How to Survive Graduate School and Have a Social Life

Graduate school is tough academically, but it can also stop a thriving social life dead in its tracks. While it can seem nearly impossible to keep up with both school and friends, there are some tricks to surviving graduate school while still maintaining some semblance of a social life.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Day planner

1. Make a schedule and stick to it. The work load in graduate school is pretty intense, and having a job makes it even tougher. Use a day planner or a calendar to figure out exactly what you need to do every day to keep up.
2. Give yourself time to screw around. Everyone needs a break, and that includes you. Your work, your social life and your sanity will suffer if you don’t schedule some fun time. Give yourself one day a week, every other weekend, or a couple hours a day when you won’t do any homework. Use that “free time” to catch up on whatever you feel like you’ve been missing.
3. Who says you can’t combine work and fun? You’ll have research to do for your thesis project, and that often involves going to places off the beaten track. When you can, take a friend or two with you on your research fieldtrips. You’ll have more fun, and you’ll have the opportunity to hang out while you’re getting stuff done.
4. Prune your social circle. You won’t survive graduate school if all you do is socialize. However, you won’t have a rewarding social life if you spread yourself too thinly across too many people. Decide who the important people in your life are, and refocus your efforts on spending time with them. You can always make new acquaintances when you’re done with school.
5. Have or attend parties to occasionally touch base with people you haven’t seen in awhile.
6. Learn to be satisfied with less. You probably won’t be able to spend all night at the bar with your best friend anymore, but you can spend an hour instead. Focus on the quality and not the quantity of time you spend on your social life.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep up with friends in other ways. You may not be able to hang out one week, but you can send a card or an email.
• Don’t be afraid to say no. If someone invites you to something you can’t or don’t want to attend, politely decline. You’re in graduate school; you need to spend your social hours with people you really care about.