Everyone who will or has gone through school, especially those in higher education, will face academic stressors. Two of the major ones I face are time management and balancing my workload. Time management is one of my greatest concerns, as I currently juggle multiple responsibilities, such as being a student athlete where I need to make it practice every day from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. while also dropping off a few teammates who can’t drive so I am not home until 8 p.m., and fulfilling family obligations such as driving my older brother to work in the morning and my sister to school while also giving myself time to make it to my high school for my AM classes there. The added pressure from wanting and the expectation of succeeding in school leads to the feeling of being overwhelmed, especially when deadlines are getting closer. For example, near the end of last semester, I had multiple essays and larger assignments to do in both my high school and college courses, and when I did have time, the weight and depth of the assignments overwhelmed me and made it harder to focus on one sole assignment. Managing my time while balancing personal life and striving for academic excellence is not as simple as creating a to-do list; I face some personal issues that complicate this process, from the aforementioned responsibilities to needing to make sure I have gas to drive everywhere so I need to work, so that leaves even less time on the weekends, and with a rocky relationship with my mother who doesn’t like me, my time at home is usually very stressful even when I am working on assignments.
Moreover, workload is what mainly contributes to my time management issues. An excessive workload can feel overwhelming and make it hard for me to feel like I could succeed. As my coursework increases, the expectations of succeeding in school increase as well; thus, with the mixture of poor time management skills, it is easy for coursework to pile up on me if I make too many little mistakes, like forgetting about an assignment, sleeping when I should be productive, and simply not finding the time to do an assignment that’s due. The fear of falling behind and failing is one of the more major stressors, and when I do fall behind, completing that bulk load of work leads me to feel burnt out and not as happy with my results. This happened last semester after I had gotten a concussion, and it was even harder to work on assignments. Another challenge related to workload is that being a dual-enrolled student significantly limits my leisure time and opportunities for relaxation, given that I have school throughout the semesters where I do not have a full break. For example, this past spring break I had school at my high school, and during my high school spring break I still had classes at UWGB. Striving to balance the workload and effectively manage time as a student in both high school and college is challenging; with each misstep, the subsequent efforts to fix the imbalance become ever more arduous and stressful, like missing an important assignment in ELA and focusing my time on it, which leads to me not working on another assignment in my Spanish class, and the dominoes will keep falling until I somehow manage to get back on track.
source: Hornshaw, Marija. “Man Holding Planet Earth on His Shoulders.” Adobe Stock, 12 Mar. 2021, stock.adobe.com/images/man-holding-planet-earth-on-his-shoulders/57405555.