I know it’s the end of the semester and we have finals and projects to finish up. I know stress levels are crazy. I know next semester is literally the last thing people want to think about right now. Fair enough. But in a strange sense, using this time to think about the future is actually not such a bad idea.

You don’t have to take any time away from what you need to get done. Just spend the five minutes you would walking to class thinking about how stressed out you are during this finals week compared to others. Do the classes you are taking have an impact?

For me, they always do. The issue, though, is that I always finish my finals and decide I’m done and it is just one painful but isolated event that I’ll never have to repeat.

In the past, though, this has led to me thinking I can handle more than I should when it comes to next semester’s schedule and then I get myself in the exact same difficult situation I was in before. I’ve started to realize that this isn’t necessarily the greatest strategy.

We usually attribute our success to how hard we work, which is certainly a factor, but not the only one. Realistically, how well you will do next semester is already heavily biased in one direction even if you don’t realize it. Realistically, a lot of it is going to be dependent on how good of a balance you have set up for yourself in your life.

So how do you strike a good balance? You reflect on your life now. Are you having trouble getting all of the sleep that you need on a regular basis? Do you have time for things that you want to do and don’t just have to do? Are you generally happy? If the answer is no, and you don’t want to continue like this in the future, do something different next semester.

In this way, everybody can be successful, you just need to identify what level of success you are currently capable of. If you want to do more in the future, that’s great too. Just take it one step at a time and don’t get yourself into more than you can handle right now if you have the option.

For me, this is going to mean joining fewer clubs and not taking too many difficult classes at once (although taking Operating Systems is unavoidable). Anyways, this balance is necessarily different for everybody, but now is a good time to make those connections and I highly recommend that you join in even if your answer is just to stay at the same pace.