Before I entered this program I was actually in a master’s program for business analytics. At the time, I had school at night and worked a warehouse job in the early morning so my schedule was to wake up at 4:30am and go to work, get home at noon and sleep for 2 hours and try to do some homework, then go to school at 5pm until 9pm. This was Monday through Friday and you are absolutely right it was brutal. What was even worse was that halfway thru the quarter we had a group project, so my group wanted to meet literally everyday before class started so I pretty much ran on 4 hours of sleep a day. So of course I had a nervous breakdown from all the stress and overwork and dropped out of school after that one quarter.
I was in another group for Software Engineering I where I was overworked—I told my group members that my schedule was open even though I had another class with a heavy workload. I ended up having to drop the other class with the workload and taking it over since the SWE I course was taking up so much of my time. After these two lessons I have learned to set boundaries for my time.
The capstone project group I am on has a somewhat similar vibe to that group I was in before–we meet on average 3-4 times a week, but thankfully for only an hour each. I told them I am unavailable on the weekends even though I technically am, but what I’ve learned is that setting time to do other things unrelated to the project, such as work for other classes or even time to relax is equally important for your mental health. At the end of it, the only person who is going to have to deal with you is you, so know your limits and take care of yourself!
