After the 9-to-5

Courtesy/Meghan Pascual

Work-life balance is much harder than you think. The transition from high school to college marks a time when you truly start to live where you work. For me, that means classes in the morning, club meetings at night and fun sprinkled in whenever I have time. I found a flow in this new norm, and I enjoy being busy enough that finding a couple hours to go on a walk with friends or fitting in a yoga class became fun. 

However, this summer, I traded in my nonstop schedule for a structured, corporate 9-5 working in communications. I enjoyed the newness, the business clothes and the people I worked with. Despite my unexpected appreciation for corporate life, when I wasn’t working, I couldn’t shake the feeling of boredom, of being unproductive. 

If 8 hours of my day and 40 hours of my week were taken up by work, what could I do to fill in the gaps?

I started small and searched on social media to see if this phenomenon was experienced by anyone else, specifically new post-college grads going into the workforce for the first time. What I found was that many people felt similarly, and instead of having hour-long blocks of classes and clubs, the larger 8-hour stretch made doing things after the 9-5 almost impossible.

An article by Fast Company discussed how Gen Z has navigated the corporate transition, with many turning to social media. While some people ask for practical tips, many of the videos talk about feeling isolated or burnt out from the new adjustment.

When we feel imbalanced, it makes it easy to forget the small changes we can make to move toward equilibrium. Around 66% of American employees say that they do not have a work-life balance. Hobbies get lost, and we neglect ways to regulate our nervous systems after a long day. This isn’t the way it has to be, though, and making a plan to conquer it is a good first step. 

From there, I worked to try to take back my time before and after going into the office, and began making small weekly lists to knock out major tasks: Call 2 different friends, go on a walk, bake a new recipe. I also made an effort to connect more with the people I worked with, going to lunch on the weekends or taking part in company-bonding at a bingo night (unlikely but actually one of my favorite memories of the summer). 

These goals made my work feel more human instead of transactional, and in turn made my workdays go by faster. By making things easier to digest, I started to take back the balance that I had so quickly lost.

I do not claim to be an expert in the complex field of corporate work, but my experience helps to reassure me that you can keep personal projects and hobbies alive while having structured weekdays. Similar to how I operate in college, finding the gaps in a busy schedule can help provide the clarity and calm you need to get through midterms, meetings and beyond.

Strike Out,

Meghan Pascual

Editor: Maia Geraci

Athens