Sophomore year is the year that students get a little too excited about college life. It doesn’t sound possible for one to be too motivated, but all the extra things sophomores tend to take on beyond classes can become exhausting and cause them to crash.

Sophomores in particular (although this is the case for many in other classes as well) tend to take on membership in too many student organizations, demanding internships and time-consuming jobs. We worry about beefing up our resumes and impressing future employers. Since we see everyone else around us working to the point that they’re only getting a few hours of sleep, we feel like we need to do the same or else we’ll fall behind.

It’s actually the exact opposite.

Those of us who choose one or two extra things to dedicate ourselves to will be much more successful than those who take on even three or four. Say a student has a job that requires 10 hours a week. On top of that, they play club soccer, which takes up another six and they are the president of a student organization, which takes up another four. A job, sport and student org doesn’t seem like that crazy of a schedule, but that’s an extra 20 hours a week on top of 16 hours of school plus homework. There are only 112 work hours in a week if we get eight hours of sleep each night.

Sometimes doing everything we’d like just isn’t possible. You could join five clubs, volunteer and have a job, but how much would you really be able to give to each of those commitments? Dedicating your time to a few quality commitments will yield a  greater return than  many half-hearted extracurricular investments.

The soccer player who shows up to practice exhausted from getting three hours of sleep isn’t going to get much out of the practice herself, and her teammates certainly won’t appreciate her fatigue on game day.

Overworking yourself will start to affect your classes as well. Aren’t classes the reason we’re all here? Sometimes it seems like classes are just a small aspect of college – a bonus tacked on to all of our other responsibilities. It shouldn’t be that way.

All students (sophomores especially) should start taking care of themselves more. It’s okay to take a little bit of a breather every once in awhile. Continue your dedication to the things you really care about, but drop the things that are just resume-fillers and time-consumers.