Most students find it extremely difficult to combine academics and extra-curricular activities. Some believe that engaging in extracurricular activities might negatively affect their academic results. This article is written based on my personal experience and research, aimed at giving you suggestions on how to effectively combine academics and extracurricular activities, be it business, leadership roles, volunteering or other social activities.
- Get organized: To effectively combine your academics with extracurricular activities, you have to be organized. Get a book and list all the activities you will love to engage in. Don’t just make a mental picture of it, Write it down. This includes your short term and long-term goals. Set deadlines for each project or task that you will love to engage in and be sure to make it realistic and achievable.
- Be disciplined: Writing down your goals and things you will love to do or accomplish is not enough. You must be disciplined and act on them. Start with the most urgent. If you tend to forget a lot or have a problem procrastinating, you can set a reminder.
- Create a daily time table: Allocate time for all your daily activities and write them down in your time-table. Be sure to give room for leisure to avoid fatigue. Add all the details such as time for prayers, cooking and brushing. When you have a detailed time-table, it will help you to make good use of your time and cut out unnecessary talks and activities.
- Set out days for extracurricular activities: As an undergraduate, you can set out days for your extracurricular activities to be on weekends, or Sundays as well as on other days of the week when you have a lecture-free day. You can also fix your extracurricular activities in the evening if you do not have an evening practical session in school.
- Decide on what exactly you want: Engaging in lots of extracurricular activities can be confusing and can make you lose focus. List out the extracurricular activities you will love to engage in. if it is a club or a religious group, get to know their meeting days, time and venue, then check out how feasible it is to be part of the group. If the extracurricular activity is your personal business, you can always fix it in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with your academic activities.
- Use your time well: There will always be uncertainties. The activities fixed on your daily time table might be cancelled or rescheduled. In such a situation, it is always advisable to fix in another activity. If you have no plans on how you want to spend your day, you may end up being caught up on social media doing nothing worthwhile. Don’t be idle and don’t be lazy. Ensure that every second of your time is spent doing something productive.
- Learn to multitask: Multitasking is a skill that is of much benefit to undergraduates. Multitasking helps you to achieve more in a specified range of time. There are lots of ways students can multitask. For some, who always take a bus or taxi to school, reading in the bus might look awkward. Such students can make voice notes during their personal study time and listen to it conveniently while in the bus. Some students download audio books and listen to it while doing a lesser task at home.
- Get a Mentor: having a mentor is a great way for you to combine academics with extracurricular activities. Your mentor should be someone who has successfully combined his/her academics with an extracurricular activity that you’re passionate about and would want to engage in. If you’ll love to engage in student leadership role, a mentor in that field can offer advice based on his/her own experiences. You can learn from the person’s mistake and avoid making them yourself. In all you do; have in mind – “A life of probity is worth living!”
