Take A Break Podcast- Episode 1

The Take a Break podcast discusses stress and anxiety, particularly among students and young adults due to the pressure of comparison for success. The host is joined by a special guest, Samantha Holmesy, to discuss the challenges of balancing work, health, and social life. They talk about the overload of responsibilities and the lack of time for relaxation and self-care. They also touch on the importance of experiences over money and the need to slow down and enjoy life. The podcast aims to help listeners find ways to alleviate stress and prioritize their well-being. Hi, everyone. My name is Han Bang, and I am your host on the Take a Break podcast. Take a Break touches on all topics relating to stress, anxiety, and where it stems from. On today's episode, we'll be discussing stress that stems from pressures on students and young adults brought on by the comparison for success. Learn more on my website, hanbang.wordpress.com. Today, I have a special guest, Samantha Holmesy, joining us. Hi, guys. I'm Samantha, and I'm currently a junior at Rutgers University. I'm super excited to be on today's episode. I feel like we talk about this topic a lot, even before this podcast came out. Yeah, we do. Thank you for being here. Before we get started, I want to share my goal for your LLS podcast that guides you through your 20s. Hey, there, fellow 20-somethings. Ever feel like adulthood didn't come with a how-to guide? Well, you're not alone. I'm your host, Fearless Miego, and welcome to How to Not Do Your 20s, the podcast where I'm your virtual big sister sharing the highs, the lows, and the epic fails of my own 20s. Think of it as a hilarious survival guide because let's face it, I've made the mistakes so you don't have to. Yep, we're spilling all the tea of what not to do. So if you're feeling a bit lost in your 20s or just need a virtual shoulder to lean on, tune in every week for the major don'ts I have in store for you guys. Available on all major platforms, stay messy, and see you soon. So being a student while also trying to balance work, health, and social life is a lot. We overload ourselves because this is what is seen as normal in today's society and in order to be successful. People around us always seem to be doing so much and have something going on in their lives at all times, making people like myself feel a little behind. I wanted to touch upon our work life first. We both work at local restaurants, earning money to pay rent and other expenses that come with being a college student. For me that includes being in sorority while for you it's going grocery shopping. Yeah, providing for myself has probably been the biggest shift when entering college and especially ever since we moved off campus into a house. I decided not to get a meal plan so I go grocery shopping like you said, but that is a lot of money added up just to receive basic needs. And also in order to afford rent and food, I work a minimum of three days a week with a minimum of five hours each shift. Yeah, I also work five days a week in the morning at 7 a.m. to make time for the rest of my day. There are days where I leave at 6 a.m. in the morning and I'm not home until 10 in the night. I schedule my shifts in the morning so I can go to classes in the afternoon. Yeah, and I do the opposite. I schedule my classes in the morning so I can go to work in the afternoon. But yeah, any free time we have is always filled with work or other activities and I feel like we never have time to just breathe and be college students. Because after and before work, we both attend classes and we're both taking 18 credits. Has there ever been a time where you go straight from class to work or vice versa? Yeah, days like Mondays where I work at 7 in the morning, I go to class at 3.50 to 5 and then another class from 7.30 to 10.30. This overload really gives me only time to eat dinner in between, let alone for you, you have to cook and make time for that. Yeah, even with all this work, I still feel like we do not have enough time to splurge on ourselves and take the money to relax. Wow, we've only touched on the intersectionality of being a working student. We should bring in health into this equation. We are both average gym girls and that takes up a good chunk of our days. Yeah, when I go to the gym, it takes me a minimum of an hour to over two hours sometimes depending on what I'm hitting at the gym. Yeah, and if we're going at least like minimum four days a week for both of us, right? Yeah, so that takes up a lot of time and we just have to schedule it around classes and work because otherwise there's no time and even on the weekdays and it sucks because some people use weekends as their rest days but we can't do that because we just don't have enough time. Yeah, and Samantha and I like going to the gym together which makes time management even more difficult but worth it. The gym is one aspect of health that we even touched upon because there's stuff like hygiene and just taking care of our actual health like immune system which is not talked about enough. Taking care of your immune system really takes a lot out of you, especially if you're like pushing yourself past your limits. It gets really hard to take care of yourself because it comes a point where you're not taking care of your body. Yeah, it catches up to you. Samantha and I take vitamins here and there but even that sometimes we have to think about and put into our schedule. If you look at my phone schedule, I literally have my day and Samantha's too on her Google calendar, day by day, hour by hour, what I have to do in order to not forget. On social