call a few friends and just take a few hours to talk and catch up. My roommates and I find ourselves curling up on the couch at least once a day. Somedays we watch movies and chat, and other days we just catch up for a few minutes in between the next obligation we are headed to. Having some time to forget about the crazy dayto day of college is absolutly 100% necesary to making it through college. As students, I think we find outselves so caught up in due dates, and chapter quizzes that we forget we are also here to have a little bit of fun. Now, fun within limits of course. Getting stuck in the whirlwind of going out is also a very serious problem. You don’t want to over do it so much it messes with your grades, but you need to enough so you can stop worrying about all of the things you need to do weighing on you.

I know the words unwind and relax were heavily used today but we need to understand that these are things we need to do to keep out mental health afloat. College causes so much anxiety these days you truly owe it to yourself.

I hope that these few tips I was able to give you can help you all to release some stress, and remmeber that at the end of the day, you are doing your absolute best and that is all that matters.