It's commonly thought that in order to get great grades in college (3.9+) that one must make sacrifices in his/her social life and exercise regimen. We all know of the kids who "grind" their way through, sacrificing parties, intramural athletics and other activities in order to get ahead academically. Having been both an academic "grind" myself as well as a socialite (in different semesters) my academic results have surprised me. In a semester where I took mostly quantitative/foreign language college courses and partied through it like crazy, I achieved a 4.0 while I felt that achieving the same 4.0 in another semester where I hit the books like mad sacrificing much of my extracurricular activities and partying only very occasionally - led to serious procrastination that I had never experienced before.
Being "under the gun" with tight deadlines and what not allowed me to stay on my "A" game while when I freed up more time for myself - I wasted it and learned at a slower pace imo.
Now why is any of this important? Many students who want great grades (esp those at non targets) struggle with course selections and participation in extracurriculars/partying and have fears that extracurricular activity can devastate grades. It's a conflict between enjoying one's life as a college student and balancing one's desire to enter a career on wall street.
Given that bankers work so much anyway, I feel as though balancing academics with extracurriculars during college is critical to being able to maintain some type of work-life balance in the real world. Everyone makes claims of bankers they know who are never able to do anything but work, but I refuse to believe this. Balance is possible given the right attitude.
I created this thread in order to learn from the users of WSO about work/life balance - in college and on wall street. Does balance actually have merit and can it improve performance? Or is "balance" well intended bs put forth by individuals who just don't have the same fire in the belly to succeed as the finance "gunners" do?
What you choose to do will vary from person to person and major to major (many will argue leisure studies requires less effort to balance than a double major in electrical engineering and astrophysics). In college I spent 20 hrs/week working for my department and many times 40 hrs/week with a professor on research (in hindsight that might be excessive but I enjoyed it most of the time, oh well). This didn't leave a lot of time for actual school work, sleep, and a life. I tried to balance the three and ended up with a 3.15 final GPA as an engineer which got me into an engineering position at a F100 company without any difficulty working 45 hrs/week, which seems like nothing after going many semesters sleeping 4-5 hrs/night.
Now I want to get into consulting...oops.
"people say they know bankers who say the only thing they do is work, but I refuse to believe this" ahahahahaha. Hilarious to try and correlate balance in school to balance when you're working on wall street, or in some other capacity that requires tons of work.
I'm not sure how you could find "good work-life balance" if you're working 80+ hours a week. Say your work hours are 8AM-11PM; a decent 75 hours a work week. Throw in a solid yet unsubstantial 10 hour day Saturday from 10AM-8PM. This is an easy week on Wall Street. You do the math to find "balance."
Yes, a balanced life will no doubt boost performance, but on Wall Street finding balance is really not in your hands.
And balance is not bs made up by people who don't "have the fire in their belly" to succeed. You my friend, are retarded.
Tl;dr. It is about efficiency. If you increase the efficiency with which you study, it will leave with more time to pursure other activities.
dont need to work hard just need to be fucking smart. easy.
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