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As the end of the fall semester at Boston College draws near, students in the School of Social Work are juggling classes, internships, and final assignments. Many students also have young families at home and extracurricular activities after hours, making it particularly difficult to balance everything in their busy lives without feeling stressed out. 

We asked Kathleen Flinton, assistant professor of the practice, to give students some tips to manage that end-of-semester stress.

Normalize the challenge of balancing classwork with field placements

Students spend two or three days per week in the field, depending on whether they are in their first or second year of the full-time master of social work program, and the rest of the week in class.

Flinton advises them to acknowledge the hefty workload and accept that it’s no easy task to earn an M.S.W. degree.

“With internships in full-swing, I think that trying to maintain the workload for academic classes can become really challenging,” says Flinton, who co-chairs the Trauma Integration Initiative, a holistic program that prepares students to help clients cope with trauma while guarding themselves against its effects. “Recognizing that that’s happening and normalizing that that’s a challenge is a big thing.”

Flinton also urges students to treat themselves with compassion and realize that they’ll need to make some tough choices based on what’s most important to them. “We literally can’t do all of it every day,” she says. “And so I think it becomes how you prioritize on any given day where your workload is, where your attention is, and where your energies need to focus.”

Prioritize friends and family

In the throes of the semester, students should continue to spend time with friends and family. “It’s OK to carve out some time and to prioritize those relationships, because that’s what helps to sustain us,” says Flinton.

Students who spend time with people closest to them, especially with finals on the horizon, may find that it helps them achieve academic success. As Flinton puts it, “When we’re able to be fully present in those other parts of our lives, then I think it somehow gives us permission to be fully present in the academic parts of our lives too.”

A portrait of Kathleen Flinton in a purple sweater and black dress

Kathleen Flinton, assistant professor of the practice.

Keep your routine

Sometimes the basics—eating well, sleeping enough, getting up and moving around—fall by the wayside as the pressure ramps up at the end of the semester.

Flinton advises students to stick to their daily schedules as much as possible in crunch time, saying that maintaining routines will promote health and wellness in demanding situations.

“Sometimes there’s a late night here or there, things get dropped,” she says. “But try to make a commitment to think about what it is that you need to be well.”

Focus on the task at hand—and take breaks

Focus on one thing at a time, says Flinton. When it’s time to work—work. When it’s time to relax—relax. Students trying to finish a paper while scrolling through social media will not achieve the best results. 

“Manage the tendency to have everything breaking in all the time,” she says. “Maybe set aside some time to say, ‘I’m putting my laptop down, I’m going out for a walk, I’m taking an hour.’ Be intentional about that, because I think that permeability starts to become unproductive at a certain point.”

Remember your ‘why’

As students sit down to write their final papers, Flinton suggests they recall why they chose to study social work. This exercise, she says, can help students remember that the stress they may be experiencing is in service to a professional mission that they’re dedicated to fulfilling.  

“Take a moment to connect to what brings you to this work and why you’re doing it as a way of realizing that you’re not going through all this stress for no reason,” she says. “You’re doing it because you have a mission or there’s a meaning to the work that you’re doing.”

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