Work/life Balance in an MBA Program
Jamal Martin, 2011
There are many activities to juggle in business school. You have your job search, your class work, your friends, your family, and for some of you a significant other. I went through plenty of stress my first year trying to manage the intense workload. Prior to business school, I use to plan out my schedule in my head. As you can imagine, the core made me quickly reevaluate that strategy. I found the best way to achieve a good work life balance in this program is to get organized. I scheduled everything on my calendar and did my best to not let emails sit within my inbox. I also put together a spreadsheet that has all of my class assignments within one document. This was a tremendous help because I could easily open my spreadsheet and know the exact thing that I should be working on at the current moment. It made it easier for me to stay on top of homework and gave me more time to enjoy my weekends.
While it is important to manage your work load, it is equally important for you to have personal time. Your personal time is going to give you the energy you need to handle the intense workload of the week. Take the time to go to the gym, go out to meet new people, or spend time with loved ones. I reserved a lot of my personal time for the weekends and tried really hard to finish homework assignments during the week. I would block off time on my calendar to ensure that my personal time would not be taken away but either a group project or last minute assignment.
Chapel Hill is a beautiful place. Take the time to get to know it while you are here. The business school is great but there is so much more to see in the area.