media, they always say in order to be healthy, you have to go to the gym but how about making time for ourselves? Samantha, I know you're big on naps. I wanted to talk to you about how even napping is not relaxing at times. When I nap, I feel like I'm just catching up on sleep that I normally should be getting with work, school, and the gym. I feel like I can never get enough sleep. Even when I do, I feel guilty about it because I feel like I should be doing something productive. We have this mentality to be productive drilled into our heads and in order to be successful, which I don't think is always correct. For me, another way of relieving stress is by hanging out with friends but don't you think that also takes up time and effort? Yeah, no one really talks about how maintaining relationships is like another job but obviously I'm grateful to have that but it comes with stress. Managing time for your friends, especially when they are in different friend groups, is a lot. We're always saying that we have so many different friends that aren't friends with each other which makes hanging out with them kind of clash. Yeah, it's really hard, especially when none of our friends are friends with each other. To plan our days, especially with our already loaded schedules, makes it really hard. Yeah, spending one time with one friend per week may seem like really little but to us, it's just like making friends with everyone or making time for everyone. Yeah, it's really hard to keep up with all of it. Even during Thanksgiving break, I had to manage spending time with my family and spending time with my friends but my mom got mad at me for not spending enough time with her. Yeah, my mom got mad at me too. She was like, you're never at home and I was just like, but mom, I just have so many friends. Speaking of Thanksgiving break, my family members asked what my future plans were and when I told them I didn't even have an internship, they began comparing me to others and what I quote unquote should be doing to be successful. Yeah, so is mine. Like even when we're supposed to be on break and relaxing by spending time with our family, like the pressures are still brought up. It is enough by just being a student and focusing on that. Overloading does not do any good except cause us to be stressed and burnt out. Yeah, exactly. We all have days where we just don't want to do anything but some of those days are more common to some than others. The challenges society presents to us to be a perfect version of ourselves is difficult when there's so much to maintain, which leads us to resort to multitasking and overloading ourselves. With that, it's important to make time for yourselves without slaving yourself away for work and money when you're still a student, especially in college. You know, I always say experiences over money and I stay true to that. Yeah, I do agree. I really do think it's important that like experiences over money because at the end of the day, you only live once and college is like a once in a lifetime thing, you know? Yeah, so Samantha and I are actually going on a spring break trip together to Cabo and a lot of Rutgers students are also going and I think that's just a great way to not think about money, even though right now it may be a little much. In the long run, it is something that we'll remember forever and not really the money aspect of it and more the fun experiences. Yeah, it's a once in a lifetime experience. Even with just social life, work life, student life and health, I feel overloaded, but I can imagine those who are overloading themselves with even more activities, such as like clubs and sports, love life, the list goes on. Yeah, you could really add on to that. Slowing down and enjoying life and the things you do helps not blur all of them together. I want to grow old knowing that I had a good life and not stress about my future because it's always on set in stone. Yeah, I want to tell my grandkids how much fun I had as a kid and all the memories instead of, oh, I spent this much time working, this much time not getting enough sleep when I could have enjoyed my life better. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you only look forward to the good memories. If we're going to live with regrets, at least let's not make them boring. I agree. Even though I'm overloading myself and I feel like I have a lot on my plate, it never stops me from comparing myself to others who are already so much more successful than I am at my age. Yeah, there's so many like TikTok influencers, like people who are making like so much money already. And it just like makes me think like, am I not doing enough at my age? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I feel like we're always told that we could be doing more, but never told that we should take a step back and relax. I just hope by listening to this podcast, I can help others slow down a little and enjoy life for what it is. I hope this podcast gave you guys the time to relax and explore your thoughts like it did for Samantha and I. I hope this podcast really opened your eyes and let you know where you're wasting time, where you're not wasting time, where you need to put time into. Thank you for having me, Han. I enjoyed sharing this with everyone. Tune in for my next episode of Taking a Break podcast on all major streaming platforms. Just letting you guys know, there's no set in stone schedule for my podcast, because like the title of this podcast, it's called Take a Break. For more content, be sure to check out my website, hanbang.wordpress.com. See you guys. Bye. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai