I'm currently a junior in high school and I'm taking 3 AP classes an an honors class, but I always make it a point to squeeze in a few minutes for Animal Crossing every day.
I'm taking 5 classes at college and I always find "some" time to play. Wether it's an hour or more. There's 24 hours in a day, I need to have free time / personal time or my stress level will be to the extreme. Normally I play acnl or another game, read or watch some tv shows I need to catch up on / film I've been wanting to watch.
I have a "chore list" that I make time for every day, it usually takes maybe 30 mins of my time and I get the things I need done in my town done each day, I do however usually play it a lot more than that. I used to play SSB and Tomidotchi life a lot as well, but I don't play those much unless my boyfriend wants to play me in Smash. I work all night long and usually do my "chores" in the morning before I go to bed, and sometimes go back on later before work. I make time for it like everything else. I also play Skyrim a lot, not as much as Animal Crossing because my family fights over TV rights all the time. I still find time for everything else I do so I don't know why it would be so hard.
It's funny because I bought my 3ds the same day New Leaf came out and, until pkmn xy, it was the only game I played in my spare time. But now, I'm perpetually a month behind in the game. I'll take long hiatuses from it when I'm busy with real world responsibility or if I want to play another game. I didn't play it for the whole month of January because at work I had some really time consuming projects and in my free time I wanted played Fantasy Life instead. Then when I have a free day I set the clock back and binge two weeks worth of animal crossing in a few hours.
I actually have plenty of free time to play AC, even when I'm in college as we do have short breaks during classes, so that's when I whip out the 3DS to check everything. ^-^
I don't have a job, but school takes up a whole chunk of time. What i do is i try to stick in 30 - 20 minutes of playing whenever i'm studying or so. I usually just let myself use up all of my breaks.
I have like two periods during school in which I can play Animal Crossing. I rarely play other games so those don't get in the way of my gameplay. I play a lot on the weekends, and even when I can't play for extended periods of time, I will check my town and talk to as many villagers as I can before saving and quitting