Handling Hopkins and your hobbies

Hopkins students really don’t know what free time is.

Yep, today we are going to talk about hobbies. Hobbies, in this case, are those nonacademic things that you do for fun. You know ━ things besides studying and working.

Hobbies don’t have to be school or work related, and they don’t have to be résumé boosters. But who am I kidding? More often than not, they are, and that’s fine.

They can range from indulging in Pike festivities, to cooking, to playing chess. Hobbies serve different purposes. Hobbies can be a means through which you relieve stress. They give you a chance to distract yourself from life.

Sounds pretty awesome right?

Hobbies give you a chance to balance school and work with more relaxing and pleasant activities; however, they can be stressful after a while. That student group that you are a part of now may feel like a burden after a while. Especially after waves of exams and papers flow through. Your extracurricular activity can turn into just another item on your to-do list. Granted, there are pros and cons to this scenario.

Being in college means learning to use time management and discernment. In this case, this means that your hobbies shouldn’t outweigh your academic schedule if you know that’s not something you can handle. Even if you can, I would advise you to stay focused on schoolwork. However, don’t eliminate all of your hobbies in an effort to reduce stress (This is assuming that you actually enjoy your hobbies. If you don’t enjoy your extracurricular activities, then by all means, drop them.) Remember, your hobbies are there to help you smile, laugh ━ because we all could use some laughter every now and then ━ and relieve stress. Eliminating these fun activities eliminates your stress outlets.

That sounds like a recipe for a meltdown.

What I’m proposing is that you maintain your stress outlet. When that stress outlet becomes a cause of stress, then it makes sense to get rid of it, or alter it. However, sometimes we see these extracurriculars as causes of stress, when in fact the real cause is our lack of time management. I’m guilty of this as well, hence me saying “we.”

So the next time you feel like you are drowning in work (maybe that’s happening right now; if not, then it will probably happen very soon), look over your schedule and re-establish your priorities. During this process, make sure your vision is clear. Take a deep breath. Try to relax and find the real source of your problem. During this time, try not to sacrifice all of your hobbies to compensate for a deeper problem, like a lack of productivity, e.g. spending too much time on Facebook. You might have to axe off one or two extracurriculars, but make sure that in the end, you still have a way to relieve stress.