How I Balance School, Travel, and Social Life

Officially being in the second to last week of studying abroad here in Nagoya, we have now entered exam season. Suddenly the “study” part of “study abroad” is making itself really known. Luckily for me, most of my “exams” are papers or projects that I have already completed but there are still a few presentations and actual exams that need to be done. 

As a serial procrastinator, this stuff isn’t easy. Since studying here, I can confirm that Japan is honestly more strict about deadlines than America is and it’s hard to balance school, travel and social life. Now as much as I’d love to just travel every day or hang out with my friends in Sakae, we unfortunately live in a reality where the study part of study abroad should be my priority. However, I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty good hang of how to healthily balance my life here in Japan so here’s how I do it!

• Living with a host family

If I’m going to be honest, if I didn’t live with a host family I am 99% sure my school, life, balance would be messed up. Living with a host family takes a lot off my shoulder because I don’t need to worry about breakfast or dinner. That is a huge plus in maintaining a good balance because I can focus way more on things like schoolwork in the time I would’ve probably spent figuring out what I need to eat or cook. It also helps me balance my social and travel life because I want to spend time with them. I don’t go out as much with my friends and instead stay in half of the time to hang out with my host family. 

• Setting aside specific days

Let me explain. Here at Nanzan University, the schedule is different from your normal class schedule in America. If you’re in the Intensive Japanese Pathway, you go to classes 4 days out of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; you have two Japanese classes per day plus any other electives you’re taking) and get Wednesday off!

Because of this, I chose to set aside Wednesdays for studying specifically, that way there’s a confirmed day where I will/have to study. I also set aside Friday nights and Saturdays for plans with friends (if there are any) and then Sundays for schoolwork or going out with my host family. Obviously Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are set aside for classes, but by setting aside these specific days, I can easily plan out and balance my workload among the days I need to be productive or can go out. 

• Only traveling on breaks or IES Abroad field trips

I will be honest, I didn’t expect to have as many breaks as I did here at Nanzan. Nearly every single month we had a long weekend or weeklong break. As a result, I decided that I wouldn’t travel unless it was a break. So going to places like Osaka and Tokyo were only saved for a long weekend of break, unless it’s an important location like my family visiting. Only traveling on breaks made it easy to decide when I should travel and not impulsively decide, “Hey, I can buy a ticket to Osaka in five minutes. I should go!” It kept me very level headed on my travel choices and most of the time I would be able to travel with friends which made travel fares cheaper than if I was traveling alone. 

I was also able to travel a lot with IES through field trips, which were planned around our breaks as well, and got to travel to many different places for free!

I will admit, my school, social life and travel balance isn’t the best it can be but it works for me! Hopefully some of these things I do can help you achieve a good school, life, travel balance if you’re planning on studying abroad! Until next time!