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Student Tips for Balance

Students are the next generation of our workforce, so it’s more important than ever that they establish healthy work-life balance habits early on. However, with the rise of technology, social media, and smartphones, it’s more likely than not that the tradition of all-nighters are more frequent than rare.

These habits on their own may be harmless, but they are ultimately reflective of an unhealthy work culture that extends beyond the college years.

The technology that can make our lives easier can actually make us work more.

Being a college student in the digital age affords access to knowledge, innovation, and people. Yet the technology that can make our lives easier can actually make us work more. The creation of “constant availability” is a blessing and a curse.

As younger adults consistently gravitate towards digital platforms, digital addiction and work-life imbalance in school can only continue to contribute to our broken work culture post-graduation. That’s why one report suggests that to achieve work-life balance at 30, start at 18.

Here’s a list of handy tips for the average student to help them practice balance, manage digital addiction, and stay present.

  1. Leave your phone out of reach when you go to bed. Looking at screens right before bed strains the eyes and reduces sleep quality. If your phone is your alarm, consider a digital clock or a silent vibrating bracelet alarm as possible alternatives.
  2. Whether walking across campus or taking the bus, keep your mind occupied while keeping your eyes up by listening instead of scrolling. A curated playlist, podcast, or audiobook is perfect for any commute and for reducing screen time during downtime.
  3. Separate work and play. Because our digital devices are often both sources of entertainment and work, establishing physical barriers can help. Keep all work-related activities out of the bedroom – instead, find a nice spot in the library or explore local coffee shops off campus. Focusing on productivity in short increments during the day can make it easier to relax, for real, later.
  4. Avoid multitasking. Grabbing lunch with a friend is always more fun than working with lunch in front of you. And no matter what you tell yourself, having one tab open for Netflix and one open for your homework is neither conducive to studying nor relaxing.
  5. When you’re feeling frustrated or stuck on a problem, take a break to do a non-digital activity. Sketch something around you, take a 10 min walk to grab a snack, call family or a friend, and return to your work refreshed.
  6. Prioritize. Dedicate yourself to 1-2 extracurricular activities that you really love to prevent spreading yourself thin. Developing relationships and leadership in the organizations that you love will be more rewarding than limited involvement and unrealistic time commitments in too many.

Want to really escape campus? Head over to one of our tiny cabins for the ultimate study break. Students now get 15% off  Getaway when they book with their .edu email address. Check out our Students Program page for more details.

Features

College Life + The Paradox of ‘Self-Care’ in an Instagram Age

Our summer marketing intern, Lucy Dong, writes about being a college student in an age where ‘self-care’ is trending and how that conflicts with the 24/7 demands of our digital age.

Being a college student has certain perks: your best friends live next door, you engage in fascinating research, join dance clubs, and develop your passions.

And while often regarded as the four most exciting years of many people’s lives, college is also associated with a lot of stress, unhealthy habits, and a lack of balance between work and leisure.

According to a study by the American Psychological Association, millennials report the worst sleeping habits of all adults and are more likely to report consequences of those unhealthy sleeping habits. 

In my first days at Getaway, I was struck by the difference between my life at school and my life working full-time. Because this company places such an emphasis on healthy work-life balance, I can dedicate myself fully to the workday and not worry about answering emails after I leave the office.

But at school there are no out-of-office messages, no “working from home”; you live where you work, and vice-versa. It’s not uncommon to find people getting a few hours of a shut-eye on a library couch while finishing a big project. I’ve written entire papers from my bed. Weekends are as much for catching up on assignments as they are for blowing off steam.

This blurred line of separation between work and leisure and its detrimental effects have not gone unnoticed. And it’s not uncommon for recently graduated students to find that the transition into working life is not so drastic. Nights spent in the library are swapped for nights in the office, and writing papers from the dorm room are swapped for answering emails from the apartment. It’s no wonder that many of today’s workers practice the same behaviors they learned as sleep-deprived students and experience the same 24/7 anxiety.

On campus, discussions of how to improve student health are increasingly ubiquitous, but visible forms of self-care are largely performative. For all the times I’ve seen my classmates discuss self-care—in the guest column of the school newspaper, on their Instagrams, and elsewhere—I rarely see what is being preached, practiced consistently. The problem on college campuses is that self-care is only popular as discourse or worse, as a hashtag – not as action. 

The problem on college campuses is that self-care is only popular as discourse or worse, as a hashtag – not as action.

How did ‘self-care’ become so surface level? We hold ourselves and each other to impossible standards: we must hold multiple leadership positions, volunteer, do research, take full course loads, recruit for internships, but also party and work out regularly. At some point it becomes unrealistic to maintain anything more than an image of perfect health, achievement, and #selfcare. 

Students have the opportunity and responsibility to build a counterculture to modern anxiety and burnout in the workplace by confronting parallel issues on campus. Something this big can start at even the individual level: dedicating to just one or two extracurriculars, going to the academic advising center to improve time-management, and even considering work-life balance ratings as part of the job search. 

In the Getaway office

When everyone around you is going at warp speed, slowing down can feel like being left behind. But if students can try to dedicate themselves to embracing self-care for themselves (and not just for social media), campus culture can eventually reflect that. 

Work culture can also reflect that. My time with Getaway has already proven that not only can balance exist in the workplace, but also that both businesses and their workers benefit from a real culture of balance – not just the rhetoric surrounding it. And that’s a lesson I will carry with me to all future work environments, on campus and off.

 

Stressed out from your studies? Check out our new Student Program.