Balancing an Internship: Allowing Your Personal Life to Flourish

By Katherine Schreiner

Any communications major would understand the importance of internships in their college career. You’re expected to maintain an internship while also completing classes, working on relationships, and keeping a healthy personal life. Interns can not put out their best work if they are mentally drained. It is important to ensure that personal life flourishing can help flourishing in all aspects of life.

Here are some tips and tricks for maintaining a healthy personal life:

1. Set specific time for personal tasks.

Planning can make or break the ability to mentally separate time for yourself and your internship. While you may be stuck to a tight schedule with your internship, your free time can be disorganized. Keeping an agenda for personal activities keeps structure, while allowing you to complete personal chores when necessary. This can apply to:

• Chores. Set aside time to keep your apartment clean.

• Appointments. Health and wellness will always come first.

• Homework. While internships are important, completing your work is just as important to work growth.

• Personal Fun. Anything from spending time doom scrolling on TikTok to going out with friends, scheduling time for fun will keep you in good spirits.

2. Set boundaries on internship timing.

Work time is work time. Personal time is personal time. Keep your time separate and burn out at a low by not blending the different times. You should respect your own time and not let work time push into personal time.

3. Apply to internships with a plan.

When looking on LinkedIn or other websites for a seasonal internship, it is important to check the job descriptions. Not only will it give you an idea on the work expected out of you and the pay, but the weekly time commitment necessary to the job. If a job requiring 18 hours a week may not work for you, maybe an internship requiring only 50 hours over a whole semester may be more fitting to your personal schedule. Apply only to the jobs that fit your time.

4. Keep work emails separate from personal emails.

No one wants their work life bleeding into their personal life. A great way to make that barrier between the two is to create different emails. While your work emails will hold all correspondence between yourself and coworkers, your personal email can receive promotional emails, personal correspondence, and personal bills. When you check your email, it will apply to the specific “life” you’re in.