University life: You can't do it all, no matter how good your time management skills are
The truth is that it's impossible to do everything, even if you're really, really organised - something's got to give
Unless you're one of these eight-year-old geniuses, you're no longer a child when you start university. And lots of people will want to remind you: it’s not uncommon to hear things like, ‘You’re an adult now. You need to be disciplined, independent and learn time management.”
People talk about time management - and how going to university is great training for it - and how it makes you a better person. Like being able to juggle studying, classes, homework, a job and maybe some socialising and relaxing every now and then is a necessary virtue of life.
What people don't talk about is how you'll need more than 24 hours in a day; either that or to skip sleep, which, to be fair, plenty of students do.
Here is the plain truth: being able to do everything thanks to good time management is a lie. A sham. A scam.
I would like to think that I, as a professional journalist (hey, I’ve been paid to write things that appear in print, which makes that claim technically true ... the best kind of true), have reasonable ability to manage my time and work with deadlines. But now that I'm studying a full-time degree, I can say, through personal experience, that being able to balance everything is overrated. And so are the perks.
What really happens is that you either learn to prioritise your responsibilities, or your responsibilities get prioritised for you. How? You're forced to choose: your grades might suffer, you might skip classes, your group mates might resent you for being a free-rider (someone who does nothing in a team project, aka the worst possible insult in uni), you might end up a social recluse ... you get the picture.
