Balancing Esports and Uni: A look into my life

 

 

Hello hai hey lovely readers, today is feeling like another less researched blog as I am working really hard on getting people to answer some questions for another piece as well as research in depth for another blog so today is going to be more of an opinion piece and a little look into my life because well it’s my blog and I feel like writing this haha.

This is going to be another more personal blog – I want to do a split of content here – half written, well researched and curated; and half more opinion, personal and nostalgia – hopefully this will make the blog not only informative but also a comfortable place for real talk about real life. And with this in mind, I figured no topic could really be more real about me than my reality of balancing esports with my uni studies. For those of you who don’t know – which is probably a lot of people as I struggle to share life details – I am at present studying for a degree in Sociology at a top university in my country (not the top but one that’s up there in the rankings).

With this in mind, I have been living in student halls (for convenience mainly) and completing my studies – student halls are a weird place, I have had very little control over who I live with, and it has been potluck – a bit like solo queue, except maybe worse because there were times I wanted to mute these people but couldn’t. Ahead of this academic year I was already applying for esports jobs and attempting to build a portfolio (which has since expanded to this lovely spot I have here), but my reality of attending uni as someone with the aspiration of being full time in esports was a difficult one and not for the reasoning of balancing freelance work and studies.

For context, I lived in a flat for eight people (plus one additional who hung around all the time), the flat was predominantly girls but the additional balanced our numbers out to five girls, four boys. If you’re thinking sounds like it could be difficult you would be right – aside from the reality of arguments, there were a lot of surprised comments (which were very *interesting*) when I admitted that I wanted to work in esports. The comments mainly centred around that I wasn’t what people would expect to work in esports – which got me thinking, what does a typical esports person even look like?

Personally, I think an esports person has no outside look, I kind of imagine it as a black silhouette, and then as I meet people, it’s the passion and character of a person that fills in what makes up a person in esports. Maybe that is an odd take, but I think people fill out their own role as themselves wholeheartedly – especially in esports – and to me it was almost odd that someone would say a person like me doesn’t fit with esports. Pre and miss conceptions aside, what really makes someone in esports anyway? Isn’t it the person being passionate? Why does their exterior mean they aren’t ‘fit’ for esports? Since when was what you looked like a factor to inhibit people from doing a job?

Aside from these comments, I found balancing my freelance esports work (once it started) with uni was pleasant for me and a lot more straight forward than I had initially thought it would be – probably not the reaction you were expecting. But it was only because I worked super irregular hours that balancing the work for me was okie, I was working before anyone was awake, and tended to be done by the time people were just getting up to go to classes. It was a nice reality for me, but the comments on being a girl in esports and gaming did play in my mind a lot, it was always interesting seeing how people responded to this particular piece of information.

Especially when the reaction was ‘gamer gurl’ not ‘gamer girl’ it was kind of weird to me, I usually mute chats in games such as League for my own peace of mind but to see this carrying over into real life was not surprising but disheartening. It was considered cool that I wanted to work in esports but it was almost like once I actually made it my reality, it stopped being cool – now I will preface this with saying that sexist comments were made in the flat I lived in, quite frequently as well, so this was probably something I should have expected but even so. How are you supposed to react to that kind of thing?

In game you can mute people, but the reception by people you live with is harder to deal with – it’s not like you can opt out of seeing these people or mute them – and trust me I did wonder if there was an irl mute button. I was pretty lucky to some degree, the work I did, didn’t really interfere with any part of my social life – and I would always choose working unusual hours when freelancing as it meant no one interrupted my workflow and I could fully envelope myself in what I was doing. (I actually worked on my birthday this year much to the horror of my flatmates – but I'm just one of those people, once I'm passionate I will happily go above and beyond for my work, and this includes working at 6am on my birthday – for the record it wasn’t a milestone birthday).

The reality of working in esports while balancing my uni studies for me at least, was less about actually balancing out the two and more about the reception I received it. Like I said earlier, it was cool that I wanted to work in gaming and it was cool that I was taking steps to, but the fact I then began was almost looked down on. I'm a big believer in don’t look down on anyone unless you are helping them up (though aforementioned I think we can all appreciate this mentality likely didn’t exist), I guess I had privately hoped that people would be more open minded and not look down on hard work, but I guess real life is a reflection of what is seen in solo queue.

