As an exchange student at the University of Connecticut, the first thing I was struck by was how big the campus is. The second thing was how busy it is. In a university with 24,356 undergraduates, it is easy to be a little overwhelmed. However, as you begin to settle into the day-to-day of life at this university, you realise that the business of university life here is normalised and routinised. It is easy to become swept up in the pace of life in this otherwise quiet pocket of Storrs, so much so that you find yourself wondering where all free time has gone. Ultimately, what I have found is that this campus runs on a “work hard, play hard” culture, one this article seeks to digest.
After a few weeks at UConn, I found that students all over the campus embody this duality. Attending lectures, you see a flurry of faces all eagerly chasing a 4.0 GPA. Then you would undoubtedly see the same faces at the next bar or frat party you would attend. At the UConn Storrs campus, there are a total of 41 different sororities and fraternity chapters that are college affiliated. After speaking to several friends and different fraternities and sororities last semester, one thing became abundantly clear: They live for this duality of a ‘work hard, play hard’ lifestyle. They would often be the last one dancing on a table at a party and the first one in a lecture theatre, in the library or at the gym the next morning.
However, there were an equal number of people who told me that they struggled to sustain this balance. At first it can feel great, like you are meeting every obstacle head on. By the middle of the semester though, many of my friends who had so much energy in the preceding weeks now just seemed drained. Some of the freshman pledges for fraternities that I had spoken to, either at the end of a party or in the run up to the next one, informed me that the entirety of their semester had either been spent pledging or cramming for the next quiz, test or essay.
Adding to this is a sports culture at UConn that is particularly pervasive. As a Division 1 sports school, the majority of the students I ran into as I began to find my feet at this giant school were fanatical about sports. Basketball takes the crown as the most popular sport on campus, with students religiously attending games, no matter how overworked they are or how busy their schedules get. This is exacerbated by the wave of advertisement and encouragement from the university for students to support the teams. Both through word of mouth and through social media pushes, the incentive to support UConn athletics looms incredibly large. Every third post on UConn’s Instagram page is related to sports, and every game I was able to attend in the fall packed to capacity.
With both the academic rigour, the intensity of sports and the prevalence of the social scene at UConn you begin to wonder: When do students get the time to rest? The answer is a simple one: They do not. Most of the people I was speaking to across my different classes said they were regularly getting less than six hours sleep a night. In a 16-week semester, this “all go” structure is bound to leave students fatigued.
For those Huskies who are brave enough to begin their days with a 9:30 AM lecture and end after the closing call of Ted’s Bar or Huskies Tavern at 1:30 AM, the cost and the reward are one and the same. The teetering possibility of exhaustion, mixed with the intoxicating thrill of being able to design your life however you want, is what makes university such a great time. I myself have found a lot to love with this philosophy.
It is often difficult to remember that a big part of university life is learning how to balance your time. Two years at my home university, the University of Warwick, taught me this. You go into the experience with a ‘kid in a candy store’ mentality. Wide-eyed freshmen gorge on as many new experiences as possible, only to find themselves in need of a lot of mental and physical rest on the other side. Being at UConn from August until December, without my immediate family or friendship network, taught me the need to find this again. It is different for everyone, but when you do, everything else falls into place.
Arriving back at Storrs in the early hours of Saturday morning after a five-week break, I found the campus brought back to life. There was a new cohort of exchange students and several new faces in my classes and lectures. After just one week at college though, you begin to feel that familiar sense of business baying, whether in the packed recreation centre at 7 p.m. on a Monday night, the classes where students are tripping over each other to find something intelligent to say or in the bars that are crowded three rows deep to get a drink.
I have no doubt that the coming semester at UConn’s Storrs campus will be a busy one. My lesson to the undergraduate students is this though: ‘Work hard, play hard’, but make sure you maintain equilibrium. Whatever that may look like for you. There is a lot of diversity in thinking, ideas and paths taken at this university. However, if there is one thing that people unify behind it is a “students today, Huskies forever” mindset. College may end after four years, but the lessons it gives you are with you forever. Learning how to contend with the business of life now may be one of the best things that Huskies of all ages can do.