💡 Assignments due. Projects running. Strategies being tested. And somehow I have to keep all of it moving at once. An honest look at what it actually takes to manage a degree and a freelance career simultaneously without either falling apart.
I am writing this on a Sunday, and I cannot stop thinking about the week ahead.
Not with dread. More like the way you keep turning a problem over in your head because something about it still has not settled. I have been revisiting a portfolio project, running through what I could have done differently, thinking about how to attract clients, thinking about how to sustain the freelancing work while the degree keeps moving forward. The economics assignment is somewhere in the background. It will get done. It always does.
But it is definitely not the first thing on my mind.
My friends’ statuses are all about exam pressure. Mine are not.
If you scroll through the WhatsApp groups and the Instagram stories in my circle right now, it is all the same thing. Exam stress. Deadlines. The usual second-year anxiety that moves through university like a season.
I understand it. I have the same deadlines. But my version of the pressure looks different.
Most evenings I am in my room working on a project or reviewing something I built earlier in the week. The pressure I feel is not about falling behind on a textbook. It is about strategy. Every time I start a new analytics project, I get stuck at the same place: the questions. Not the technical questions, but the business ones. What is this data actually trying to tell us? What does the business need to know that it is not currently asking for? Each project I look back on shows me a version of myself that did not know enough yet. The project from January looks completely different from the one I finished two weeks ago, and that gap is the whole point.
I stay in my own lane. Comparison steals joy and I gain nothing from measuring my journey against anyone else’s.
The degree and the freelancing are not competing. They are the same thing.
When I say economics is the last thing on my mind, I do not mean I am neglecting it. I mean my coursework is in business and commerce, and the work I am doing on the side is business and commerce. They are the same conversation happening in two different rooms.
The real tension is not between the degree and the freelancing. It is time and bandwidth. Fitting analytics projects, client work, coursework, and everything else into the same week without anything slipping. That is the actual challenge.
My relationship with my calendar is the reason I never feel behind. Each day has a dedicated block for specific tasks so nothing bleeds into everything else. Every day I work out, take notes for coursework, send emails, and work on portfolio projects that connect directly to the client work I am building toward. Analytics gets a full day of its own each week, not a slot between things but the whole day. Because I stay on the schedule, the pressure never becomes panic.
Three journals. No fourth yet.
Someone might look at this and think I am overcomplicating my life. I would argue the opposite.
I keep three journals right now. One for work: projects, processes, what I tried, what worked, what did not. One for fitness: calories, run times, breathing exercises. One personal: tracking my mental state, my thoughts, the quieter stuff.
There is talk of a fourth. But for now, three is enough.
The journaling is not productivity theatre. It is how I stay honest with myself about where I actually am versus where I think I am.
I dreamt about a bug I could not fix. I woke up knowing what to do.
Last week I spent the night on a problem I had not cracked before going to sleep. The kind of vague, working-dream where your brain keeps running the code while the rest of you is trying to rest. I woke up with a clearer idea of the approach than I had when I fell asleep.
That, to me, is a sign. When something occupies your mind so completely that you start seeing its patterns everywhere, in the middle of a conversation, on a run, in a dream, that means you genuinely care about it. I do not call that being haunted. I call that being blessed by the struggle.
I enjoy it. I would not trade it.
Fahrenheit 451, Overwatch, and the rest of it.
People sometimes act like you have to sacrifice everything else at the altar of your goals. That the hustle requires you to hollow out the rest of your life.
That is not how I operate.
I have been reading manga since high school and watching anime since grade 8. Lately I have started picking up novels too. I just started Fahrenheit 451 last night and I am looking forward to finding out where it goes. Yesterday I played Overwatch for two hours. When I want to go out for indoor football with the boys, I go. When I feel like reading, I read. When I feel like playing, I play.
The full picture of a week looks like this: a full day on analytics, daily coursework notes, a daily workout, emails sent, portfolio work moving, a chapter of a book, a match or two online, and time with people I actually like. All of it in the same seven days.
That is not a person falling apart under pressure. That is a person who has learned to carry a lot without making it heavier than it is.
Diamonds are formed under pressure. So am I.
I am not overwhelmed. I am not stretched thin in a way that worries me. I am energised by the weight of having meaningful things to do every day.
I say alhamdulillah every morning when I wake up. Genuinely. Because the life I am living right now, the degree, the projects, the reading, the building, is exactly the kind of life I wanted. I am not yet where I am going. But I am moving.
Second year hits different when you are building on the side.
Not harder. Just different.
Until next time, ponder this:
What would you do with your time if the pressure you were feeling was the kind you actually chose?