Saturday, April 26, 2008

What is wrong with time?

I just don't seem to have enough of it these days.

One of the things that irks me when I tell people about how I have no time is their response. "But you're just a uni student aren't you?".

'Just a uni student' seems to be a pretty common comment these days, and it points to a lack of understanding about the rigors of the uni student. Consider if you will, my schedule. I have to put in 16 contact hours a week, which involves an hour commute each way on public transport. No biggie?

Now consider that I, like many other students have a part time job to meet the demands of increasing inflation rates, rental prices and exorbitant petrol prices across the country. At the moment, this takes up 15 hours of my time.

So all together, I'm working solidly 31 hours a week, but that still lags behind the minimum hours needed to classify a full-time job, which stands at 38 hours a week. So it would seem on the surface that being a uni student is easier than having a full time job, but as we head deeper you can begin to see this isn't the case.

You see, the full-time worker gets to go home after a long day, and do nothing. I do concede this is become less frequent with the popularization of the internet leading to working at the office and home, but for the vast majority, home time is their own time.

Not for uni students. We have on average 7-8 hours of reading, homework and assignment work per week on average that takes place off-campus. It's even worse for journalism students because you have to fit in around other people's schedules for interviews and such.

Another key area is the competing attentions of five different disciplines. Uni student in this country usually have four units per semester, and a part time job, which makes focusing on any one thing detrimental to the others.

Full time workers on the other hand, have one area to focus on, their jobs.

All these competing demands and rigorous wok loads for uni students is probably why you see the pulling bucket bongs in their precious spare time.

Now, you may be asking if I've worked a full-time job from up here on my high horse, and I'm here to say yes, yes I have.

Whenever there's a semester break, I work a full time rotation. I need to if I want any cash to do things like buy a car, move out or buy the services of high class prostitutes. 'Dem ho's don't come cheap you know.

It's hard work, to be sure, but at the end of the day I'm able to go home, and do whatever I want, not constrained by the deadlines of academic pursuits.

So before you call somebody a 'lazy ass student', just consider the points above.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Hey Joe. Saskwach here, feeling your pain. I'm also wondering which uni you go to here in WA? If it's UDub we could meet sometime.

Jimmy said...

I go to ECU, the hippie university.

Anonymous said...

I had a feeling you'd say that you damn hippy. I shall meet you next time Hey Joe. Next tiiiiime!