Having a Life Will Make You Better at School

Where is the balance between the responsibility of classwork and the freedom of exploration? Is college an endless trade-off between enjoying your extracurricular life and thoroughly engaging with your classes? Actually, I think your education is best supported by having a life outside the classroom.

By Phillip Reeves

There are two easy, but very different, traps to fall into once you start at King’s. The first is trying to explore the entire city in your freshman year and, therefore, getting little school work done (Tip: the city is big, and you have four years to explore it). The second is making school your only priority, allowing yourself to invest in other activities only once every homework assignment is complete.

My freshman year you could catch me falling asleep in Hebrew Lit and Foundations of Politics after being out until 1 AM almost every night. Sophomore year was a harsh correction in the other direction, with me being well-prepared for class but not enjoying life since I deprioritized people. Where is the balance between the responsibility of classwork and the freedom of exploration? Is college an endless tradeoff between enjoying your life or thoroughly engaging with your classes? Actually, I think your education is best supported by having a life outside the classroom.

I’d be kidding myself to say my median between these two extremes is a gold standard or that I perfectly adhere to these guidelines. But nonetheless, here are three main principles that have finally helped me strike a middle ground.

1. Everything has its proper place.
What are these things that you know if they happen, you’ll be able to say, “Wow, this was a great day!”? Mine are productivity, exploration, and friends. If I start off the day knocking out a few important tasks, wander through the city to find new sights, and end the day in community, my day really couldn’t have been better.

Pick what these three things are for you and get proper amounts of them every single day. I call these tier-one priorities. Personally, church is in this tier as well since it helps sustain my other priorities in this tier. When you plan your week, put these three priorities on your planner before anything else. They don’t get moved for any reason.

Then, what are your tier-two priorities? I consider these the tasks that others require of you, and by “require” I mean problems would arise from you not being there. For me, this is class, work, and meetings. These on the calendar second and also don’t get moved for any reason, but tier-two priorities don’t get to replace tier-one priorities either.

Lastly, tier-three priorities are everything else–primarily, homework. Here is what’s great about homework being at this tier. Since the things you enjoy most have already been scheduled, you can do homework without feeling like you’re taking time away from exploring or friends. I call this guilt-free homework. You’ve given leisure its proper place; now give homework its proper place too.

2. Know when you’re free, not just when you’re busy.
This might seem a bit cryptic initially, but stick with me. Most of us use Google Calendar to keep track of almost everything in life. However, Google Calendar only shows you when you’re busy. In fact, days that you have nothing scheduled don’t show up, as if meeting-less days shouldn’t exist. This causes me anxiety as it makes me feel as if my whole life is scheduled and rigid.

But, if you use a physical planner and supplement it with Google Calendar, then you can see the balance in your schedule between free time and classes, events, etc. In free time, you can plan coffee hangouts, group study sessions, or times to sit by the river and just breathe. Schedule this down time. Giving yourself downtime won’t inherently hurt your academic performance. It’s when this free time is unscheduled and indefinite that it erodes your time for essential tasks.

3. Give homework a planned time and nothing more.
I’ve never responded well to professors giving me a book to read over a break. I don’t deal well with having so much time to complete an assignment. The longer I have to do an assignment, the greater the odds of me not finishing it. Yet, if I only have a week to read a 300 page book, the difficulty of reading it with everything else going on forced me to read at any possible chance. Nine times out of ten, I get the task done in the small window of time and not the large window.

Here’s a solution. Former King’s professor Dr. David Corbin gave me the best advice I’ve ever received for how to do school well without it monopolizing your life. Think of being a student as your job and give classes and homework set hours that you’re “on the clock”. When your “shift” ends, you won’t do any more homework regardless of what tasks you might have left. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done in three hours if you tell yourself that you only have three hours, as opposed to letting homework go until it’s done. Does this mean you might not get everything done? Probably not. I’ve found that fear of not finishing a task and the reward of guilt-free leisure time are surprisingly good motivators to be efficient.

The school-life balance is not a simple line to toe–it took me three years to get a good conception of what it looked life. As you’re seeking this balance, make sure you don’t go to extremes of too much exploration or too much homework. Try different balances of each. Even as you’re searching for the right one, you’ll see it’s a lot easier and enjoyable to keep up in class when you actually have a life.

Phillip Reeves is a Senior at The King’s College in NYC. He is studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics and is a member in the House of Ronald Reagan.