You may have heard the motto, “At college you can only choose two of these three things: work, play and sleep.” Well, I’d argue you can get all three if you play your cards right. I am a loyalist to the 15-credit schedule and a dedicated advocate of “work-life balance” at Washington University (and for that matter, college in general). A standard academic schedule is an ideal way to maintain relationships with a network of good friends, get a decent amount of sleep (or, enough to avoid sleep deprivation) and maintain involvement in extracurricular activities.

Wash. U. students tend to take a lot of classes in their time here—whether it is necessitated by their major, personal initiative or the motivation to graduate early, most of us will at some point end up taking more than 15 credits in a semester. Whether or not this is a cultural component of life at Wash. U., it’s easy to become consumed by your academic schedule.

Take sophomore Jorge Gutierrez, a good friend of mine. A biology major on the pre-med track, Jorge is currently taking 19 credits, which include Organic Chemistry, Cell Biology, Computer Science 131 and Ancient Medicine. He wanted to get ahead on his graduation requirements and work toward his major while also pursuing interesting classes at Wash. U. Unfortunately, Jorge described the semester as a nonstop game of playing “catch up” on homework and tests. He’ll be the first person to tell you that his was the schedule from hell, and it kept him from really enjoying his semester.

This kind of class-loading doesn’t just hurt your performance in classes—it has a pervasive impact on the rest of your life. The average Wash. U. student is involved in student groups outside the classroom. With meetings for those organizations, the intensive levels of studying that the majority of Wash. U. classes require and a constant schedule of exams, projects and quizzes (see the “midterm season” phenomenon that dominates Wash. U.), how can you possibly get enough sleep to get through the semester? Jorge was quick to validate my hypothesis—on average, he gets about six to seven hours of sleep a night and is forced to use weekends to catch up on sleep (and homework).

It’s easy to see how an intense class schedule can make having a healthy, balanced semester nearly impossible. But, besides the high potential for sleep deprivation (and a messy, unnatural sleep schedule), most of us enjoy spending time with our friends as an outlet from the intense, nonstop pace of Wash. U. life. While I can’t speak from experience, the math simply doesn’t add up. If you are taking a lot of classes, balancing extracurriculars and trying to sleep, I can’t imagine how it’s possible to maintain close relationships.

Jorge also reiterated how challenging it has been this semester to balance 19 credits and a healthy social life. He says that the best he can expect is to catch up with friends over dinner, and that as the semester has gone on, he has had less and less time to hangout with people on weekends. Mostly, he tries to catch up on sleep and work ahead, which usually turns out to be an impossible task.

At some point in a heavy academic semester, the stress of constantly working and the lack of sleep these students get will have negative effects. Whether that means giving up an extracurricular, dropping a class or foregoing hangouts with friends, something will give. Worse, a college student’s mental and physical health can’t possibly hold under that much stress. The consequences of sleep deprivation are well-documented in scientific literature, and academic stress is a known pressure on students’ mental health.

The financial concerns of attending Wash. U. are an incredibly valid reason for scheduling 15-plus credit semesters. I don’t deny that it’s necessary for some people to load their schedule so that they (or their parents) can lessen the financial burden of going here. However, your mental health (and happiness) are extremely crucial to your success at college. Creating a work-life balance at a college that actively struggles to promote such a culture is challenging. Taking an average schedule may only be part of a much more complex solution to achieving a healthy lifestyle at our University. However, the positive effects of having the time to do things you want to do outside of the classroom makes this argument stand as a valid alternative for students looking to achieve a work-life balance.