Happy New Year from your favourite Canadian West Coast, university-focused columnist: Ask Pawan! Speaking of celebrations, this month also marks one year since I’ve been at the helm of the advice column and I would love to flip the script and hear our readers’ opinions.
For the next little while, if you go to the Ubyssey’s advice page you’ll be able to submit your thoughts on past advice! If you’ve had your question answered by me or realized that you were using something I’d written, I’d love to hear how that advice turned out for you. Think of it as a delayed Christmas present to your anonymous pal at the Ubyssey, as the critiques will help me dish out better advice, and the compliments will feed my exponential ego — win, win! To submit your comments, criticism or regular queries for the column, head over to ubyssey.ca/advice.
Hey Pawan, I have a hard time saying no to social outings. Whenever my friends ask me to hang out, even if I'm planning on studying, doing meal prep or legitimately caring for myself, I always say yes. How can I be better at saying no?
It always surprised me how easily a new acquaintance or social group you join can go from arm’s-length moderation to a time-consuming vortex. One moment, you’re trying to get someone’s name down or laughing to yourself about what an odd little group you’ve found and, the next moment, you’re getting the ace of spades tattooed on the small of your back.
While your experience may not be nearly as dramatic, I doubt it is anything of a controversial statement to say that just about everyone has confirmed plans with someone, only to realize that saying yes meant they put something important on the back-burner. There’s hundreds of valid reasons to say no to an outing, but why does it always feel so hard when you’ve got the invite sitting in your notifications? In a word, FOMO. In four words, “fear of missing out.” It’s the idea that every moment you’re not somewhere with someone, you’re inevitably missing out on something. Whether that be bonding with the bros, seeing incredible sights or just plain “losing your youth,” there’s always going to be a monkey on your back telling you that the outside world is calling your name and that you’re an outlier for ignoring it. Here’s a few things I’ve learned to use, just to make sure I’m keeping my work and social lives in balance, as best I can.
Know Yourself, Know Your WORK
If you’re anything like me, there’s been a couple times where you’ve been invited out, you’ve confirmed and you’re ready to rock before you then you realized you had some work due the next morning. Usually, next comes the stages of grief in quick succession: disbelief that you made a prior commitment; anger at Google Calendar for not stopping you before; bargaining to understate the importance of your other responsibility; depression when you realize your work-social-self balance is tipping one way; and finally, acceptance in your indiscretion and a commitment to the future. To preempt all of this is to prevent a lot of avoidable stress, so I cannot overstate the importance of having a solid idea of what your week looks like. If you have your work, social and solo times all clocked into an easily-accessible calendar, you’ll have a much better chance of not double-booking and suffering the costs of lost time. Even if you don’t think you can rigidly stick to the times on your calendar, it’ll be an essential tool in keeping cognizant of the approximate time you’ve spent doing things that matter to you. It’s better to tell someone you’ve already got plans than to give them a yes and flake at the last minute.
Birds of a Feather, Friends Forever
Now that you’ve got an iron grip on your schedule, you’ll still find that you’re going to have to make a few judgements and decide on what is more important to you in a given week. While it isn’t necessary to maintain parity among self, social and work hours, being aware of them is key. When it comes to telling someone that you have plans, you’ll quickly see a divide forms between the different reactions you’ll get. Hopefully, the most common one you’ll get is that of understanding and empathy.
Another reaction you may be faced with is a bit more sensitive, where the person taking the rejection seems to feel threatened or insecure with the response and it seems that the context of the situation has maybe changed. Sometimes these reactions can stem from the other party having been told no before or if they feel that you aren’t putting in enough time for them. It is important for you to be able to reinforce your choices in some contexts, but also make reasonable concessions in others. If the other person doesn’t understand why you place such value on one activity and not another, that’s a prime time to assert yourself and give them a peek at the responsibilities you have to yourself, your academia and those you care for. On the other side, if it seems like you underestimated how important an event or social occasion is to someone, a little on-the-fly revaluation may not hurt. That being said, the concept of emotional blackmail is certainly not to be forgotten in such instances.
Telling someone you can’t attend something isn’t a fun conversation to have, but it is something that has only become more necessary in my life as I’ve gotten older and my responsibilities have grown. Almost as a silver lining, there is a benefit to keeping a tight leash on your time in that you get to see a subtle quality to people: it shows up in their speech and body language when you’ve decided to tell them no. It’s up to yourself to decide what an appropriate reaction to a given rejection is, but it’s certainly something to look out for when you deliver such news to those in your life.
Uni problems? Unique answers. Send your questions, comments or critiques in anonymously to the ubyssey.ca/advice, or email them to advice@ubyssey.ca