How to Create a Balanced Semester Schedule

Many students get into college and glut themselves on courses pertaining only to their majors.  That mentality often leads to burnout by sophomore year, and then a change in major shortly thereafter.

Like our bodies, our brains need a balanced diet.  You can’t live on meat alone, you need vegetables, starches, and the occasional treat to stay happy and healthy.  

Creating a well-balanced semester course load will help prevent burnout and keep you from feeling drained at the end of every semester.  It is one of the best self-care tactics you can take in college and may even help you graduate on time.

Protein 

Whether you are vegan or a full blown carnivoir, most of us build our meals around protein.  Lean protein is a major fuel for our bodies and keeps us full for longer.

It is the same for your mind.  These are the courses you should build your semester around.  Often, they are courses in your major that have to be taken right now so you can graduate on time.  There is no wiggle room here, you will take these one or two courses this semester or you might as well change majors.

It is important to recognize that not all your major requirements will fall in this category.  Just the ones with time constraints.

For example: when I was in college, I could take control theory at conceivably any point.  There weren’t any classes dependent on it, and it only required the basic freshman courses as a prerequisite.  It was an insanely hard class, but I could move it around and fit it in.  Conversely, orbits had to be taken first semester of Junior year or I would be adding an entire year onto my major.  Orbits was a protein class, control theory was not.

Veggies

In my previous example we spoke about control theory: a difficult class that could be fit into any semester.  Those are the vegetable courses.

You need to take them for your major.  They may be unpleasant or difficult, but you can pick which one you want with each semester.

This is important.  Because these courses are difficult and required, but flexible in placement, you need to be careful where you put them so they don’t create a semester that is too difficult.

I recommend registering for at least 2 per semester with the intent of dropping one within the add/ drop period.  This gives you the opportunity to see how those courses pair with the courses that cannot be moved.  Often, you will find that one course will have a better layout or course expectations for the semester you are in.  

At the same time, you will get exposure to the other vegetable courses so you are familiar with their course load and can pair them with an appropriate protein course.

The overall difficulty of your vegetable-protein combination should be approximately equal every semester.  Some veggie courses will be easy and some will be hard.  The key is to match an easy veggie course with a hard protein course and vice versa.

Starch

Most students will load up on vegetable and protein courses and skip the starch entirely.  But skipping the starch definitely do you a disservice.

Starch courses cover the familiar.  They are often easy A’s and generally take place outside of the major.  Often, they are modes of developing hobbies or exploring new interests.  Often, starch courses can be turned into a minor or certificate in your program.

As an example, my father loves to read.  When he went to college he found it difficult to find time for reading.  So, even though he was an accounting major, he took literature courses.  Those courses gave him an excuse to read.  Not long after he started taking the courses, he found he could combine them into a minor.  

He wanted to read and found a way to get credit for reading.  It relaxed him, gave him homework that was easy, and gave him a class he would look forward to every week.

The best starch courses: complement your major without being part of your major, make you feel relaxed, give you something to look forward to, and are easy A’s.

Look for classes in hobbies you already enjoy and for survey courses.

Dessert

Everyone needs a dessert course every semester.

This is the course who’s homework you get excited about.  It should give you something to look forward to after you finish your protein and vegetable courses.  Assuming the course gives you homework at all.

Your dessert course should be such an easy A you don’t really have to think about it, while at the same time energizing your week.

Some of my favorite dessert courses were: yoga (I took this every semester), introduction to martial arts, comparative religion, the evolution of language, and a survey course on terrorism and extremist ideology.

The courses were quirky, had very little homework, projects instead of tests, and were fun.  Most had very little to do with my major or minors, and generally had little to do with my life overall.  But man were they fun, and now I have some fun factoids I can use in pirates.

Create a balanced meal

It is important to balance the difficulty of the courses you take each semester so you don’t wind up in a situation where all the most difficult courses are in the same semester.  Ideally you would never have an easy semester and you would never have a difficult semester– they should all be middle of the road.

To help make sure all your semesters are manageable, I recommend you register for your protein courses, and then register for all the vegetable and starch courses you think might work with your protein courses for the semester.  Then drop vegetable and starch courses during the drop/ add period until you have a manageable schedule with a manageable course load.

Do not be afraid to drop or add classes during the drop/ add period.  That is what it is there for.  Remember: a bad grade stays on your transcript, a dropped class early in the semester doesn’t really get recorded.

Most of all, make sure you have time for fun in your schedule.  Register for a dessert course so you have time built into your schedule to develop a hobby you already enjoy or learn something unrelated that interests you.

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