When I explain on my tours all of the activities I do on campus (pre-med, varsity athlete, Greek life, etc.), I always get the question “how do you do it all?” from eager parents—making sure that it’s possible to balance life and get that “eight hours of sleep” (apparently a college myth). While I may not get eight hours of sleep every night, it’s not an unreasonable goal. I’ve survived two years of college without needing to pull an all-nighter. The reason: the Academic Resource Center at Tufts.
My first two years at Tufts, I met with a time management/study strategy tutor once a week to help me achieve the balance between the legendary college triangle: sleep, good grades, and social life *pick two…*
In these 50-minute meetings, I worked to overcome test anxiety, learning how to study efficiently, and schedule out all my deadlines to get everything done—on time.This required asking myself “where is all the time going?!?” because there’s 24 hours per day and they have to go somewhere…
Together, we wrote out, in 30-minute intervals, where all my time was going every day and when I had gaps in my schedule to sleep, study, and have a social life. Now in my junior year, I still do the same process: writing out my schedule to answer the frequently asked tour question of “how do you do it all?”.
I want to show that being a STEM student and a varsity athlete can be done so I asked two of my best friends and sailing teammates to write out their weekly schedules for you all.
Here’s descriptions of all the different junior-year women featured and their academic + extracurricular activities on campus.
#1: My schedule is also attached. I’m a Biology major on a Pre-medical track with a minor in Art History. Besides being on the sailing team and blogging for Jumbotalk, I’m part of an all-gender inclusive greek organization called ATO and am a tour guide for Tufts Admissions.
#2:Elena is a double major in Mathematics and Biology. She is also a skipper on the varsity sailing team.
#3: Kelsey is an Electrical Engineer with an entrepreneurial leadership studies minor and a physics minor. Besides sailing, she is on the electric car team, is part of the Society of Women Engineers, co-president of Tufts Energy Group, and a member of Women Entrepreneurs at Tufts.
We all wanted also make the disclaimer that these are general schedules and have a high weekly variability—not all homework (“HW”) time is always used, social time not always consistent or scheduled in (note some blank spaces), and that time for dinner/showering/gym aren’t always explicitly shown.
Enjoy!!