Many students face an ominous decision every Sunday morning: they wake up (of course, they are tired from a late Saturday night of studying and doing homework) and ask themselves “do I go to church like my parents expect me to, or do I sleep in and be sloth-like, which they will also expect?”

Balancing church life with a busy school schedule is not easy, and it requires the occasional selfless act.

With TCU being a Christian-based school, numerous students are very active in their respective churches and this presents a unique balancing act. This balancing act requires one to set their priorities. It truly seems like God takes a backseat during the college years because of school activities and “getting the grade.” It does not have to be like this.

For instance, if I have a project due Monday morning and my soul has the urge to go to church, I just force myself to get up painfully early and go. It really is that simple in theory. Church only takes up a few hours of your Sunday morning and the rest can be spent on working on the aforementioned project. The problem with this is not everyone has the luxury of being yelled at by their parents to wake them up on Sunday morning and being temporarily blinded by bright fluorescent lights. The solution for a lack of the parental unit is a piercing alarm clock and an “incapacitated” snooze button.

With Sundays taken care of, how do we allot more time for other fun church functions such as cook-outs, fundraisers, and in my case, Greek dance practice? This time the solution is a tad bit more painful – the occasional loss of a Saturday afternoon, exacerbated by the upcoming football season. Guess we will have to skip that weekly pregame kegger and ingestion of three pounds of bratwurst. This loss of a Saturday afternoon is indeed painful, but it is a small sacrifice to keep you involved with church life while still having fun in school and making great grades.

What do we do during the looming weeks before finals and the actual week of death otherwise known as finals week? This is where I think God will show some compassion on our poor, sleep-deprived and heavily-caffeinated souls. He will definitely understand that sometimes a Sunday afternoon just has to be spent studying for finals. God will also expect us to be praying to him to grant our professors the wisdom to curve our grades.

Danny Peters is a junior psychology major from Fort Worth.