Hannah S.

Photography by Hannah S.

One of the best lessons I’ve learned in my time at Georgia Tech is to make your well-being your highest priority. Something I’ve noticed in the past four years is that your typical Tech student works hard. This is great! It means that our campus achieves big things; the research innovation, job opportunities, and student organization achievement on this campus make it a great place to go to school. It also means that there is a pressure to do more. I’ve always felt the need to fill my schedule to the fullest extent possible. Sitting around with nothing to do didn’t satisfy me, and I found myself in multiple situations where I was drowning in work with a google calendar that was bursting at the seams.

It wasn’t until the middle of my term serving as the Panhellenic President that I realized my habits were unhealthy. I was overworked, experiencing extreme stress, and just generally unhappy. The nature of this role was stress inducing, especially given that we were pioneering the process to shift our highly-structured recruitment process to an online platform. The ambiguity of the COVID-19 pandemic along with my lack of experience and changed management put me in a tougher role as a student leader than I could have imagined. I was fortunate to have an incredible organization advisor and the sweetest friends who listened to my rants and uplifted me through the challenges, but I found myself being repetitive in my frustration.

I reached the point of my frustration where I felt like a puppet to the organization I lead, and I knew something needed to change. I learned to stand up for myself and not let Panhellenic be my job 24/7. The first step in this was trusting myself and remembering that I was doing my very best. Decisions I had to make for a group of 1500+ women were tough, and I was never going to please everyone. I found that one-on-one conversations cleared up the frustrations that naturally arise when big decisions are made and allowed me to make meaningful connections with chapter Presidents who were experiencing the same struggles as myself. I also learned that separating Panhellenic President Hannah from regular college student Hannah helped me compartmentalize stress and relax outside of meeting times. I blocked out hours when I would turn off notifications, never schedule meetings, and do something I enjoyed. I found joy in the mindlessness of going for a run or baking macarons in my kitchen.

I’m not sharing this story to say that I have discovered the perfect formula for balance. I’m sharing this to say that, while your commitments are important, you need to keep your commitment to your well-being above all else. Something my advisor shared with me while I was serving as the Panhellenic President was that the organization wasn’t going anywhere. If I chose to log out for an hour, a day, or even a week, it wasn’t going to disappear. She was right. I didn’t need to be spending all of my time working on this organization because, frankly, there was always more work to do. What mattered more was that I had time to do things for me. I know now that I am a better version of myself when I get enough sleep, have time to workout, and spend time with friends. When I do things that bring me joy, I carry that positivity into my other commitments.

There will always be an internal pressure to fill my schedule, but I now know how to take a step back from things and reflect on what's best for myself outside of my commitments. This is a lesson a lot of us learn after the fact, but it is important nonetheless. You are always priority number one.

Hannah S., Georgia Tech

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