Falling in Love With a Full Schedule
February 21st, 2025
Writer: Amany Sayed
Editor: Emily Pawlak
The second I turned in my last fall semester assignment, I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I was free! No more endless readings, essays, office hours, or frantically speed walking to class in the cold and windy mornings. As I stared at my Google Calendar, once so full of colorful blocks but now an empty white space, I finally felt calm in the present moment.
This positive headspace quickly gave way to something much less pleasant: boredom. Throughout winter break, I felt antsy and anxious, longing for something to do. I was lost. The self-discipline I’d built for myself in my first semester of college was difficult to hold on to without even the semblance of structured time. I slept late, woke up late, and struggled to find the motivation to make plans with my friends. Without assignments or extracurriculars, how was I supposed to be productive?
I had thought that returning to school would give me the chance to feel motivated again which I’d been waiting for. But, now that I’m back on campus, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed again. My days are long, and the only time I have to myself is spent either eating or sleeping. Often, I find myself looking four or five weeks ahead in my calendar, stressing about the future. In my brain, an automatic countdown has started for Spring Break, as I await that blank space in my Google calendar.
This problem isn’t unique to my college experience. I’ve always been a perfectionist and put a significant amount of pressure on myself when it comes to school. Since high school, I’ve been faced with this never-ending cycle of what I felt was my brain waging war against itself. Like most, I struggle to balance my classes, clubs, and time with my family. My senior year, for example, I was so stressed about running my school's National Honors Society, writing college applications, and acting in the fall play. And yet, when the break I am so desperate for does come, I feel wholly uninspired to make anything out of it.
As I found myself falling back into this cycle, I promised myself that this time would be different. I don’t take for granted the opportunity I have here at the University of Michigan, a school I worked so hard to be able to attend. I’m busy, yes, but I’m busy with classes I wanted to take, clubs I applied to join, and a research project I signed up for. To be a student at Michigan is one of the greatest privileges I could have ever asked for; I get to check something off of my lengthy to-do list.
I have been reminding myself that not every waking moment must be spent towards the goal of some greater accomplishment. I must remember to refill my cup with genuine days of boredom, instead of focusing on finishing an upcoming task.
The solution, I think, is not to throw myself so fiercely into my work that I forget how to live without it. Nor is it spending time off in a perpetual state of anticipation for what’s to come. Rather, it’s about finding a balance between my busy schedule and allowing my mind to rest. While I’m certainly excited for Spring Break, I’m starting to look forward to my readings and discussions and have made a conscious effort to appreciate the beauty of campus. Instead of worrying about the next assignment in my Canvas dashboard, I immerse myself in the topics I’m learning about and prioritize one subject at a time. Slowly but surely, I am altering my mindset about classes –they are not about achieving that A, but about learning something new. After all, I’ll only be an undergraduate once, so I better make it count.
Photo Credits: Zoe Romeu
