When people ask me how I balance being a full-time student at Texas Tech with competing in reined cow horse, I usually give the same short answer: "Badly, but consistently."

That's mostly a joke. But there's truth in it — "balance" for a horse person in college doesn't mean everything is perfectly equal. It means you've built a system that lets you do both without completely falling apart. Here's what I've figured out so far.

The Honest Reality: It's Structured, Not Balanced

I stopped trying to "balance" horses and school and started trying to structure them. Balance implies that both things are always getting equal attention. That's not real. Some weeks the horses get more. Some weeks school wins entirely. The system I've built acknowledges that reality instead of fighting it.

At the core, my week looks like this:

That schedule doesn't always hold. But having it means I can identify quickly when something is slipping and adjust, rather than just feeling vaguely overwhelmed.

"Balance implies equal attention. I stopped trying to balance and started building a structure that acknowledges reality — some weeks horses win, some weeks school does."

The Show Calendar Is the Foundation

At the start of every semester — before I register for classes, before I look at syllabi — I put every show date on the calendar. NRCHA regional schedule, Stock Horse of Texas events, any futurities I'm planning to point toward. Then I build the semester around those dates.

This matters more than most students realize. If you wait until three weeks before a show to tell your professors you'll be gone, you're creating a problem for yourself. If you tell them during syllabus week — "I'm a competitive equestrian, here are the weekends I'll miss, here's how I plan to handle it" — most ag faculty will work with you. They understand it. They've often been there themselves.

The conversations I've had with ag professors at TTU have been almost uniformly positive when I'm upfront and proactive. One professor told me: "I don't care if you miss class as long as you communicate ahead of time and don't fall behind." That's the standard I hold myself to.

Using Show Weekends Productively

A show weekend involves a lot of waiting. You haul in Friday afternoon, show Saturday and sometimes Sunday, haul home. Between runs and classes, there are hours of sitting in the trailer or at the arena.

I started treating those hours like study halls. Textbooks and a laptop in the truck, earbuds in during the wait, and intentional study between runs. It's not ideal — a show barn isn't a library — but an hour and a half of focused reading while waiting for your class to start adds up over a semester.

📚 What I Bring to Shows for Studying

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Communication Is the Skill Nobody Talks About

The most underrated skill for a horse person in college is learning to communicate clearly and early — with professors, with your trainer, and with yourself about what's realistic.

With professors: communicate ahead of shows, not after. Bring a schedule. Be specific about dates. Offer to complete work early or make arrangements for exams. Then follow through on what you promised.

With your trainer: if you're in a busy season academically, say so. A good trainer would rather know you have three major exams next week than wonder why you seem checked out. In my experience, trainers who work with college students understand the rhythm of the semester — they've seen it before.

With yourself: be honest about when you're spread too thin. There are semesters where something has to give. Better to make a deliberate choice — fewer shows this spring, lighter training schedule during finals — than to drift into a state where everything suffers.

What the Horses Actually Need

The horses don't care about your exam schedule. They need consistency. Not necessarily long sessions — but consistent handling, consistent work, consistent care.

During heavy academic weeks, I prioritize two things: daily check-ins (even if it's just a twenty-minute grooming session) and maintaining any specific training goals we're working toward. A shortened session done consistently is better than skipping three days and doing a two-hour marathon on Saturday.

The maintenance pieces — feeding schedule, supplement routine, hoof care schedule — these are non-negotiable regardless of how busy school gets. Build those into your calendar the same way you build in study blocks. They're not optional.

Mental Compartmentalization Is a Skill You Have to Practice

When I'm at the barn, I try to be fully at the barn. No checking my phone for email during a ride. No mentally running through my to-do list while I'm handling my horse. The horse notices when I'm not present — and a distracted ride is often worse than no ride at all.

Same in class. I don't think about training problems during lectures. I keep a small notebook where I can jot down barn thoughts when they occur to me during the day, but then I let them go until I'm actually at the barn. The mental separation isn't natural at first — it's something you build over time.

"When I'm at the barn, I try to be fully at the barn. The horse notices when you're not there mentally — and a distracted ride is often worse than no ride."

Sleep Is the Variable You Can’t Shortchange

I learned this the hard way. Five AM barn mornings plus full class days plus evening training sessions plus studying — on six hours of sleep — works for maybe two weeks before everything starts degrading. Your riding gets flat, your focus in class disappears, and your mood suffers.

Sleep is the structural foundation that makes everything else possible. If I have to choose between getting to bed at 10 PM or finishing a non-urgent task, I choose sleep. The task will get done tomorrow. Chronic sleep deprivation accumulates and catches up with you.

The Part Nobody Warns You About: Identity

This one surprised me. When you're a horse person who goes to college — especially a big university where most people have never touched a horse — you're carrying a whole identity that doesn't have a lot of external reinforcement. Most of your classmates don't know what reined cow horse is. They don't understand why you disappear to shows on weekends. You start to feel like you're living in two different worlds simultaneously.

That's actually fine. You are living in two worlds. Finding a community — whether through the ag department, through horse people in the area, or through online spaces like this one — helps you feel less isolated in that dual identity. The TTU ag community specifically has been that for me. These are people who get it.

Being a horse person has made me a better student — more disciplined, more focused, better at managing time because I don't have the option not to be. And being a student has made me a better horse person — more methodical, more patient, more curious about the science behind what I'm seeing in the arena.

The two things belong together. You just have to build the structure to hold them both.

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