times and bothersome at others, but balancing them is something that must be enjoyable first. I love being busy and feeling like people desire my assistance or presence at different places. Call me needy, but I think everyone wants to feel wanted. A valuable lesson I learned is that if you have anything in your life that feels unpredictable, make sure you leave time for the unpredictable. For me in GCSA, sometimes this meant sacrificing personal relaxation time to know that an event or an announcement would go on without any problems. Education classes meant time spent at another school even after I just had classes on campus. Things like this fall into a rhythm and for most people, even busy rhythms can be easily handled. I was not so much balancing these classes into my life as much as I had to balance everything else
around them. Lastly, athletics, or in my case track and field, is the piece in your life that takes up what seems like the bulk of your time and energy. It can also often leave you feeling even more drained than you were before and leave you with doubt about making it through the next day. For things like this, I treat them as my playtime. In my life, track and field was, and still is, my relaxation and my socialization time. When things like athletics are taking time and energy you must put the positive in to get the positive out. So I go in with a positive attitude and often came out with a positive outlook and outcomes. All in all, I did a pretty fair job of balancing things last year and I can say that no, not everything was perfect. Keep in mind that being successful at the balancing act is not about being perfect like the “above-and-beyonders,” and it is not about being busy like the “booked buggies” either. It is about putting all you have, your talents, your expertise, and your skills out there for people to appreciate and see. If you apply that to your own individual balancing act, then those times when you are feeling overwhelmed (trust me they will come) you can just take a second and realize that it really it is all worth it. I loved the balancing act I did last year, if I had the choice I would do it all over again and not change a thing.
The Vista | 31
SPORTS
Everyone has things they must balance in life, whether it is to balance family and friends, or work and school. How do they do it? Some are what I like to call, “above-and-beyonders.” These are the wonder children of our generation, and they are able to balance what seems like everything that you could possibly think of while still managing to volunteer part-time at the Simple Room. Then you have the “booked buggies.” Booked buggies are the ones who overbook themselves in all their activities to a point where they may be completing everything but they are invisible to the social networks. These people I am sure we are all familiar with and you may even find yourself trapped in this web of scheduling at times. No worries – this is NOT a bad thing! However, there are always the ones that fall snuggly in between, though never staying too far away from either extremes of the balance beam. Last year especially, that “snuggie,” was me. Here’s what I have to say about my experience, and hopefully it can help you, too. Last year, I was balancing track and field, elementary education classes and field experience, along with working on Greenville College Student Association (GCSA). Did I ever have a plan going into these activities about how I was going to be successful in everything? No, and planning every second of your day out might not be the best idea either. Taking it piece by piece and day by day, the events in my life last year were hectic at