How to Balance an Internship and College

Internships are indeed an important part of college life that help students to gain some professional experience and skills. Completing an internship helps your resume and job application stand out from the crowd among the potential employers. However, because of the academic pressure, it becomes difficult for a student to balance between internship and college schedule. The student has to attend lectures and involve in co-curricular and extracurricular activities while in college. Hence, it is crucial to managing your time intelligently to balance both. Here are a few tips to help you balance internship and college schedule:

Prioritise

Before you take up any new task, analyse how important it is and compare it with your current work and college schedule. Rank your tasks in order of significance to balance your upcoming obligations and tasks. Prioritise the tasks to complete them as per the order and to avoid confusions at a later stage.  While giving your best in every work is essential, you need to ensure that your priorities are satisfied to meet your future goals.

Stick to your schedule

Creating a schedule always helps to complete the tasks easier. You should stick to the schedule that helps you to balance your lectures and part-time work. If you schedule your tasks well ahead, then you can avoid falling behind and slacking off in your commitments. How can you do that? Whether it is your lecture, your internship schedule or any other obligations, marking up due dates on a calendar help you to keep track of your deadlines.

Read more: Why Internship Experience is Important

Budget your time

Analyse the amount of time you need to spend on various tasks such as finishing an assignment or getting involved in a group discussion. You should keep enough time during weekdays to complete your college work because you will be busy with the internship during the weekend. To maintain a balance, make sure you give sufficient time to enjoy things you like such as playing a sport or spending some quality time with friends.

Set goals before the week starts

Whether you have to work on a draft for your research paper or develop a social media plan for your internship, you should make it a habit to prioritise the tasks right from the beginning of the week. This will help you to finish important tasks and plan accordingly based on your availability and difficulty of the tasks. If you have exams coming up or a research paper to finish, let your internship provider know your difficulties so that you can take some break from the work.

Read more: 5 Tips That Can Be Helpful During Internship

Give yourself some time to relax

One of the most important tips to balance college schedule and internship is to keep some time to relax and have fun. Never get exhausted by taking up too much of responsibilities in your hand. Indulge in things you enjoy such as hanging out with friends, reading books, picking up a new hobby, playing sports, or watching a favourite TV show. Getting involved in your favourite activities will enhance your working capabilities, which in turn help you to tackle responsibilities in a better way.

Balancing college life and an internship is not an easy task. However, if you set your goals by following a systematic schedule, you can accomplish all your tasks without sacrificing your education.