By Melanie HaidColumnist
This is it. The choice is yours, you have all the options in front of you. Grains, meats, vegetables, fruits – anything you can imagine is yours for the taking. This is your typical food-court dinner, one that you face every night as you make your dinner selections. You take your basics, a little bit of each part of the food pyramid, because that’s the most important part (obviously). You shift down the line, and just when you think your tray is full, there’s more. Yes, you’re really in the mood for all of those cookies, smoothies, pastries; how could you not be? So you take a few here and a few there, it’s not even that much, totally manageable.
As you sit down to eat dinner with your friends, you engage in the usual jubilant conversation about how interesting class was today, the who-did-what, drama left and right until you’re full. One problem – you’ve still got a lot on your plate.
That’s right: you’ve got a lot on your plate, and chances are, it’s too much. As a freshman, you’re not only getting used to the change in lifestyle, you also need to take your extracurriculars into consideration.
Most importantly, of course, are your classes but on the side? There’s way too much you want to be involved in, but not enough time in the day to do it all (I mean, if you want to get more than two hours of sleep).
The Hofstra Club Fair was a fair of opportunity: everywhere you looked, there was something you could do, important and impactful and ones that could keep you in shape and others that would look good on a resume and others that would help you write one and sororities and frats and coloring clubs and before you know it? You’ve signed up for a solid 10 to 15 different clubs.
When you go home and look at their meeting times, you notice three of them overlap, and your email inbox is completely full and suddenly it’s been two days into the semester and you feel like you can’t breathe.
Luckily, there’s a simple solution: focus on what you actually love. You have to cut back on what’s not necessary. And trust me, a lot is unnecessary.
The best way to do this is focus on what you actually want to do – not just next week but also with the rest of your life. If you want to pursue music, maybe you don’t need to try to squeeze club basketball in there, but rather start up a game with your friends – if you ever have time.
There are plenty of ways to be involved with things that don’t directly involve commitment, and sometimes, that’s in your best interest. Breathe and focus; you don’t have to commit to doing everything every Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. and rushing to finish your homework between classes. School comes first, and if you can hone into what’s in your best interest, you won’t feel too much like a pile of stress and extracurriculars. Well, as calm as you can feel in college, anyway.
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