Balancing horses with grad school

[EventingMaff]

I never found time to be the biggest constraint during my graduate degrees (MsC and then PhD) - but I didn’t have labs so outside of lectures I had flexibility to work from home which made it easier to fit barn time in. I did pick up and drop riding throughout but more because of field research (considerable extended travel), transportation / access, and finances and not really because of time.

Now I work a demanding job (60-65+ hrs / week), have a 9 month old, a husband with a demanding job and I still fit ~4 rides a week in. It often means I’m riding at 9 PM at night or 6 30 AM but I fit it in best I can around my other commitments.

As long as riding is helping your mental health, you can find a way to fit it in…but as soon as it becomes a drain on your energy you need to hit pause. When you have a demanding schedule you need to make sure you focus on energy-gaining activities and not further energy-draining ones!

[J-Lu]

I came back to riding in Grad school (PhD) in the life sciences. It kept my sanity because my other time was full-on lab work. I trained 3 horses at one private place and the owner gave me the Trak mare I carted around to 2 post-docs. My riding life has always been a bright star in my academic life, and to this day, the barn friends are my best friends.

Good luck!

[DisraeliEars]

You might want to try a month-to-month lease or lessons, at least for the first semester. Everyone handles grad school differently. I was doing an MA and then a PhD (didn’t finish) in history. I usually had three 3-hour class meetings a week and then the rest of the work would be done on my own time. If I had been into horses at the time, I think I could have squeezed in time (MONEY would have been the big issue).

I don’t know about engineering or hard sciences and how those programs are structured, but - as I said - a lot of it comes down to personality and time-management skills.