Well I’m certainly not the one to talk on this. I’ve successfully failed two college courses on the subject of Family Studies. I could’ve probably handled three classes, which was the requirement for completing my general electives, but failing two of them forced me to re-take two more on the subject, where I barely passed each with a D and D+, respectively. If you think five classes on the subject of Family Studies sounds miserable, you’re right.

I initially failed the first two because I piled on three classes while I was putting together my portfolio—a culmination of two years’ worth of graphic design classes. I thought I could show up to what I call a “normal person class” that I could “do with my eyes closed.” But as the term dragged on and I became more and more involved with producing my portfolio, I completely failed to take note of the major dates in my other classes i.e.; Midterm exams and due dates for final papers. Lol.

It’s not that I’m a bad student, but when you compare the work to design work, I just simply don’t have room in my brain to care about Colonial Family Structures of the 1800’s.

I made the mistake of over-scheduling myself when I knew I was going to be busy working on my portfolio that term. But we all know that it’s definitely not that hard to pass a Normal Person Class. Especially when that class is MUCH easier than doing graphic design.

I say that because Normal Person Classes are simply a different kind of ‘hard.’ And you can at least fake a good job. But it’s a different story with graphic design.

Some people can only take one design class at a time. Others are able to juggle three and still produce great work. My advice is to plan your schedule around how much time you think you’ll be spending on homework for each class; with a happy balance between class, work, homework, sleep, and you fill in the blank. Spoiler: You are not a superhero that can take on the world! If you know you’re going to be taking a super demanding and rigorous design class, then it’s probably not a great time to also try to whiz through three whole Normal Person Classes too.

It takes a lot of maturity and time management to not do what I did, because failing classes costs you time, money and sanity.

So stay up just a little bit later than you want to when you know you have to, get up earlier than you want to, check your dumb class email and read your dumb book, go to your dumb class, listen to the dumb lecture, take five minutes and look at the dumb syllabus, and write your dumb paper.