It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to sit down with students and talk about their interests and aspirations, but it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of my work with graduate students.  Our students range from those who are coming straight out of their undergraduate years to mid-career folks and career changers.  Most of them have jobs and/or families and have decided to take on the additional responsibility of graduate school.  It’s not surprising, then, that when I do have such conversations with students, the topic often turns to work-life balance.

A couple of months ago a bleary-eyed student came to see me.  She was her usual cheerful self when I greeted her, but as soon as she sat down and began to talk, I knew something was wrong.  I put a box of Kleenex on the table.  She started off with an apology about missing a campus event the week before and went on to tell me that she had a difficult few months at her full time job.  Several weeks before she came to see me, she had reached a breaking point and her life came to a grinding halt.  What she described was a kind of paralysis – she couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t focus; she could hardly even think.  She had just begun to sort out how she got to the breaking point, especially since she had always been so full of energy.  I saw myself reflected in her young eyes and remembered a time, just a few short years ago, when I was in the same place.

The first time that I met the student I was struck by her outgoing, energetic personality and confidence.  She, like the other students in our graduate programs, is passionate about working with organizations that help people in need, whether it’s working to create awareness about human trafficking globally, or developing educational programs for youth in the inner city.  They are deeply engaged and committed to their work.  This student, however, seemed deeply engaged and committed to everyone and everything in her life, which is fine, I suppose, until you find yourself unable to get out of bed one day.  She had truly believed that she should be able to do it all, for everyone, all the time.

She described the first time she knew that something was not quite right.  Her sister had sent her a text message and wanted to know when to pick her up to go shopping for paper goods for their cousin’s baby shower.  She cringed, then she felt a pang of guilt.  “I just didn’t want to go,” she told me.  She had always helped her sister with everything and didn’t know how she would tell her sister, “no.”  She summoned up the courage to call her sister and tell her that she couldn’t go, and guess what?  The world didn’t come to an end.  That’s when I shared with her my own experience and the story of the cookies. 

I have always believed that women could successfully combine career and family, which is why it never occurred to me to stop working when I had my first child. It’s about fulfilling one’s potential and contribution in the world.  However, there is a difference between having it all and doing it all, and I learned that the hard way.  A few years ago when my daughter was in preschool, the parents were asked to contribute to the Fall Festival bake sale.  I decided to bake chocolate chip cookies, of course.  At lunch with a colleague the next day I mentioned that I would be baking cookies that night and I would bring the extras into work.  “You’re a busy working mom,” she said, “why don’t you just go to the bakery at the grocery store and buy some cookies?  No one cares.”  Anyone who knows my penchant for sweets would not be at all surprised to learn that I had a life changing moment about cookies.  No one cares if the cookies are homemade or store-bought, no one cares if my child skipped a bath last night, and no one cares if I respond to an email from home at 10:00 p.m. or wait until 8 a.m. the next morning.  It wasn’t too long after that lunch conversation when I found myself sobbing uncontrollably in my office with the door closed one afternoon.  I realized then that I would have to invoke the power of “no.”  Learning that it’s OK to say “no” sometimes has been the key to my ability to find work-life balance.  It saved me.

The student and I agreed that if you realize that you don’t have to accept every request or commitment that comes your way, it forces you to prioritize, and setting priorities is a valuable way to shield one’s self from burnout, such as we had both experienced.  After all, how can we take care of others if we don’t take of ourselves first?  For example, during the safety demonstration at the beginning of every flight, the flight attendant tells you that if there’s a need for an oxygen mask and you have children, put the mask on yourself first before assisting the child.  Why?  Because you can’t effectively assist a child if you don’t have oxygen for yourself.  Simple enough.

As my conversation with the student wound down, I sensed that she felt less shame, less alone.  I suggested that she ask herself just one question that may help her to prioritize what’s really important to her: whom am I doing this for and why?  Many of us go through life without ever pondering this question.  We are so driven that we rarely take the time to examine why we are so driven – we just forge ahead and go, go go.  And sometimes we talk about work-life balance as if it were just that easy – saying no and prioritizing -  but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not.   Finding work-life balance is work.

And so came the big question – did she feel that she could continue in the graduate program?  I was gratified to learn that she had already determined that she would continue her graduate studies and that she was doing it for the right reasons.  Her face lit up when she talked about her relationships and deep conversations with classmates and how much she has learned from the readings.   Despite it all, she remained confident that her calling in life was to serve others and, newly committed to taking care of herself too, she left my office with a smile.