Educational Advice

Study-life balance: is it possible?

At both school and university, it can be difficult to strike the right balance between studying, working, and socialising. This post will hopefully show you how you can make the most of your time without neglecting your academic work.

If you’re organised, there’s no reason why you can’t fit in all of the things you want to do. When you’re at school, there are a few things that you absolutely have to do:

  1. Attend all of your lessons
  2. Do your homework
  3. Revise for exams
  4. Find time to relax

There are also a number of other things you might want to do:

  1. Hobbies such as music, art, drama, dance, and sport
  2. Spend time with friends and family
  3. A part-time job

To manage all of this, build your routine around what you have to do. Having a routine helps you to get everything done on time and stops you from forgetting things. If you’re doing your GCSEs, you’ll still have a full timetable at school, so take the weekends and evenings as a starting point. Plan when you will get any homework or revision done: it might be that you decide to do an hour or two of work as soon as you get home from school to get it out of the way or that you would prefer to dedicate all of Sunday to your work leaving your evenings and Saturdays free for hobbies or part-time work. As long as you give yourself enough time to get everything done in time for any deadlines you may have, this should work well.

The rest of your time is then yours to spend as you like, so slot in any clubs you belong to, any music or sport you might do, and your job if you have one. Alternatively, you can use these other commitments as a starting point and plan your homework around them; choose whichever approach works for you. After you’ve done that, you’ll know when you’ll be free for socialising or when you’ll have time to just relax. This is very important: if you work all the time, you’ll become tired and unproductive. Your brain needs time to relax and assimilate what you’ve been learning so whilst it may seem like watching TV, surfing the internet, reading, or going out with friends is a waste of time that would be better spent working, you actually need these breaks to help you do your best.

Things are a bit different as your GCSE exams approach. You might have study leave or you might be in school but have more freedom to revise as you wish. Either way, the same principles apply: make a list of all of the subjects you have to revise and prioritise them in terms of when your exams are and how challenging you find each subject, allocating more time to topics you find tricky. Make a timetable and stick to it; this will mean that you cover everything you need to and can still leave yourself time for your hobbies and relaxation.

When you start A levels, you tend to have a lot more freedom. You usually have a number of free periods a week and the older you get, the more opportunities there are for part-time work. This means that organising yourself is both easier and harder than it was before: you have more freedom but also more options, which can be overwhelming at times. But the same basic principles apply: maximise the amount of time you have outside of school by making the most of your free periods to get homework and extra schoolwork done and then follow the same principles as before with regards to managing your hobbies and social time. Doing well in your A Levels and choosing the best course at university often involves doing some extra reading above and beyond what your teachers tell you to do so make sure you allow time to do that too.

At university, you get even more freedom. If you move out for university, it will probably be the first time that you live alone. This is exciting but also brings with it a lot more responsibility. University students need to find time to do the following things:

  1. Contact hours (including, but not limited to: lectures, seminars, tutorials, labs, and field trips)
  2. Independent work (including, but not limited to: coursework, writing up lecture notes, reading for seminars, preparing presentations, and revising for exams)
  3. Household management (paying rent and bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc.)
  4. Part-time work
  5. Volunteering
  6. Clubs and societies
  7. Looking for internships and applying for jobs
  8. Socialising

Everybody has to do the first three because at a bare minimum, you need to live and get your degree. It also makes sense to get these in order first before you work out when to do everything else. The number of contact hours you have depends on what course you do: scientists may have full days in the lab whereas students studying English or History can have as little as six hours of lectures and seminars a week. But that doesn’t mean that’s all you have to do to succeed academically. University is all about learning to work independently, so you need to spend time preparing thoroughly for any classes and seminars as well as working systematically through any assignments and revision when it’s exam season. In fact, the students who do best often do extra work which supplements their studies such as attending optional talks and seeking out extra reading in the library. Universities have many fantastic resources and events so make the most of them whilst you can!

When I started university, we were advised to treat our degree like a job, which meant spending about forty hours per week on academic work, and this really worked. Of course, you don’t have to work 9-5 if that doesn’t suit you, university gives you the luxury of doing your work at whatever time you want, but the principle is there.

Once you’ve decided when you’ll be working, you can fit everything else in around that. Get into a routine of paying your rent, shopping, and cooking and then the rest of your time is yours to fit in anything else you want to do, whether that’s paid or voluntary work, sport, or going out with friends. I would advise being flexible: university is a great time to try new things, so don’t turn down a subsided weekend away or a lucrative opportunity for part-time work or an invitation to a friend’s birthday party just because it doesn’t seem to fit in with your plans. See if you can rejig your work routine or other commitments first before turning down the invitation.

Overall, whether you’re still at school or in your final year at university, it’s all about finding the right balance. Academic work is important, but so is your personal life and other interests. Having a few different things going on at once can also help you to focus and be more productive as well as creating interesting opportunities for your future and reminding you that the world won’t end if your grades aren’t perfect all the time: striking a balance is a win-win situation.


Jess A. graduated with a First in French and German from Oxford University in 2016, and has since completed over 80 hours of tuition with MyTutor. She is now doing an MA in French Literature at Durham University, where she balances her love of books alongside her German tutoring, yoga, and aerial arts. 

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