Balancing school and sports can be tricky if you’re a student athlete. It often takes a process of trial and error to find out what works best for you. Spend too little time studying, and your grades will suffer. On the other hand, not giving enough time to improve your athletic performance can result in less playing time and even being dropped from a team. How can you avoid these two extremes?
Establish your priorities
It helps to list your priorities from the most to the least important. Asking yourself why you are at college in the first place can help to uncover what’s most important to you. When you understand this, it makes it easier for you to plan. You won’t worry about skipping a class to attend a vitally important practice or missing a practice to write a crucial exam. It’s a question of trade-offs when you know your priorities.
Take a look at your performance standards
Trying to live up to unrealistic standards you set yourself can cause stress and lead to burnout. There are a limited number of hours in a day, and if you feel constant pressure to perform, it can be unhealthy. If you accept that you won’t always be able to do everything perfectly, you will manage your stress levels better.
Get essay writing help
When peak competition season for your sport coincides with assignment deadlines, you may feel a great deal of stress. It will help to hire someone to write college essay for you. You can pay for essay writing on EduBirdie, and a professional writer will produce a quality, plagiarism-free essay within your deadline. You can get good marks for your essay so you don’t fall behind and also have time to take part in competitive sports.
Don’t be afraid to ask for support
As a student athlete at college, you know how important it is to get support to achieve peak performance. Coaches, nutritionists, and psychologists all help you to improve in different areas. Your team members are also there to support you and offer encouragement.
As a student athlete, you are likely to need as much help as you can get with your academic responsibilities. Asking for it does not reflect on your abilities. Talk to professors and get suggestions on how to stay on track with your studies and what resources you can use.
Learn to manage your time
It’s easy for time to slip away when you have so many responsibilities to juggle. Learning to prioritize and follow through can help you to manage your time. You can’t afford to procrastinate, and planning ahead can help you to avoid this. It helps to set aside some time every week to plan for the week ahead.
List your responsibilities for the week and define specific goals you want to accomplish. You can use this weekly planner to create daily schedules. This takes away any guesswork about what you need to do and how to spend your time.
Learn some effective study skills
Sitting behind a desk for hours and staring at the computer screen without really taking anything in is a waste of time. Sharpening your study skills can help you to retain more information. One of these skills is taking notes. Paraphrasing essentials can help you to absorb more. Breaking down what you need to study into smaller components makes it easier to learn.
Creating mind maps is another useful way to retain information. Self-testing is a critical way to prepare for exams. It can also help to join a study group and learn from peers to fill your gaps in understanding.
Do some self-reflection
It’s important to identify unhelpful patterns such as procrastinating on starting an assignment or wasting hours after sports practice. When you identify an unhelpful pattern, it is easier to find ways to break it.
Look into what strategies work for you when you feel too much stress. For example, some people find it helpful to connect with friends, and others find getting out into nature relieves stress. Practices like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing are known to relieve stress.
Conclusion
The life of a student athlete can be challenging and lead to frustration and anxiety. It can also be rewarding and full of possibilities. Various coping strategies, such as establishing your priorities and managing your time effectively can help you at college as a student athlete and in your future career.
Author’s Bio
James Hughey loves writing, and he did not think twice about making it his profession when he had to choose a career after college. He worked hard on his skills and kept going with his passion to perform well and grow, and this meant a boon for his academic writing career. He regularly features his essay samples on sites that provide free essays to students.