Making Time for Wellness
This week’s blog is written by Sarah Dierkes, Master of Human Resource Management student and current ECS Graduate Assistant.
After four years of undergrad and my first semester as a now graduate student at Ohio State, you might think I’ve cracked the code on how to juggle work, school, extracurriculars, and personal wellness, but you would be wrong!
Don’t get me wrong, I love my program and my job. I’m learning so much and get to work with so many incredible people at ECS, but sometimes things can feel a little overwhelming. With that being said, my relationship with personal wellness has been anything but linear, and that’s okay! In fact, a 2020 survey of higher education students found that 76% of students struggle with their wellbeing. While I’m certainly no expert, let me tell you a few things I HAVE learned:
Boundaries
The biggest thing I’ve learned in the past few years is how important it is to set personal boundaries. Setting stop times for certain tasks has really helped me find a balance between school and life. Similarly, I used to have a hard time telling people I didn’t have the capacity to take on additional projects, but I’ve gotten much more comfortable being honest about how much bandwidth I have. Overall, sticking to my boundaries has helped me focus more on the quality rather than quantity of my work.
Stay Organized
One of the most stressful things for me is the unknown. Planning and organizing have really helped me be more put together and manage my time efficiently. Each year I buy a new planner and use syllabus week to write out the due dates of every assignment. This sets me up for success and more importantly helps keep me from having to repeatedly check each course’s syllabus multiple times a week.
Use Your Resources!
This one took me awhile and is actually something I’m still working on. Ohio State has a TON of resources available for students that don’t get as much recognition as they should (and no, they didn’t tell me to say this). The Student Wellness Center covers basically everything wellness-related you could imagine. Also, Ohio State’s app has a “wellness” tab at the bottom with a lot of great support resources.
Wellness looks different for everyone, and it should! We all have different things going on in our lives and different priorities. I think advocating for yourself is the most important thing you can do because you can’t rely on others to be considerate of your time and wellness.
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”— Anne Lamott
