Here’s Why It’s Important to Balance out Order and Chaos as a Student

Student life can be many things to many people, but there are certain factors and motifs that recur time and time again.

It’s hardly a surprise, for example, that University students often enjoy having a beer or two on a quiet evening, or getting together with some compatriots in the local taverns for a jovial evening here and there.

On the one hand you have a particular “template” of student life — hard partying, to the absolute limits, at just about any cost, with all thoughts of study sometimes left behind entirely. On the other extreme, you have the student who is something like an ascetic academic hermit, and who does nothing but study. This is often the case for those studying for particularly rigorous and impactful degrees, such as an accounting MBA program.

Despite the prevalence of these two student archetypes, though, there’s a good argument to be made that balance between order and chaos is the best policy to adopt while studying. Here are a few reasons why.

Growth and insight happen at the meeting point between structure and unpredictability

Consider this: when you’re in a hyper-structured environment and allow very little uncertainty or chaos to enter your inner domain, you also shut yourself off from the kinds of events, experiences, and forms of information that cause you to confront the world in an adventurous spirit, adapt, grow, and learn unexpected lessons.

On the other hand, when you essentially “live in chaos”, you expose yourself to constant risk and turmoil, with no way of “digesting” your experiences and gaining proper value from them. Instead, you become completely dissolute and ineffective.

One of the major reasons for being a student is, in theory, that it gives you insights into life and yourself that go beyond the content of your course.

Success in the professional world will largely hinge on your ability to maintain this balance

Business professionals who are unable to marshal their time effectively, discipline themselves into taking action when they feel otherwise inclined to take a nap, and who are prone to easy distraction, are unlikely to succeed to any significant degree.

Likewise, professionals who do everything strictly and only by the book, and who never deviate or take risks, are likely not to express their potential very well, particularly if they are entrepreneurs or otherwise self-employed.

As with all other things in life, success in business is a matter of being able to discipline and control yourself, while simultaneously meeting uncertainty and possibility in a productive and measured way. May as well start training for this as a student.

You’ll simply have a better time if you maintain this balance

If you’re a big fan of pop culture and celeb gossip, you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s no such thing as too much partying. Spend a couple of weeks hitting the clubs hard every night, however, and you’re likely to either be dead or wishing you were.

Life isn’t fun or fulfilling when you live it without any rules, restrictions, or a dedicated focus. Likewise, life isn’t fun when you’re hyper-regimented and restricted in every conceivable way, and never allow yourself so much as an opportunity to enjoy a beautiful sunset that you haven’t pencilled into your schedule.

Striking the right balance is where you’ll find life being the most enjoyable and also fulfilling.