Have you ever felt like the only thing you do is eat, sleep, and do homework? Or, for some students to eat, sleep, work, and do schoolwork? Honestly, this is probably most college students, me being one of them.
When we get a second away from drowning in all of our work and studies, we forget that we have to care for ourselves.
Caring for ourselves goes beyond eating, sleeping, and taking a shower. However, sleeping is one of the most important things we can do to remain mentally involved. Outside of these basic care factors, we need to be doing the things we enjoy doing.
For some people, enjoyment is working out, doing arts and crafts, riding horses, or simply just watching a movie with the family. We don’t realize how much these things satisfy us and give us peace of mind. I want to begin discussing the importance of sleep.
According to Harvard Medical School, “sleep plays a critical role in immune function, metabolism, memory, learning, and other vital functions.”
Sleep is one of those things we tend to shorten just because we have to get something done for school or work. Talking with one of my classmates, Summer Zubkoff, a student here at Owens, she expressed to me, “I go to bed so late and don’t get much sleep because I stay up so late studying for my classes.”
I began to talk with her about her function and mental awareness when she is on a few hours of sleep vs if she got a full eight hours of sleep. She assessed my question and told me she feels much better when she has had a good night of sleep. This led me to my next question for her about her involvement with things outside of work and school.
When we are so involved with our studies, we push off going out with friends or making fun in our lives a priority–even though it truly has a huge impact on our happiness and mental health. We must take some time throughout the week to do something we enjoy doing.
For me, I take some time to put away my laptop and go out to the barn, care for and ride my horse. This brings me joy, and I am usually energized and super happy when I leave there. One thing to be aware of is time management is key to being able to do these kinds of things.
I asked Zubkoff what kinds of things she enjoyed doing that did not involve school or work. Zubkoff says she enjoys fishing, going kayaking, hanging with her cousin, and watching horse races on TV. I asked her when the last time she was able to do any of these things without the interruption of school work.
She hesitated to answer, “Well I do watch the races, but I usually always have my computer in front of me for schoolwork.”
While she still may be getting to watch the races, her focus is more on the schoolwork, as she has to make sure she gets completed instead of enjoying her time watching the races.
Without noticing, not putting any time into our happiness can be bad for our health. Happiness is more than just feeling happy.
An article from The Greater Good Magazine, a science-based website for ways to promote a meaningful life describes the ways happiness helps your health. Happiness encourages a strong immune system. An experiment discussed in this article explains a study of 350 people that showed that the participants with positive emotions and more energetic feelings were less likely to develop a cold.
Another benefit to happiness is combating stress. I’m sure any college student at some point, if not many times, will say they are stressed. Stress can have a very negative impact on our health, and it is important to control it the best we can. In the same study, the participants that showed to be the happiest had a 23 percent lower level of cortisol, a stress hormone.
Going out and simply enjoying life can take stress levels down in a much larger amount than we think it can. Along with a good immune system and combating stress, happiness decreases aches and pains, combats disease and lengthens our lives.
We must recognize how we are treating ourselves and how we are finding happiness in our lives during the stressful work and school atmosphere.
Take some time in your upcoming weeks and the rest of your life to figure out how you can be successful in a work-life balance. Focus on your eating and sleeping habits as these are huge factors to how you feel on a daily basis. Without some good rest, we are not at our full mental functional ability.
As well as taking time for ourselves and pleasing our brains with the happiness our hobbies give us, teach yourself to put away the schoolwork for a few reasonable hours and simply enjoy yourself, your friends, your pets, and your family. Our happiness is a huge part of remaining healthy!
