This piece is mostly coming from the (almost retired) student leader in me. Especially if you are balancing multiple leadership roles, this has to be the most important lesson. Last semester, I was the President of my sorority and Vice President of Gear and Triangle while being in smaller roles on two other executive boards, serving as a Peer Leader, and being involved in numerous other organizations and activities. While I prefer having a packed schedule with different commitments, it is still always so important to be able to mentally take a break from everything. Too often I found myself catering to the needs of others instead of taking a step back and understanding how I needed to be supporting myself at the time. Eventually, I believe I have gotten really good at this type of balance.
While there have been battles I’ve off-the-bat decided not to pick, there have also been ones that I decided to give up because they were either never worth my time or weren’t worth my time anymore. An example here is previously wasting my energy on someone who only made me frustrated. Last semester, I finally decided that they were actually worth a negative amount of my time and I actually couldn’t care less about them, so I just didn’t give them any energy. This is a person who constantly tries to take credit for things that I do, does not pull their weight a single bit in group projects (but, of course, tries to make it look like they did everything), and here’s the real zinger: refuses to pronounce my name correctly. I spent so many semesters pretending to tolerate this person when it actually just made my blood boil to be around them. And then last semester, I kinda just decided to give up. There was nothing I could do to change this person, and we are on totally separate planes of emotional intelligence. I was just really wasting so much energy for no reason. And guess what, it has been such a weight lifted off my shoulders. Obviously, I am still civil, but I just really don’t care what they think about me or say about me because, ultimately, it does not have any effect on me.
Once you start to get the hang of understanding what is worth your time and energy, you can just start saving it before getting invested in anything not worth your time. One example of a battle I explicitly chose not to pick (and a pretty small one) is the use of slack threads. In addition to being in a sorority, I am also a sweetheart of a fraternity, so I am in Slack workspaces for both organizations. In the fraternity Slack, there is a huge stigma around just continuously replying to others’ messages in the channel instead of using threads. And if you do make the mistake of responding to a message without using threads, you will be immediately bombarded with everyone reacting to your message using the “spool of thread” emoji. Comparatively, my sorority’s Slack is a mess—barely anyone uses threads, and sometimes, you have to scroll so far to find where the conversation even started. While, yes, a more organized Slack with everyone putting messages in threads is a lot easier to maintain, it was a battle I chose not to even think about. I knew that it was nearly impossible to ask sixty people to change the way that they have been messaging and for them to always get it right after the idea was proposed the first time. The disorganization bothered me, but ultimately I had no desire to spend my time on something so small; it’s a battle I chose not to pick.
At the end of the day, spend your energy in a way that you are proud of and that is going to align most with your goals.
