My first semester of college I attended parties at least twice a week, spent hours under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the library and still muscled out a two-hour deep clean of my room every Sunday. I went home for winter break exhausted. When I came back for my second semester, two things became clear:
Managing a schedule in college is hard. Maintaining boundaries is even harder.
Focused on finding friends my first semester, I developed a “say yes” mentality. Want to go to Santa Monica this weekend? Yes. I know you have a midterm to study for, but do you want to squeeze in a two-hour group run to Target? Yes. Want to pregame Green Beach on Thursday? Yes. Are you still OK to go out Friday and Saturday as well? Yes.
This mentality carried over to my classes. Despite my lethargy, I struggled with asking for extensions or assistance in office hours. After all, I had always been able to do it all in high school. Why would I need a break?
Between academic pressure and trying to meet new people everyday, I was consistently clocking in only a few hours of sleep each night. It got to the point where I was running off of adrenaline everyday. I was bound to burn out.
That burnout happened in the second semester. I could no longer wake up in time for classes after working in the library or talking to my friends all night. I insisted that I only needed six hours of sleep, but instead slept for 12. With assignments slipping through the cracks and my mental health at a low point, I needed to make a change.
The first step was committing myself to saying goodnight to my friends in a timely manner. Next, I set a timer to stop work at midnight, preventing myself from staying up until 3 am working on an essay and pushing my bleary eyes to a breaking point. Setting this boundary significantly helped my time management.
I decided to stop worrying about whether or not I would lose friends if I chose to stay in once in a while. My closest friends, I realized, had been made over spontaneous coffee and dinner dates or by breaking a sweat together on the treadmills at the gym, not necessarily through drunken hellos. While going to parties with my friends was still sometimes the highlight of my week, if I needed a Saturday to rest and catch up on homework, I refused to let myself feel FOMO.
“Most importantly, learning to set boundaries also helped me grow into myself. “
After making these changes, speaking to my professors about my concerns and needs came easily. I was honest with myself and asked for extensions when I was feeling overwhelmed. Fortunately, college professors are much more understanding than our high school teachers claimed they would be, and every time I spoke to my professors I was met with empathic leniency.
Most importantly, learning to set boundaries also helped me grow into myself.
Before, I had really struggled with defining “College Norah.” “Highschool Norah” had spent more hours studying than passing time with friends, and “College Norah” wanted the opportunity to spread her wings. With all the social pressure that I put on myself in the first semester, I had lost control of my academics, and in many ways my agency.
Setting boundaries not only helped me alleviate this pressure and regain my discipline, but also allowed me to reevaluate how I wanted to approach college, and what kind of person I really wanted to be.
Freshman year brings many new challenges and lessons, and one of the most important is learning to set boundaries for yourself both socially and academically. College is the perfect opportunity to hone this important life skill before we are thrust into our adult lives. The work towards self-improvement starts now.
Norah Mannle CM ’27 hails from the suburbs of Washington D.C. In her free time she enjoys long walks, critiquing new coffee shops and skiing.
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