How to Rock the Uni/Work Balance

If you’re a full-time student, then university is essentially your full time job. While your face-to-face classes at uni may not take up the full 40 hours a week the usual full time job requires, the at-home work you are required to complete certainly might. Balancing a career on top of this can seem nigh impossible, but we’ve formulated some tips and strategies to help you stay on top of everything. Read on to find out how to tackle the uni/work balance!

Plan ahead

It’s easy to let assignments and tasks sneak up on you, especially if you’re juggling a very full workload. Before your uni session starts, download all of your subject outlines and note down when each assessment is due. If you’ve got an idea of any projects at work that may require extra work hours, make note of when they’ll be coming up as well.

Put each set of deadlines in a combined calendar, making them a different colour. This way you can see which weeks will be busier, and start your work accordingly.

Communicate

It can be easy to forget that your boss at work and your tutors at uni want you to succeed. You’re all on the same team! Remembering this, it’s important to let them know if you’re struggling. If you have a large number of assignments coming up around the same time, let your boss at work know you might need an afternoon or two off to complete them. You can always try to make up the hours in the following week, if needed.

If you feel like your work may not help, talk to your tutors and see if they can talk over the project with you. This can help you get a better understanding of what is required, enable you to ask any questions, and save you time looking up these queries later on.

Work to a schedule

As you’ve no doubt heard before, establishing a schedule can be really helpful in using your time efficiently. As long as you remember to organise time to relax it can help keep stress to a minimum.

Find it difficult to stick to a constant schedule? Try to set aside a few hours every couple of days to complete your uni work. If you can work diligently during these periods, free times (such as weekends) can be spent relaxing and binge-watching Netflix instead.

Utilise your travel time

If you get to work or uni via public transport, use that time to do readings or start assignments. If you’re on a packed bus, download the PDFs for your readings to your phone. It’s much easier reading from something the size of your hand, than a bundle of papers.

Many people spend upwards of an hour a day on transport, so using this time to prepare for class, catch up on lectures, or make notes means you have time to relax later on.

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 Many subjects put their larger assessments at the end of the session, so now is the perfect time to start planning ahead. When you’ve got a moment, start utilising these techniques and rock that uni/work balance today!

Featured image courtesy of Unsplash