Balancing academics & extra curriculars ⚖️

A little background of what I did in Poly:

- I was an exco in 3 CCAs

- Active volunteer thru CCAs & external orgs

- Got Minor in Psychology thru PLP (smt that NP offers, not sure abt other polys)

- Won in a recognised business competition

- Graduated with Diploma with Merit from a business course

- Did 2 Internships (One school & one self sourced)

I did quite a lot in poly and it’s not easy balancing my academics and external commitments :”) Hence I created some rules for myself so can I keep up with my school curriculum while fulfilling my commitments! Let me share of them here, hopefully it helps 🤠

1. Plan ahead before semester starts

Well at least try to. When nearing to the start of a new semester, lecturers will send out the curriculum materials. Hence, from there I would note of all the test periods, assignment and project due dates onto my calendar. This lets me know what to expect in the coming weeks and prep in advance for it. Additionally, during the holidays, I would research more on the mod I m studying just to gauge if the mod would be easy or hard to me to tackle. This would give me a general idea of what I can expect in the upcoming semester 🙃

2. Lectures

I know a lot of people tend to speed up or skip parts of lecture videos because it gets boring 🥲 But honestly, I don’t rlly recommend it bc I feel that lecturers tend to give exam tips during the lectures which are super beneficial. Another point is to understand your lectures so you don’t have to review it again when exam period nears …

3. Study smart

This is a continuation from the previous point, when you reach the exam period, focus solely on tutorials and past papers qns. In business, my lecturers love setting similar qns from there so do the qns until you are very familiar with it!!! For individual assignments, I always submit it 1 day before the dateline. I don’t recommend submitting it too early bc sometimes the lecturers will give last minute tips that wld help a lot. But also don’t submit too late bc there might be unknown maintenance on the website 💀 so submitting it 1 day before always works for me

4. Don’t overload yourself

I am an ambitious individual and love to pack my schedule to the brim to keep me motivated. But this caused me to have a burnout period where I get so stressed about everything that lost focus on my studies. SOO to avoid this, do know your limits. Know how much commitments you can handle on your plate, sufficient enough for you to be on track on with your studies. Sometimes it’s about trial and error, testing if you have the capacity to handle different commitments 🫡

5. Make friends and have fun

I only managed to commit to my CCAs, bc I have good friends there that I can enjoy spending time with 😙 Altho it took up a lot of my time and effort but it did not felt like a burden but an enjoyable journey 🥰 And honestly, CCAs played a big part of my poly life and I m super grateful for it ✨

Just some extra pointers before I end my post, for my minor in applied psychology, I got it by completing 3 semesters worth of modules! Altho it’s an extra mod but I really enjoyed the course and had lots of fun 🌿 The grades I got from the mods are excluded from my GPA so it’s rlly fun with no stress 😎

Alright that’s all for my tips! Lmk if you want more tips on building your portfolio ☃️ but I hope this post would help you somehow 🧍‍♀️

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