The importance of having a social life in college

Keeping up with school work, classes, homework, and studying is obviously extremely important. However, I think it is almost as important to have a healthy balance of school and social life. Sometimes it can be difficult to maintain school work while also keeping up with the college social life. Ensuring a healthy balance of social life and school is also extremely important for the mental health of all college students. If students are constantly neck deep in books and stuck in a constant rotation of stress and work, it creates a very unhealthy routine for a college student. As silly as it may sound, college is not only about the school work, it is also about the experience, the friendships, and the fun. Taking away from your college experience because you are drowning in school work is only going to make college seem like a bad and depressing memory.

The best piece of advice I can give any college student, is to embrace it all and have fun, because time flashes before your eyes. Finding and having valuable college friendships improve social life, lead us to success, and make the education feel more satisfying. In order to find friends and improve your social life, does NOT mean you have to go to parties, or drink, or smoke, or give into any kind of peer pressure. Just going to the library with classmates, going to the dining hall with you dorm roommate, or even just talking to your classmates and forming relationships, are all extremely simple things that will change your college experience, for the better. Maintaining friendships in college and keeping up with the social scene in college can also help students improve their mental health by decreasing anxiety and depression, improve self-esteem, and allow them to build healthy relationships. In my experience, I unfortunately was a freshman at Monmouth University during Covid which extremely limited us students from doing any of these things, but I was still able to make the most amazing connections and find my best friends, girls who will one day be my bridesmaids.

I am forever grateful to myself for breaking out of my shell freshman year and going completely out of my comfort zone in order to make the friends I did, and have the amazing experience that I did. In conclusion, having a successful social life will make the college experience so much better, easier and satisfying for students. It can surely be difficult to break yourself out of your own shell, but it is also so worth it. I have met the best people and made the best memories and I just hope all students will take my advice when I say that this is the most important part of college. Enjoy it! Embrace it! Go to that party! And live it up!