KONDA: Prioritize your health before academics
Column: Pitch in
As a high school student who often stayed up well past midnight studying for tests, I used to scoff at my mother when she urged me to get to bed at 10 p.m.
I would often scratch my head in the kitchen, wondering if I should spend my spare 10 minutes eating breakfast or driving to school in a hurry. Most of the time, I did not think twice about my decisions, taking the obvious option without considering the consequences.
Needless to say, it can be hard to break habits. But transitioning to college forces you to take another look at your life and consider what can be done to make it better. And in this case, it means taking care of yourself. Whether it be prioritizing your physical health or your mental health, your body must be a priority.
It sounds simple, but many of us struggle to maintain a proper sleep schedule.
Considering the sleep stages, it is more beneficial if you sleep before midnight as you have optimal time to enter a deep sleep. That feeling of grogginess after sleeping at 4 a.m. is due to your body's inability to move past the REM stage and rest properly.
To be fair, I have had my share of late-night study sessions before midterm exams or even for a hasty paper submission. A once-in-a-while mindset kept me moving forward, although I was fighting an urge to crash down into bed. And I always regretted waking up in the morning feeling unmotivated and tired, telling myself that I would sleep at a reasonable time the following night.
Not getting an adequate amount of sleep can also affect your health adversely over time, increasing your chances of having high blood pressure or heart attacks. Although it seems minute as a college student, these consequences are crucial to consider.
Similarly, skipping meals or neglecting nutrition can be easily pushed to the side regarding academics. I have heard countless times from friends and classmates that they have unintentionally skipped meals because they were caught up in the demands of studies and extracurriculars all day. And suddenly, it is 10 p.m. with nothing more than a small, hastily eaten meal sustaining you throughout the day.
At the moment, it seems entirely unnecessary for you to break away from your concentration on reviewing cell biology to have a meal. But in reality, we should not be making our academic commitments so urgent that we cannot consider our basic needs.
Also, it is beneficial to maintain proper nutrition in college. A 2017 study comparing general dietary intake with academic performance in college and university students found a positive correlation between eating proper meals and having higher academic achievements. So, the better you eat, the better you are likely to perform.
I am guilty of it as well, but now I am deeply reflecting on how it has affected my relationship with proper eating habits and overall nutrition. That realization is the first step toward change, and overlooking meals can have consequences that no longer classify as the minor inconvenience of lunch before class. You need fuel to proceed through your day — that adrenaline rush before an exam cannot keep you going forever.
Many portions of physical health must be balanced with academics. It directly affects your ability to perform well in school. And physical and mental health are not isolated from each other — they are interconnected in a way that requires you to focus on both simultaneously.
Stress and anxiety are prevalent. While it can be beneficial in short spouts, burnout is real. Mundane activities such as sleeping well and eating lunch can feel like a challenge, and it can feel impossible to even get out of bed in the morning.
Above all else, the first step in maintaining your health is to have the desire for it. If you do not want to prioritize your health, get better sleep or nutrition or avoid stressing out for no reason, it will feel like another battle amongst it all. Engage with yourself and understand your priorities because there is no future without a healthy body.
Take it from my mom, who reminds me day and night that nothing is more important than maintaining my health. It does not matter if you momentarily fail to move forward because there are far more opportunities to come. You only have to be strong enough to try again.
Vaishnavi Konda is a sophomore at Rutgers Business School majoring in business analytics and information technology and minoring in linguistics. Her column, "Pitch In," runs on alternate Sundays.
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