On a more personal note, I suffer from massive imposter syndrome (this isn’t me asking for a sympathy vote let me assure you, I cannot be doing with sympathetic smiles), and the real challenge for me – apart from very unhelpful flatmate comments – was believing I deserved the opportunities I was getting. The team I worked for, a hundred percent took a chance on me, being a uni student with next to no experience working in esports, but with a lot of passion and a few well timed emails – I landed a really good starting place for my future esports career. But I’ll be honest, that’s something I was definitely unnerved by too, I frequently wondered on the nights I was alone staring at my screen, out of desperation for my class reading to make sense, if they should’ve looked for someone else, if I wasn’t showing up enough, if my content wasn’t good enough.

The team I was at had a sizeable content team and I was one of several writers, it was honestly hard not to feel like I was not good enough – circling back briefly to my uni life of being at a top uni also amplified this and I'm sure we can all appreciate that there are times the aforementioned people really should’ve kept their mouths shut which probably would have made my whole balancing act of reality that much easier. Because in my opinion at least, the balancing of life isn’t only about time management, it’s also about looking after yourself and feeling confident in your own abilities which is something I believe every human struggles with at one point or another – and is difficult when you are just starting out in something new especially.

I’ve already talked on this blog about women in esports and the reception of it, but the fact that people were so willing to comment on how ‘weird’ it was for me to want to work in esports was just plain weird in itself. Maybe I had been a bit naive to expect people to understand it, but I don’t know, it’s not really something I would expect people to want to put down in the way it was. Why should it matter who works in esports as long as they are good at the role they fulfil? Surely as long as that person is well qualified, knows what they’re doing and what they’re talking about that’s all that matters – this is something I want to cover in a future blog especially but for now let’s leave it at what I’ve just said, and we can revisit this topic further down the line. 😊

I don’t want this particular blog post to sound like a whiney girl who was butt hurt over people thinking her career choice was weird, so I figured I’d impart some advice from what I learnt of balancing uni and esports work to make sure this ends on a positive note:

 

A.   A.   Time management is everythingggggggg – literally everything. Plan the day, what happens when, how it works, when you should be done, if breaks will be needed – I feel like this is advice that’s said a lot but not really followed up on, but if I could tell my past uni self one thing it would be to always be considerate of how much time was available for everything

B.   B.  Working irregular hours isn’t a bad thing – I worked in the OCE time zone while being in the EU/UK time zone and this worked out amazingly for me, my work was done before anyone was awake and I was actually in a better frame of mind to do my uni work because I was already focused and ready to work

C.   C.   This is a big one – screw the haters and people like those I mentioned about. Screw their opinions, if I could back to myself there, I’d tell her that they aren’t paying for my work, and they all openly admitted they weren’t doing what they wanted with their life, so they can take a hike and you do you

If anything, the side to esports I struggled with balancing with my uni life was watching the LEC/EU Masters matches, the first matches of the afternoon/evening often clashed with my classes and if my flatmates were insisting on dragging me out of my room on a Friday night (and/or a Saturday night as well) I’d miss the end matches, which provided me no motivation to go back and watch more. Hence why I loved working in a different time zone as it allowed me to balance a social life (though I quite openly admit I'm an introvert and being able to escape off to watch a match was a great excuse to not sit in the kitchen staring at my phone for hours on end).

Heading into this year I'm hoping for better (actually open minded and accepting) flatmates, the jobs I’ve applied for to come through (if you’re a recruiter from one of those jobs – hi! I’d love to work for you!) and in general more belief in my own abilities. I feel like it’s hard to remember that the jobs we dreamed of and get to work, we deserve because we worked for them, and people wouldn’t take a chance on us if we weren’t worth it. So that’s my (semi) positive take from my first year in esports and a year of balancing uni studies with it – you’ve a hundred percent got this, keep going because the best really is yet to come (and I darn well hate that phrase) and if in doubt, ignore the haters, you do you because no one does you better than you (another phrase I cannot stand but it felt right) and keep smiling, because your smile is one I'm glad is on planet earth.

My researched blogs – hopefully with interviews – will be returning soon and I will post another personal piece of content soon (once I decide what it will be)!

 

See you on the next blog ヽʕ •ᴥ•ʔﾉ

 

Notable Sources of Information –

Not applicable as this was my experience and opinion based 😊