Making the Most of Student Life at UCalgary

may be an impossible task. Many students have tinges of regret over choices they've made throughout their time in university.

Perhaps this is self-consolation, but there's only so much you can do to "make the most of your youth" during a time when you're also under a lot of pressure to do well in your classes and other areas of life.

Not only that, but you may not even know what making the most means to you - especially among the influence of friends and social media. It's draining to try to keep up with what's going on, and difficult not to feel guilty about taking an unproductive break.

This is not meant to be a pessimistic blog post by any means, in fact, the conclusion I'm trying to show is that if you've made it so far to read this then you probably are making the most of your student life. Not because reading my blog is the most fun thing you could be doing (which it is), but because it means you are trying.

And hopefully, these few tips can help you with some aspects of student life and ease some burden from your shoulders :)

Follow Clubs and Other Accounts on Instagram

Unfortunately, many clubs do not use the official U of C ClubHub platform to promote events, but nearly every club posts them on Instagram. You can even discover new clubs on Instagram through recommendations and also follow non-club accounts that are related to student life (residence events, university district events, and more).

You can consider making an alternative social media account if you don't want to clutter the feed on your main one! I highly recommend this because often clubs will cross-post each other's events leading to a huge cycle of seeing the same thing posted over, and over again (come on, please just use ClubHub...).

Add Things to Your Calendar Immediately

Most of us track classes and possibly deadlines on our calendars (if not, it might be good to start) but the most difficult things to keep track of are things like random club events, hangouts with friends, career fairs, etc.

I used to see these events on social media or my email and think "Yeah, I'm free then, I'll remember to go or put it on my to-do list". As you may be able to guess, I often did NOT remember either of those things and ended up missing out on them.

So, my simple suggestion is that if you see something that you are at least 50% interested in going to, you should add it to your calendar right then. One amazing benefit of this is that it significantly decreases the constant load of stress on your brain, which sometimes even subconsciously is thinking "What was that thing I was going to do?".

This way, you can have a set time every day or so to glance at your calendar and decide which things you want to do, and feel prepared for the day ahead with a freer mind. I can't recommend this enough!

(Maybe) Let Your Priorities Change

We're students. Sometimes it's midterm season and sometimes there's not really much to study or work on. And as humans, sometimes we feel a spark of inspiration or the need to rest.

Oftentimes, the advice given to us is to "set goals and live a consistent life to be happy". I think that there are merits to this, but I have found that it is very difficult to maintain the same priorities in university.

There are weeks when I just have to study instead of doing anything interesting and in doing so I am not betraying or procrastinating my non-academic goals. Sometimes, goals even disappear completely to make way for other things. I found that it's good to recognize that this does not mean I did anything wrong or that I am neglecting certain parts of my life. You can't predict how easy/hard courses are going to be for you and sometimes you have to make difficult choices.

This tip won't work for everyone, as many people find that a disciplined and consistent lifestyle works best for them. If it doesn't, then try it out.

Thanks!

I hope that at least one of these tips helped or spoke to you, and if you have any tips for student life or general advice please share in the comments so that we can all learn from your insight :)

Until next time,

Ana