Some people stress out about their 15-credit course load. Others work full-time while completing their education.

I got to talk with Samantha Derner, an NDSU junior from Le Sueur, Minnesota, majoring in nursing with a minor in wellness, and Alycia Gabel, an MSUM alumna from Barnesville, Minnesota, who double majored in computer information systems and management information systems and double minored in business administration and anthropology.

Since starting at NDSU, Derner has worked roughly 40-50 hours per week. However, it has an effect on her classes.

“Working that much while going to school affected my GPA 100 percent,” Derner said. Classes other students would consider easy because they are busy work were difficult for her.

Obviously, working over 40 hours a week leaves little time to sit and do assignments, read the text book or study for weekly quizzes. Derner has been able to keep her GPA above a 3.0 but it’s always a struggle. Even working part-time, Gabel felt she could have been more successful if she had not worked during college.

Having a social life is another challenge. Derner is involved in NDSU Saddle and Sirloin and is a member of Kappa Alpha Theta (KAΘ) sorority, both of which take hours of dedication and hard work. Being an active member of KAΘ requires community service and Samantha puts in around 30-40 hours each semester. Even with this involvement, however, she feels she doesn’t have a good, balanced social life and it has impacted her emotional and physical health.

Gabel had a great way of finding the perfect balanced social life while in college. She would often get groups of friends together to not only study for tests and do homework, but also to have fun together. She was able to build relationships with people in her classes and get school work done at the same time. She also found time to participate in the Student Academic Conference as both a member and an office and serve in some advisory boards for the student senate.

For both of these women, time and stress management was and is essential and both handle it in different ways. Derner carries a planner around with her, saying she “would be lost without it.” Not only that, she has an office calendar she uses to plan her months and a white board she uses to plan out her day. But even with all that, she still says “stress is very hard to cope with as a college student.”

Gabel took yoga classes twice a week that helped her to relax and really focus. She also looked for jobs that would work around her class schedule and had a lot of flexibility. She had an on-campus position, an evening position and a position that allowed her to do homework in between tasks.

The way that you schedule your classes can also help in keeping stress down. Taking a mixture of easy classes hard classes instead of taking easy ones at the beginning of your career can help keep later semesters easier to manage.

“But if I had one recommendation for managing stress, it would be sometimes you just need to breathe,” Gabel noted.

In the end, both agreed you should only work as much as you need to. Your main focus should be on your classes and yourself, though working a little for experience and extra money isn’t a bad idea. Having a job can also be a nice break from your studies.

“Work hard, but remember to have fun,” Gabel said.