balance – Page 23 – Life @ U of T

The Magic of Drop-In Fitness Classes

As a U of T student, we have access to numerous fantastic resources, scholarships, and world-famous libraries. However, personally, my favourite perk of being at U of T is our Hart House membership, or generally, our access to daily free drop-in fitness classes.…

A picture of the app, Forest: there's a timer set to thirty minutes and a count down of thirty minutes happening around a picture of a pine tree

Adventures in Time Management: Finding Time For My Career

One of my goals this year—as a Career Centre blogger and as an undergraduate student—is to focus more on my career through exploring different jobs, networking, and building my skills and resume. However, as midterms and essays and extracurricular activities started to pile up during October, I realized I wasn’t contributing as much time to developing my career as I would like. In university, I think it’s just as important to strengthen your employability as it is to get an education. An undergraduate degree is usually just four years. After that, you’re in the work force for most of your adult life. Thinking about this partly motivates me even more to prepare for life after graduation, and partly sends me into a panic. Since October was not as balanced as I would have liked, I decided to try out Forest, a productivity and time management app. It didn’t go quite as well as I thought it would, but it did yield some career insights.

The time I slept through all the fun holidays

My entire blog post can be summed up into this:

*makes elaborate plans for Halloween*

*realizes Diwali falls on the same weekend*

*has to finish all assignments before that weekend*

*is overwhelmed with stress and feels guilty for cancelling plans with friends*

*cancels everything anyway and sleeps through Halloween*

Balancing School and Self-Care (Part Two)

There are many ways to get through midterm season: all-nighters, coffee, 8 hour long study sessions the day before an exam. I have attempted all of these at some point over the past few years. However, personally, my body absolutely…

How do they do it? Juggling academics and athletics

As a campus tour guide, I receive a lot of questions surrounding student life and whether a school-life balance is something one can expect to manage at the renowned U of T. Seeing everyone’s defeated, exhausted expressions on campus, I thought it’d be a good time to share some of my tips and tricks of the trade that have helped me to juggle three jobs, three sports and a full-time course load.

A drawing of a woman with many outstretched hands to juggle different life responsibilities. — Disclaimer: I don't usually look quite so glamorous while doing it.
Source: yummymummyfitness.com.au

1. Sometimes you need to downsize. Sure, juggling five balls looks really cool but if you’re exhausted and you’re about to see them all fall to the floor, consider whether you might be able to take one out of the equation. I know it’s hard, we’re very ambitious students and we prefer to be able to persevere and to succeed without giving anything up, but I encourage everyone to critically evaluate whether the cost is worth what you’re gaining.

Balancing School and Self-Care (Part One)

The most difficult part of my university experience so far has been learning how to balance. Every September, I am thrown off my feet by my new schedule, and just when I feel like I have a routine set up, midterms hit. As the type of person who insists on combing through every single reading, I often find myself overwhelmed by schoolwork and unsure how to fit in any much-needed self-care activities. However, spending 8-hour blocks on studying or writing has never worked for me either. I lose focus after a few hours at most, and often end the day cranky and tense from so much studying at once. Last winter semester, during a particularly difficult academic period, I went to see my college's learning strategist for help. Here are some memorable tips that I learned from her, as well as some personal ones that work for me.

"Midterms" carved into pumpkin — Source: Rusaba Alam

Painting of an umbrella (representing and labelled as "self-care") in the rain.

Staying on Track with Your Self-Care

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I think maintaining the self-discipline to actually keep yourself well, both mentally and physically, can be hard at times. Knowing about and trying out different self-care strategies is great, but sticking to them can be another thing. As we’re writing all about self-care this week, I started thinking about why some of the self-care activities and strategies I’ve experimented with haven’t stuck while others have…

In Which Sargam Seeks Help!

For Self-Care week, I want to share an experience that literally changed the course of my entire university career and perhaps, changed how I will live my life from now on. Okay, yeah, I’m overly dramatic usually but I’m not exaggerating here, promise. Brace yourselves.

a box of assorted cookies — PS. A lot of my self-care tips include food, in one way or another.

De-stressing Through TV Shows and Movies

October is HealthyU month at U of T, an entire month dedicated to celebrating physical and mental health! October 17-21 (starting today!) is Self-Care week, which promotes ways to take care of yourself physically and mentally as well as how to de-stress. Okay, I'll be the first to admit that when I initially thought about self-care, I wondered, "Why do I have to be concerned with how I'm doing?" Well, after some careful consideration, I realized that if I don't care for myself, I get burnt out...easily. I can't always be on the go, go, go (although I do enjoy that) because otherwise all aspects of my life: social, academic, and personal would suffer. My not-so-secret way (according my friends and family) to de-stress from the enormous amount of midterms I have coming up all in the same week (scary) is to watch some good TV shows and movies. But first, let me explain the source of my stress. I prefer to study in 2 to 3 hour blocks, even though concentrating for that long can sometimes be difficult. Finding time to study for that long can also be difficult, especially with my other commitments. Sometimes I feel stressed out because I feel like I haven't studied enough. However, at the end of my long studying sessions, I mostly feel like I've just come out of a deep slumber, blinking rapidly and looking around wondering "Where am I?"

Picture of Robarts Library — Robarts in the Winter: a building that pulls me in for many hours of studying

My Dates with Myself

I'm think I am an introvert, I probably always have been. I try not to shy away from it anymore because I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Also, I think a lot of people misunderstand what introversion means. It can mean "a shy person" but I like to think that the psychological definition of introversion is much more relevant:

"a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings"

This makes a lot more sense to me; I'm not a quite person because I have nothing to say or I'm scared to say it but more so because I'm taking everyone's inputs in and assessing my own thoughts first. I'm the kind of person who doesn't need to have other people around in order to feel happy, energized or active. I'm perfectly content spending a weekend with myself, just going about daily life and reading a book or two (or 10). I like listening to my music and staring into space (or simply staring into space).

View of Huron Street from Sid Smith Lounge — Chilling in the Sid Smith Lounge and "people-watching" (a fancy term for staring into space)

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