Oh vocation. This is such a difficult thing for me to talk about at the moment and not because I don't have anything to say but for the opposite reason. (It's actually the subject of my dissertation).

My vocation to teach came from being taught by dedicated and passionate teachers, it came from watching teachers work with their students in a way that I didn’t think was possible and it came from being in classrooms and standing in front of children and teaching. I didn’t start my degree knowing I wanted to teach but it didn’t take long for that idea to come through my education and it’s something I’ve been actively nurturing for the last year or so.

I would say take philosophy, I don’t normally give such explicit advice but philosophy is tremendous and I have loved studying it, you will find it more concrete and tangible than you expect and, if you don’t like it, then drop it (the joy of the liberal arts college). 

I live off-campus, I’m married, I commute. All of these things help me to balance my life and work. I don’t like to work after dark, I wake up early instead and work early in the morning if I have a heavy workload.

Luckily I enjoy my studies and my workload is rarely engulfing. I don’t have much advice except to say that the problem of work/life balance doesn’t really go away for most people and if you can achieve some balance, make some rules whilst you’re at college then you can get on the right road to being healthy in the future.

for now ...

The most prestigious universities in the UK are Oxford, Cambridge and their Russell Group bedfellows; if your concern is with the reputation of the institution you attend and the economic value of your degree then I think it makes sense to focus there.

Living in late networked capitalism has literally altered our psychological physiognomy. The onslaught of notifications and the sugar-rush of Vines, tweets and YouTube videos has changed our ability to work in the way that people thirty years ago were able to.

I often feel phantom vibrations in my leg or get anxious if I haven’t recently checked my phone. I puncture my writing time with updates on Twitter or news websites, I read in small chunks or when I’m travelling so as not to be constantly distracted.

If you are really struggling then a long, concerted effort may yield rewards. I went to live in a Franciscan friary, deleted Facebook and turned notifications off on my phone in order to try and readjust to a slower, more focused way of thought and action. It had an effect on me but gradually I have let the short-term hits from social media return and I have found my ability to concentrate ebb away as a result. 

There are numerous extensions, apps and programmes which have been designed to counter the oversaturation and overstimulation that comes with life today. Meditation, mindfulness, blocking software, the Pomodoro method, long-reads, brain training, writing challenges. These are all responses which work for some people.