Students’ Views

So, you start out the semester everything going your way, but then for some reason it is always around the 4th week of school when everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) piles up! You try to avoid the chaos, but I really don’t think there is any method of combat that actually works under these circumstances. I love to write up my “To Do Lists� and have great joy in marking off things from the zillion activities that are constantly going on in my life. However, for once I couldn’t do that this week. I actually had to see from one day to another how much time I had available and work around it with my studying.

I am in charge of SING this year for APO, which is very exciting but also time consuming. Luckily, I have great members in my chapter that have been excellent at helping me come up with ideas and formulating them into what I believe to be the best skit our campus will see at Homecoming this year. Just to inform those of you who are not familiar with SING, this event is one of the most exciting events that we have on campus in the fall. Each organization is able to formulate an idea in the form of song/dance in a skit to perform to the entire campus and Alumni during Homecoming weekend. It is almost like a huge talent show that pokes fun of the little things we love about Southwestern. Besides making time for SING practice, I also needed to find time to work at the hospital.

Once a week I work/volunteer at Brackenridge Children’s Hospital of Austin. I thoroughly enjoy the time I spend there and the enormous amount of information that I learn from week to week regarding life in the hospital. I am fortunate to be completely immersed in the life of a physician and see from an outsider’s perspective the real world of medicine without having to catch the somewhat false representation on Grey’s Anatomy every week (even though I am addicted to the show� ).

I bet you are wondering with this tad bit of information regarding my extracurricular commitments and 17 hrs of class, how do I survive? Well, I honestly take it one day at a time and try not to dwell on certain aspects because that will ultimately lead to stress. I’m not saying stress is completely avoidable because it is bound to happen at some point; however there is a way of diminishing the increasing levels that sometimes we, as students, deal with on a constant basis. I studied for majority of the weekend for one test in particular and was really prepared to take it that Wednesday, however I felt unprepared for another exam I would have the following day considering I spent majority of my time on the previous exam. Unfortunately, I did have to pull a few all nighters’ to make it through, which if you knew me is highly unlikely because I love my “sleep time�. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to sleep even if I made myself knowing that I had three tests in three days and a quiz the day before that I was not fully prepared for.

All in all, everything worked out fantastic and I think I did very well on all of my exams. I really learned that sometimes you cannot always plan to the exact minute of everyday but simply go with what works and more than likely if you are on top of things, everything will be fine!