Not sure how to handle feeling overwhelmed

I’m behind on my uni work despite spending all weekdays working on it. I get distracted easily and find it difficult to get the tasks done despite them being quite simple. At the moment, I work both weekend days, which is causing me stress. I used to work only one weekend day and I was able to manage that and stay on top of my work. I feel that studying all week and then working at the weekend is burning me out as it gives me very little time to spend with family or to just relax.
Should I ask if I can reduce my part-time to one day again or just try and push through it? It’s been keeping me up at night and I’ve been having breakdowns/panic attacks because of it. Though I worry that because my job is short-staffed, I wouldn’t be given reduced working time. It also means I would earn less and have to budget more, but I don’t live in accommodation so it would mainly be for savings.
Sorry if it’s a bit long, but I’m really unsure how to proceed.

Reply 1

ThatguyAl

Original post by Anonymous #1

I used to work part-time (~20hrs/week) when I was at Uni a few years back so I can relate, it is incredibly tough.
I remember it becoming especially tough when getting close to an exam period and then even more when I started looking & applying for graduate jobs.

Since I'm a more introverted person I didn't have the need to socialise a lot, basically I could recharge better when being alone, but even then I barely had any time off except for summer breaks when I worked more to save some money.

I didn't have any options because the part-time job was the only way I could pay for my bills, food, etc., but if you can afford I'd suggest trying to reduce your work hours since your goal is to graduate from the University with a good degree. Have a chat with your work manager, I'm sure they'll understand your situation.

Some tips that helped me:

Plan your leisure time as well as your study time. It used to help me mentally when I knew that say this Friday I can just forget about everything and play video games for 4 hours straight and not feel guilty about it.

Try to move work away from your study days and try to have at least one day free from any commitments if at all possible. In my case that day was Wednesday (we had no lectures on Wednesdays for some reason) and I worked weekends on 5-10hr shifts.

Regarding focusing issues, first of all understand that everyone has these problems and there is nothing wrong with you. Secondly, I remember getting into environment that promoted studying and removed distractions has helped me a lot. I used to study at the Uni library quite frequently because of that. It's quiet there, all resources are available (books or online), and you can't just sit around and watch youtube videos or play games for hours. I also remember that doing homework & assignments right after the lectures has helped a lot too since what I learnt was still fresh in my memory.

Having some sort of study plan helped me too. It very much depends on your goals, etc., but just as an example I used something like this back when I was preparing for my exams - Say for this exam I have to prepare 20 topics. Preparing for a topic would take me about 2 hours each, so total 40 hours is what I need to commit to to be ready; and I have 3 months or 12 weeks left until the exam. That means I gotta commit about 3-4 hours a week starting from this week to prepare myself for the upcoming exam. Then I'd stick two 2-hour "study sessions" in my calendar (a paper calendar or google calendar, doesn't matter, whatever works for you) and committed to that schedule. With the plan in place I had nothing to worry about because I knew if I studied as I had planned I would've been ready for the exam. The plan didn't work 100%, sometime I had other commitments, the other times I was just being lazy, but a poorly executed plan is better than having no plan and even then I still felt much better prepared and more at peace with my progress.