A division of an exchange student's time
At home and in High school I always felt overwhelmed by all the stuff I had to do, I would try to treat everything with the same level of importance. In the past I have not been good at prioritizing and very good at procrastinating. Which isn't very fun when you give everything a strong sense of commitment, so everything would get done but was often late and I was working very inefficiently. This year there's been a huge change, maybe just because I don't live at home anymore, but also because my exchange year has given me the chance to do a full reset.
This year I've been much busier and have been waaay more productive. Here's my scheduling and how I divide it up:
"Required" Time:
For me this is going to school and mandatory YFU gatherings, and for 4 weeks, my Internship (will describe below). which, are the things I'm officially here for. What's awesome/weird for me is that I don't need grades this year. I still do homework, but I am less of a perfectionist about it and I just sit down and crank it out. There's a certain comfort in knowing that the most important thing is is to just show up. For others this would be college classes and work. In high school I often stayed home from school because I hadn't finished the homework, which created a vicious cycle. I hope I maintain this attitude for College next year and don't turn into one of those students who ditches Lectures to work on a paper for the same class.
"Committed" Time:
This is stuff that I don't need to do, but do consistently anyway because I actively commit. For me here it's Choir, Theater, Grüne Jugend, The Greenpeace energy committee. I am absent from this stuff from time to time which is totally fine, and they're not fun every single time. These are things that I picked out myself and they have led to meeting sooo many people and got me into so many awesome events, these are also commitments which I have accumulated over time here.
Exchange Students: Don't worry if you have trouble finding a club or group for your particular interests, just keep your eyes and ears open and keep an open mind and don't be afraid to ask people if they know what kind of groups there are that do ____. Don't worry if it's not ideal. In terms of language, I can't even begin to describe how much specialized vocabulary I've learned from these groups (i.e Theater, Political, Environmental terms), and Grüne Jugend & Greenpeace are ideal atmospheres to improve speaking skills through discussions and debates.
To be clear, I got involved in the Grüne Jugend (green party, youth group) solely because of environmental stuff, but as I result I've learned an incredible amount about the political system in Germany in the process although I'm not interested in politics, but because I view it through the lens of Environmental Policy it becomes interesting through osmosis.
"Free" Time:
This could be further divided into alone and social activities, but for me they are pretty similar. This is often me hanging out with friends, writing my blog, going jogging, playing guitar, and my newest hobby: learning Chinese!
At first I had so much free time here that I didn't know what to do with it, as it got pushed aside by my Committed Time activities/events. During this year I've become someone who always equates interesting with fun, and when I'm not doing something productive I have a guilty voice in my head nagging me. So when I watch youtube it's Scishow and Ideachannel, when I'm playing a game online it's Memrise, and when I go jogging I listen to (and repeat) Pimsleur's Learn Mandarin. It may seem kinda intense, but I love it!
So that concludes my summary of how I spend/schedule my time on exchange, I hope I continue to do so back in the US because every day is a gift! I hope that the people who read this take the time to think about their own lives, and use their time so that there's never a dull moment.
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