Issue 4: The Life Balance Myth
Balance is one of those words that is overused and mostly seems unattainable. As young women we are taught that we must balance our work with our family commitments, we must balance studying and our career goals with seeking Islamic knowledge. As we have grown into adults with deep relationships with our friends and companions we have learnt that we must also balance how much we give with how much we take.
I have had quite the tumultuous journey when it comes to balancing my studies with my social life. Being thrown into Medicine is daunting at first, especially when you are surrounded by your peers who have spent their gap years travelling across South East Asia or working in refugee camps. You soon come to realise that your journey up until now has been to get into Medicine and now that you’re here you realise that just being a medic isn’t enough.
I was barely keeping my head above water with my degree. The content was overwhelming and the sheer amount of knowledge we had to consume in the first two years was unimaginable. I decided early on that I didn’t care much for societies and events and I was going to keep my head down and study. That was until I realised I wanted to make the most of my university experience with the friends I had made there, so began attending all the events I could and spending hours chatting and laughing in the library. But don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all fun and games, when it got to exam season it was brutal; 12-14 hour days on very little sleep and near to no hope of ever getting past this. I remember thinking to myself ‘it doesn’t matter if I kill myself revising, as long as I pass’.
And then to my dismay, I failed an exam in second year. It was one exam and it broke me. But it is also one of the experiences I am most grateful for. It is only when the worst imaginable thing happens (I know I sound like a drama queen but failing an exam for someone who’s always excelled in academics truly does feel like the end of the world) that you realise that an all-or-nothing attitude to life is unsustainable. I failed that exam, and had to spend my summer revising for the resit, but the entire process shifted something in me.
I promised myself I would now make the most of my third year. I saw that studying ridiculous hours with no respite did not actually mean I was going to do well so decided to study normal human hours while doing other projects. I joined the fundraising team in a charity that works to provide maternal healthcare in resource poor settings and even went to Bangladesh for charity work. This was also the period where I co-founded Hawaa Empowerment and Hanaa and I were laying down the brickwork to this mammoth project of providing safe spaces for Muslim women to excel audaciously. Not only this, I was also meeting up with a lot of friends and making so many memories. I went travelling whenever I could. I tried my best to not miss family events. It was a good year. I learnt the art of balance. I learnt that it was so closely intertwined with organisation, resilience and patience.
Fast forward two years. I was burnt out. Balancing all these roles alongside studying Medicine which was just getting harder and harder by the day was becoming too much to handle. I was losing interest and motivation in my projects. I was finding it hard to prioritise different tasks. Everything started to feel like a chore. That’s when I realised I was no longer balancing things properly. Medicine was always the goal. I had to remind myself that Medicine was my priority and all other projects were amazing and taught me so much but my main goals and ambitions in life would and could not be achieved if I didn’t become a doctor. So I had to rethink things a little. I left my role in the charity. This left Medicine and Hawaa Empowerment and those were the two main things I had to focus on as I neared the end of my journey in medical school. That decision, in that point in time, was the best decision for me. I still had the two main things I was passionate about, my two main goals in life were with me. But it also left space for myself. For me to not feel bad if I spent a day binging Netflix because I had too much to do. For me to spend a day with my friends and not need to worry about going to the library after. It gave me more time which helped me to balance things a bit better.
The moral of my story is: study/life balance is a myth. There is no one answer fits all. But my advice to young students would be to make sure you do something other than study. Find a passion project, join a group, create one. Give yourself something other than your degree. It will be a welcoming distraction. But also, if you have too much going on in your life. If you’re dealing with health issues, or family/ work commitments and you don’t feel like you have the capacity to do anything extra - don’t. Don't feel bad. We live in a world where toxic productivity is praised and these unhealthy standards are becoming so detrimental to the mental health of so many young people. Allah does not ask for perfection, only that you do your best. Do what is best for you. If that’s spending three hours in the library and then coming home to play Play station for the rest of the day, so be it. But every six months, check in with yourself. Ask yourself if you’re stretching yourself too thin or if you think you have capacity to do more. Be that volunteering in an event, or starting that small business. Just do not settle. You’ll soon come to realise that although balance is scary and seems impossible, it is not. It’s just an ever changing notion that changes with you.
-Nazia Ali