{"id":17623,"date":"2013-08-07T10:43:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T14:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=17623"},"modified":"2014-09-09T09:41:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T13:41:03","slug":"the-juggling-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2013\/08\/07\/the-juggling-act\/","title":{"rendered":"The Juggling Act"},"content":{"rendered":"The concept of \u201cliving a balanced life\u201d has always been such an elusive one for me.\r\n\r\nGrowing up, I maintained a relatively erratic lifestyle, and I carried that into my first year of U of T. I\u2019d sleep 3 hours one night, and crash for 15 hours another (no doubt after I had stayed up for at least 36 hours cramming for a paper).\u00a0 I would go two days without a proper, substantial meal one week, or spend 4 hours in the cafeteria every meal, going back for fourths, and sometimes even fifths. One weekend I\u2019d be out with my friends three nights in a row, but the next I\u2019d neglect to do my laundry for fear that I\u2019d waste precious \u201cstudying\u201d time by having to fold clothes instead.\r\n\r\nThe worst of it was that I thought I had this lifestyle down to a carefully calculated system. To me, the \u201cbalance\u201d I found was within two extremes, wrongfully thinking they\u2019d somehow cancel each other out. Needless to say, everything started to take its toll on me \u2013 I started to get more severe mood swings, I started crashing for longer periods, and I frequently began to fall sick at least every two weeks.\r\n\r\n
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Source: http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/tabathaleggett\/the-stages-of-pulling-an-all-nighter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

How I ended up feeling most days.<\/em><\/p>\r\nSecond year came around and many of my habits remained the same, but I noticed that subtle changes helped drastically improve certain aspects of my life.\r\n\r\nI joined intramural volleyball again, but this time, I made it a point to attend practices and games weekly.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t played competitively since my high school varsity team got cut back in junior year, but it didn\u2019t matter \u2013 I still loved the game, and playing on a regular basis made me remember how good it felt to exercise. The endorphin rush was just what I needed to kickstart a day of studying after practice. I traded in going out every night of the weekend to give my body a chance to rest and recuperate from a hectic week of school.\r\n\r\nInstead of listlessly doing mass sign ups for campus group memberships at the UTSU Clubs Fair (with my actual involvement going only so far as to just receiving the email updates), I decided to get more involved in Friends of MSF<\/a>, a campus group that advocates for a cause I feel passionately about.\r\n\r\nAll these little changes began to make me feel better \u2013 as clich\u00e9d as it sounds, I felt more purpose day-to-day and it was refreshing to make friends with people who actually cared about the same things I cared about and who were actually excelling<\/em> in school (not just getting by!).\r\n\r\nThe art of balancing life here at U of T often feels like a precision juggling act \u2013 we look to those who seem to have it all figured out as mythical creatures who have achieved the impossible and managed to maintain a life where \u201cwork hard, play hard\u201d really does exist.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll let you in on a secret \u2013\u00a0those people who seem to always get it right are not\u00a0so different from you and I. They're just doing everything they love with the right amount of time commitment to each endeavour.\r\n\r\nI still struggle greatly with healthy eating habits, studying smart<\/em> (not the same as studying hard!), and keeping an active lifestyle outside of intramural season, but my experiences have only taught me for the better (and I\u2019ll definitely be keeping you guys updated on my progress along the way). Now that I\u2019ve gotten a taste of a more balanced life, I\u2019m determined not to let it slip away.\r\n\r\n

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Source: www.tumblr.com\/tagged\/enough_sleep\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

I'm still working on figuring out the magic formula to have all three.<\/em><\/p>\r\nP.S. If you have any advice to give incoming first-years on balancing academics with personal life, tweet us and don\u2019t forget to hashtag #StartUofT<\/a>!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\nThe concept of \u201cliving a balanced life\u201d has always been such an elusive one for me. Growing up, I maintained a relatively erratic lifestyle, and I carried that into my first year of U of T. I\u2019d sleep 3 hours…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “The Juggling Act”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “The Juggling Act”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,62,60,1,69,67,68],"tags":[86,78,92,259,1733,25500,88,9307,85,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17623"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17653,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623\/revisions\/17653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}