It happens all the time at the dining hall: after waiting in line for approximately a million years, as soon as I see the buffet in front of me I get a bit overeager. I can’t just take one scoop of mashed potatoes, I see that delicious fluffy bread and even salmon. Shoot. As I pass the sad looking pan of veggies, I realize I’m missing my greens and reluctantly pile roasted broccoli onto my now-overflowing plate.

And, as soon as I sit down, I realize that my eyes were far larger than my stomach. The mashed potatoes and dessert are downed in seconds, leaving only a sad pile of picked through vegetables that I’ll sit with until I’ve convinced myself I made a healthy choice by at least getting carrots.

Arranging my schedule for this semester seems a bit like a trip to the dining hall. The waitlists for a few of my classes were so long that I didn’t bother standing in line. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted so I ended up getting a little bit of everything. One professor told me I should work at the Writing Center, another said I should try being a tutor at the Modern Languages Resource Center and to make sure I wouldn’t let French fall by the wayside. As I have no idea what I want to be doing, I took some of everyone else’s suggestions and went to go try them out.

When classes actually started, I was reminded of how there are only so many hours in a day, and it quickly hit me that I had grossly overstuffed my plate. There was no way for me to possibly juggle five classes and three part time jobs  – not to mention the homework, group work, and staff meetings that came attached.

As much as I want to do everything, and to create the perfect balance of academic classes, work, and fun, I can’t. The workload from even the first week loomed so large on my planner that I kept gravitating towards the quick filler assignments without tackling anything else.

I hate to admit it, but I had bitten off more than I could chew. The semester had barely even started and I was already feeling overwhelmed. So, after a tearful call to my mom, I sat down and really thought about which aspects of my day I enjoyed, which I dreaded, and which might have to wait for later.

The first to go was working as a French tutor. As much as I wished that I could juggle the commitment, I knew that I accepted that responsibility in the same way I chose to eat carrots with dinner. I had taken the job because I thought it would make me seem like a more well rounded person, it would be nice padding on my resumé, easy money because students rarely come in to be tutored, and mostly because I didn’t want to let down one of my favorite professors. But at the end of the day, it isn’t what I look forward to doing. My French homework is always the last lingering assignment left on my to-do list, and I spend twice as much time avoiding it as the homework itself would take.

While the overachiever in me bemoans the idea, removing some of the parts of my schedule that I was subconsciously avoiding isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as I focus on pursuing things that I find energizing and intriguing, not just the dessert of the real world that is Netflix, having a lighter semester could help direct me towards a major. Discovering a passion takes time, and it isn’t always academic – I’m still working on remembering that there is more to the world than grades. With one less class comes more time for clubs, cementing friendships, and maybe even more time to pick up my once-loved camera that I’ve barely considered since freshman orientation.

I’m not sure where this semester will lead. But somewhere in the balance of schoolwork, work-work, and everything else, I hope to identify a mix things that I naturally gravitate towards, instead of just unenthusiastically continuing to push around the ‘obligatory’ veggies on my plate.