Student Blog: Procrastination is NOT an Option : Routine in College

     Routine in college is hard. Everything is so new, so exciting and it can be tempting to go out every night and let the laundry fairy wash your sheets (spoiler alert : you left her at home!) Routine as a theatre major? Even more vital…and you guessed it…even harder. Between rehearsals, Rep Class performances, and the never-ending gen-ed classes, routine is essential to not losing your mind and your voice. 

     I am a girl who loves her routine, I would even venture to say that I thrive on routine. In fact, finding my routine was one of the things I was most excited for when coming back to Buffalo as a Sophomore. But while my Law and English Major friends had to find library time, I had to find time to warm up, cool down, and eat real food. I love majoring in my hobby. I love having active classes, and midterms that involve memorizing dance steps instead of genetic sequences. However, when those students can sit in the back of their 400-person lecture hall and zone out on a day where they didn’t get too much sleep, I can’t really get out of ab workouts in my 15-person jazz class. So not only does my routine have to maintain my school/life balance, it has to keep me rested and healthy in a way that many college students don’t understand. 

     From the first day of class to now, one of my biggest priorities is making sure I eat full meals. And to make my life even more complicated, I will admit that I am quite a picky eater. I have 3-5 nutrient dense breakfasts that I rotate between every morning, each of which I can trust to give me enough energy to get me through my day (and taste consistently good). 

     Before I can get up and eat breakfast, I have to get a good night of sleep. It can be difficult, and I will admit that there have been some nights where I have an assignment due, or want to stay up late watching Dancing with The Stars, but one night of bad sleep can start a chain of days of exhaustion. And no matter how many Monsters you drink, sleep is the ultimate way to recharge your body. 

     These steps helped me find a pretty solid routine for my first month of college, until a wrench was thrown into my plans. AKA : we started rehearsals for our Fall Musical : The Lightning Thief. Being in rehearsals from 6-10 PM every night, while exciting, means my routine just got shortened by 4 crucial nighttime hours. Ultimately, this did not cause that many hiccups, just the knowledge that procrastination was truly not an option anymore. 

     However, this also made two steps much more important to my routine : my warm up and my cool down. Studying for class as a Theatre Major is always going to be more complicated : I need a quiet practice room, the desk in my thinly-walled dorm simply will not do. And with a rehearsal ending every day now, my voice needs to be in tip-top shape. That means as hard as it is, I need to get up earlier every morning to warm up, and when I get back to bed at night, before I can settle in for my nightly doomscroll, a vocal cooldown is in order to make sure I can do it all again tomorrow. 

    Overall, the key to my routine, and really any routine is commitment. I know what it is like to have to run a show without warming up, or go to dance class running on no food and only coffee. If you’ve never tried it, I would not recommend it. The coolest thing about a routine is that everyone’s is unique. We all have to figure out what works best for us, from our go-to breakfast, to the scales that cool us down every night.