Moderation hard to reach in college

Everyone is familiar with the age-old idiom “everything in moderation.” In college, it turns out, keeping things in moderation is more difficult than I ever expected.

Here we have students who attend all their classes, do all their reading and homework and participate in the extra-curricular activities practically required to get into a top graduate school. The strict admissions at Harvard Law School, for example, can easily lead to this work-focused mentality. At Harvard Law School the top 75th percentile GPA is 3.95, and the average LSAT is 176. Only 11 percent of all applicants make it in. Instead of treating school like a full-time job, students often treat it as something they need to worry and stress about 24/7.

Students go in and out of classes running between their jobs, volunteering, participating in extracurricular activities and homework, but in return they are leaving little time to themselves.

Almost everyone knows at least a few friends who have this strictly work-focused mentality. One friend I know is either constantly studying in the room or the library. It literally seems that between eating and sleeping, students only work; how they manage to maintain this strict work ethic mystifies me.

Contrasting those students who constantly work are the students who party or socialize constantly. A 2007 study done by Columbia University indicates just how serious this problem is: 49 percent of students either abuse alcohol and prescription medicine or both. School, for some, seems to be an excuse to hang out with friends and relax.

How to find the balance between these two things is one of the hardest things to figure out while attending college. Our future (and our wallets) requires us to take our education seriously, while our sanity requires us to spend time with friends and have fun every now and then.

While working hard is important, working constantly during all of our waking hours is not an asset to our sanity or even our long-term happiness. John Mac, a first-year chemical engineering student, said his experience at UCLA has not exactly been relaxing.

“The amount of free time that I have is either excessive or non-existent,” Mac said.

Although we may like to think that we will be relieved of 16-hour work days when we finish college, if we do not take time for ourselves now to stop, relax and enjoy life, then we may never get that opportunity. If we look at the present as just a way to get a better job so that we can enjoy life in the future, then we risk throwing away some of the best times of our life and have the possibility that the twelve, fourteen or sixteen-hour work days will continue into forever.

On the flip side of the workaholics are the students who seem never to study and are either partying or hanging out with friends constantly. Here is another instance where moderation seems, for many, to be unreachable. With so many opportunities here, many students cannot bring themselves to sit down and study for any extended period of time. One student I know somehow has time to hang out with friends, go to parties and drink almost every night. As I study in the lounge on my floor, I often see this person stumbling in at two in the morning after what must have been an awesome night of partying.

Constantly putting off work can cause more stress than benefits. Often times, students go to parties, the beach or Hollywood, and find that school becomes a second thought. Instead of treating school like a job, many students miss lectures, and never treat college as a career investment.

With the educational and recreational opportunities available to us, it is difficult to find the perfect mix of work and play. On the side of universities and our future careers we are expected to work, work, work, leaving little time for ourselves, while on the flip side we are constantly yearning to go outside to have some fun. Although some do manage to find that perfect balance between work and play, we can see, either in ourselves or others, why moderation is so important.

If you have no life, then e-mail Feeney at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].