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0 Written by Andres Salazar
Students have it pretty rough. Going through a post-secondary education comes with a bunch of challenges: being swamped with assignments and exams, group projects with annoying people who don’t do the work and having to rearrange your entire life schedule at the beginning of each semester. The mixture of way too many assignments and not having enough time outside of campus, unfortunately, also leaves many students without the opportunity to work as much as they would like.
Getting a chance to breathe and relax is essential to having a successful academic career, though many just don’t have the time, or money, to dedicate themselves to a healthy pastime. Although not always accessible, a good hobby can help relieve some of the academic stress and give the refreshing mental boost needed to get through a busy week. The good thing is that hobbies don’t always need to be giant undertakings with 40+ hours of uninterrupted dedication; they can often be a 30-minute part of your day, and can often cost little to no money to participate in.
1. Competitive Board Games
Board games are a classic activity to make any evening hangouts more enjoyable. Games like Uno, Exploding Kittens and Sequence make people work on their strategy-building skills while also making people laugh at all the silly mistakes they make. All of these are good games, but often don’t become much more than a game-night activity. Board games like chess, checkers and even Scrabble have large competitive scenes that can help you develop those critical gaming skills, while always upping the stakes against increasingly better competition. Most cities have local leagues and tournaments where you can keep improving and possibly even get occasional prizes for your strong performances. Keep up the good work and you could find yourself getting a national ranking, which then opens up even more opportunities. The fantastic thing about this is that it takes pretty much nothing to get started. If you don’t have a chessboard or someone to practice with, online versions of chess, checkers and Scrabble are available on different platforms and websites, with the ability to log on and play against people from all over the globe. On top of it all, because it can be done on everything from a traditional wooden playboard, to a smartphone, you can get a 15-minute chess session in between your classes, on the bus, or simply in bed before getting some shut eye.
2. Language Learning
Picking up a new language might seem like a daunting task to many people. In fairness, getting to a conversational level, or memorizing an entirely new alphabet can take some time and lots of patience. The good news is that language learning is like a marathon; it’s about consistent progress, slow or fast, instead of a short sprint. Free apps like Duolingo or Memrise are great for students, as they give you a chance to take your mind off of your upcoming exams, and learn a new skill, with game-like lessons for as short as 5 minutes. Will you become perfectly fluent at the end of your first month? Probably not. But, give it enough time and you’ll be surprised that you can somewhat understand what’s going on in a foreign-language Netflix show without the subtitles on.
3. Geocaching
This refers to the activities of looking around your area for hidden checkpoints and surprise boxes left behind by other local geocache enthusiasts. Apps like Geocaching give you GPS locations so that you can walk around your neighborhood, the coulees or even some parts of the UofL campus and find small packages. Sometimes these packages will have something as simple as a notepad to mark down when you found it, to possibly even gift cards to local shops and cafes. What’s great about Geocaching is that you can do it in as little as five minutes, though you can easily spend a whole day doing this with a friend, all while exploring and discovering areas you might not have seen before.
4. Starting a Blog
Although many might not like to admit it, most of us have probably spent too much time on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or X, mindlessly scrolling through different forms of content. Putting yourself on the other side of the content stream is a great way to express yourself; starting something like a blog, an Instagram page or even a YouTube channel can be done in less than twenty minutes and can let you build an audience as you explore your own interests. As with the other things on this list, you don’t have a set schedule, so you can choose how much you want to do. It can be as simple as making one thirty-second Instagram reel a week, or a daily routine of releasing a ten-minute YouTube video. Doing this might even help in the long run, as you could build enough of an online presence to get sponsorships and collaboration opportunities. Take your interests and share with the world; it could become something big!
Conclusion
Students are constantly busy people; assignments seem to keep popping up, all while already being drowned in exams and annoying group projects. As important as personal time is, it often gets thrown aside as the semester gets going. Giving yourself a couple of minutes here and there truly is essential to your mental health, and there are hobbies out there to take your mind off of things that don’t require that much money and time. It goes without saying that these are not the only options, though these are some of the easier ones to get started with. Though, if times are busy and the wallet is tighter than usual, these hobbies will be sure to get your mind off of things and give you the reset that you’ll need.
