Juggling University Studies with a Side Hustle: a YouTuber's Perspective

Hello 👋🏼, I’m Gutsy, a 2nd-year undergraduate business student at a university here in Singapore. You may (or may not 😿) recognise me from my YouTube channel gutsy studygirl on which I mainly upload ‘Study With Me’s, with occasional videos on exam-/subject-specific tips.

(Screenshot of my channel's home page)

While filming these videos hasn't been a form of stress relief per se, it has helped me to learn a lot about how I work best. So if you’re thinking of taking up a side job or substantial commitments outside of school as a university student, I hope that the following sharing of my experience will help you to have a better idea of how you can go about managing your time.

How I juggle creative freelancing with university studies.

1. I list my non-negotiables

“You cannot do everything all at once; you are not superwoman.” It’s such a common piece of advice, but many always seem to forget or ignore it when they enter a new stage of life like university. Perhaps the excitement makes them want to do everything and excel at it all?

I am guilty of the same, but I am starting to realise that I can’t really be trying to do everything at the same time. The limits of my physical and mental health show me that I can’t really afford to continue living that way (almost sounds like an existential crisis 🤣), which is why I found it helpful to be clear about which parts of my university education were non-negotiable when determining how much time to dedicate to my channel.

Choosing what I wanted to sacrifice in favour of YouTube was difficult, so I figured I had to make my decisions by looking at what I knew I wanted to say “yes” to when it came to my university experience. With my time being taken up by the more important activities, the parts that needed to take a backseat - in my case it was CCA - naturally came to light.

2. I adjust my job commitments according to my overall workload, and not the other way round

Continuing from my previous point about non-negotiables, I wanted to maintain my grades and the channel while still leaving enough time for family and friends. So rather than pushing myself to post videos twice a week and then struggling to do the work that entails (on top of my schoolwork) like I used to, I now post once a week or take breaks from posting altogether for the week. In fact, I would even turn down new projects/collaborations for an entire month if I have examinations on top of assignments. That is, I won’t stretch my overall workload just to accommodate extra commitments.

In this respect, I found that it’s important to learn how to say “no”, because how much extra-curricular work I can handle changes depending on my course load and other factors in life, whether I like it or not. If you’re taking up a side job that doesn’t offer such flexibility, just constantly remind yourself not to be your boss’s “yes man/woman” and end up biting off more than you can chew.

3. I maximise my weekdays

While adjusting the time I spend filming and editing around my academic workload is effective, what makes my life easier is the fact that unlike how it was in high school, my current course allows me to decide which day I want my classes on. This means that I can plan all my classes to fall on the same 2-3 days, such that I only need to go to campus then. As compared to when I used to have school from Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm (sometimes even staying back till 10pm 😵), I now have time, outside of weekends, to accommodate both my other commitments as well as schoolwork.

So while university may be a huge leap from high school, it is definitely the best time to start something new or venture out into side projects that excite you because you are in control of your own schedule.

4. I plan to manage multiple schedules

This ties in with the previous point. For me, some planning needs to happen quite early on because I have to simultaneously tackle multiple deadlines, be it those of my YouTube posting schedule or university assignments, on my own. I don’t have a manager and I don’t have anyone helping me with the channel.

I used to make detailed plans and schedules (planning what I need to study weeks in advance) but this was hard to keep up with, and I felt demoralised when I couldn’t finish what I set out to do. So rather than micro-planning, I’ve now settled for creating a daily to-do list and discarding it at the end of the day - I still keep track of my deadlines and the progress of my projects/revision with an excel sheet, though. (I also use Excel to keep tabs on the progress of my filming/editing process for the channel.)

(Screenshot of one of my many Excel spreadsheets; this one’s for my YouTube content planning)

Excel is perfect for the job because I can use multiple tabs to manage an overview of my school deadlines, individual revision schedules, work tasks, and YouTube schedule. I can even make a template out of it to reuse each year! Recently, I’ve been dabbling with Notion - not because I’m sponsored (which for the record, I’m not 😢), but because student accounts are free 🤣 - which serves a similar function. It may not have the same level of flexibility as Excel, but it’s more user-friendly and, at least in my opinion, has a much better interface.

(Screenshot of my study plan for finals on Notion)

5. I kill 2 birds with 1 stone by choosing to post Study With Me videos

As a high school student, I would often watch videos of YouTubers’ studying as I did my own work but with the horde of recommended videos at the side, it was very easy for me to get distracted and start venturing to other videos for entertainment, ignoring the task at hand. That’s when I thought to myself “why not remove the possibility of distraction by filming myself studying instead of watching other people study?”. And then tada....gutsy studygirl was born!

In a way, filming myself for Study With Me videos provides a form of ‘surveillance’ while I tackle my assignments to make sure I actually get things done, and it also gives me material to edit and upload on a regular basis. This really helped me back when I first started the channel in 2018 - the year of my IB exams - and is proving to be even more of a lifesaver now that I am constantly facing overwhelming deadlines.

I am still learning.

Truth is, I still get burnt out from time to time and, scarily, it isn’t always obvious to me. I’m learning to trust others when they say that I am being stretched beyond my limits and to humbly accept their advice to slow down.

Being a young adult is honestly a pretty exciting experience. There are so many new things to try and experience - especially when you’re in university/college - and so many new things you can do - taking up a part-time job, joining societies and clubs that you usually wouldn’t, or even starting your own YouTube channel or other dream projects. But that also entails a huge increase in the number of things that are competing for your attention - something which drives home the fact that growing up is about learning how to manage your responsibilities better.

With that, I'm realising the importance of practising good habits, such as scheduling, keeping track of my expenses, getting enough sleep, and saying “no” when I need to, etc. And I guess this realisation is the string that ties together all the pointers I’ve shared in this article. Successfully juggling a side job with your studies ultimately boils down to picking up good habits along the way. You will never start off being a pro at managing both, but hopefully what you’ve just read has helped to set you off on the right foot.