Grades Are Important, So Is Having a Life
Class, library, apartment, repeat. You came a long way to do more than that.
Daniel V Pack
9/15/20262 min read
I lived in Los Angeles for ten years. People still ask me about it. Have you been to this beach, did you go to that neighborhood, what did you think of this place everybody goes to. Most of the time my answer is no. I’m an introvert, and I spent most of those ten years in my apartment. I had a whole city outside the door and I didn’t really go look at it.
I ran English conversation groups for international students, and I got in the habit of asking what they’d done that week. The answer was almost always some version of schoolwork. Class, library, apartment. Library again, sometimes until 2 a.m. Then class. They were tired, and they had every reason to be.
None of that is laziness or bad planning. It’s the opposite. You worked hard to get here, and that work ethic doesn’t switch off once you land. It’s built into you. So you keep going, and the loop closes, and a semester goes by where the only thing you saw was the inside of three buildings.
Don’t get me wrong, your grades are important, but you also have to take care of having a life. Otherwise it’s like flying to Las Vegas and never leaving your hotel room.
In the conversation groups I started assigning homework, and the whole point of it wasn’t learning English. Come back next week and tell me a story about something fun you did. Show me a picture of where you went. A restaurant, a trip, a movie, a book.
And they did. Somebody would come back with a restaurant they’d tried with a few other students. Somebody else had pictures from Niagara Falls. They’d tell the story and the rest of the group would ask questions.
I won’t claim the homework is what got them out the door. Most of them probably had those plans already. But it put the idea on the table that these things counted.
Explore life off campus. Whatever school you’re at, NYU, Michigan State, UCLA, every college is surrounded by a town or a city, so take a look around. Leave campus. Take a weekend trip. Take a little vacation over break. If all you wanted to see was a classroom and a library, you could have stayed home and gone to school. You chose to come to the US. Why not get out and see a little of it?
The rest is whatever de-stresses you. Seeing friends. Video games. Pickup soccer, the gym, a hike, a restaurant you haven’t tried. As long as you’re not in a classroom or a library, it counts.
There’s no deadline on a hike, and nobody is going to grade dinner with your friends.
Look, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and the stress and anxiety are running high, take advantage of your campus counseling center. It’s usually already covered by what you pay, and one conversation commits you to nothing. And if you’re in a bad place right now, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741. Both are free and open all night.
Your assignments aren’t going anywhere. There will always be more. The one thing you have to do in the middle of all of it is take care of yourself, and that one isn’t going anywhere either.
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