A Student's Rant

I've been a student for a long time. I've been in and out of university for the better part of eight years, which is pretty much all of my adult life. I did, of course, take some time off to work, too. (Oh yeah, and move to Germany)

I had a situation a couple of weeks back where someone I know said to me that students have it so easy. We don't really do anything, and we just basically live life like one big party. The real hard thing in life, according to this person, is working at a real job, and not some part-time, twenty-hours-per-week sort of gig while "studying" on the side.

I really took offense to that. I mean, sure, there are students who don't do much else other than sit around, go to lectures occasionally, work occasionally, and party a lot. Maybe because I finished my four-year BA in around two years and am now a graduate student, I don't really get what the undergraduate student experience is really supposed to be all about. I do know my fair share of people who don't do a heck of a lot and manage to squeak by somehow.

But the thing is, I find such an attitude detrimental to those of us who are working fucking hard for our degrees. I have friends who go to school full-time, work those twenty-hour-per-week gigs (and why doesn't this count as "real" work, exactly?), and still somehow manage to get great grades. They're also always really fucking busy.

Then there are people like me. You know what? I don't work. (Oh no! The horror!!) I study full-time, and I'm taking sociology courses on the side so I can become a better social historian. And statistics classes, to boot. No, I don't work. For money. I work my fucking ass off, reading, on average, at least one textbook a day and aim to write at least 1000 words of text for some paper I've got on the go. Every. Single. Day. Yeah, I sit around and watch Mad Men. I also take my dog for a walk for at least an hour a day. And I spend at least a regular eight-hour working day filled with schoolwork.

The difference between my day and your working-life day?

You get up, go to work, and go home. Then you have "you" time. I get up, dilly dally, go to university, get home, dilly dally, write, read on the train, and work some more. You work five days a week. I work seven.

I am always on the go. Always.

I know it may seem like this, but I'm not actually trying to go on a "studying is worse/harder than working" rant. I don't think that distinction is possible. I just think it needs to be acknowledged that they're so different.

I mean, I get it. I've worked your standard 37.5 hour a week gig before. It's not easy. You have a fixed schedule, are chained to your work and often end up counting down the seconds till you can log off your computer and go home. Working destroys your soul. Students, in contrast, can work whenever the hell they feel like it (showing up for classes excepted) and can fly off on vacation at a whim. Although it's not recommended, it's entirely possible to do absolutelyfuckingnothing for three weeks and then cram everything into seven days. I admit this one of the things I like best about being a student -- the flexibility. But the price of that flexibility is that you're always working. And when you're not working, your planning and thinking about the work that needs to be done. Or procrastinating, I guess admit.

In fact, when I was working a "normal" job, I was so used to student life that having two days every week to myself without anything that had to be done was extremely strange. It was uncomfortable. It was so uncomfortable, in fact, I signed up for classes at a distance university just so I would have something to do with all that time.

Yes, I know most people aren't weirdos like me.

While I would agree (to a point) that working for pay can be more exhausting than studying, mostly due to the time constraints and restrictions (Would I sit at my computer and study for eight hours straight with two fifteen-minute coffee breaks and a half-hour for lunch? No.), you get time for yourself in big blocks of time, which is something students don't get.

I'm talking about the student experience right now, not because I don't believe the other side isn't difficult, but because I think our side needs to be brought to light every so often. Especially when people think we sit on our asses and twiddle our thumbs all day. Or, rather, get drunk and boink all day. Man, wouldn't that be the life?

And as a response to the disbelieving remark of "Don't you work?!"

You know what I did today?

I woke up at 6:30am, handed in a paper to a professor, wrote up and e-mailed my theses for my upcoming oral exam to my professor, read a textbook, cleaned the flat, studied for my oral exam, took the pup for a walk, had lunch (at 5:00pm, mind you), and wrote a book review. It's now 10:00pm.

Did my "work" day include more than eight hours of work? Probably not.

But it's been a long-ass fucking day, and that's how almost all of my days go. As do other students'.

So please stop berating us.

We're working hard, too. (And who says we can't take a day or two off every so often, either? You get two a week!)