Maintaining Your Work-Life Balance as an Honors Student

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In Commonwealth Honors College (CHC), we often want and need to accomplish a lot on the professional, academic, and even personal level during our short time at UMass Amherst.

In this blog, I aim to recognize the significance of mental health and the prevalent issue of overworking within the Honors College. By sharing a bit about my journey so far in CHC, and by highlighting key resources that UMass and the college have to offer to facilitate academic and professional success, I hope that I can help other students that may be balancing academic excellence and mental health!

Not unlike many students at UMass and in CHC, I came into my first semester with hopes to graduate early for financial reasons and to save time — I was in a bit of a frenzy to complete as many credits and fulfill as many requirements as possible.

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I remember my academic advisor told me when I was registering for my very first classes that I should slow down and only take 15 credits or maybe less. He explained that I needed time to get used to college life before taking on a heavy academic load.

However, I did not heed his advice, and took on 19 credits instead. I was just in too much of a rush. This pattern would continue every semester: first 19, then 18, then 19, then 17, then 20!

In retrospect, having to petition my academic dean to allow myself to take on more credits over the credit limit was a bit of a wakeup call. While these heavy academic loads did not plunge my grades by any means, I was beginning to realize that I was unintentionally sacrificing physical and mental health for academic overachievement — and I had normalized it!

Reaching out to my advisors within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and at CHC really helped me put things into perspective. They mentioned that college is not a sprint, but a marathon. They emphasized that college and the curriculum is designed on purpose for a four-year experience, not a three-year one.

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Just hearing from someone that has experience with navigating academic requirements that I logically did not need to take on a lot of classes every semester was helpful in itself.

If you think you may be in the same position that I was in before, here’s a few tips:

• Ask yourself: Do I have enough time for myself? Am I leaving enough time for exercise, socializing, or hobbies?
• Are your grades or quality of your work suffering? Spreading your bandwidth too wide can sometimes mean that things fall between the cracks. Check to make sure that you have enough energy to put your best foot forward.
• Reach out to your advisors in  your major and CHC regularly, at least once a semester at the minimum, to see how you’re looking with your academic progress. If you’re well ahead, your advising team can help you decide how taking one or two less classes would impact you. The difference may shock you!

It can be really enticing to just graduate already. I was considering dropping one of my majors to shave off requirements so I can graduate early at one point. However, I realized that I would miss out on great opportunities and may come to regret it in the future if I skipped one of the most integral experiences of my academic career.

Honors Advising was really helpful for me to make this realization, they are people that are there to support you! Drop into their office hours, they hold them every day Monday through Friday.

Don’t fall into the trap of overworking yourself! Your future self will thank you for it.