When attending a university that is known for its liberal arts, it is more than often than not that we hear how easy we must have it or how lucky we are that we probably don't have to study that much.
I'm sorry, what?
In case you were uninformed, we do a lot for people. A lot. Even as students, we are still considered social workers.
Put yourself in the shoes of a Social Work major, and you tell me if we have it easy or not:
6:00 a.m. You mindlessly tap your snooze button on the alarm that is blaring beside you. You wish that you had gone to bed earlier the night before, because four hours of sleep just doesn't cut it. Right now you're probably thinking, "Every college student goes through this," but just wait. We still have the whole day to go.
7:30 a.m. You're done getting ready for the day. It's a miracle that you even showered. You start to fix breakfast when you realize that there's no time to sit down and eat a full, healthy meal, because you actually had to make yourself presentable today. You settle for your favorite flavor of Pop-Tarts and head to your required service learning for class.
8:00 a.m. You arrive at the elementary school you are tutoring at for your service learning class in which you have to get 20 hours of community service in. You sit with your "clients" and assist with the basic skills and subjects that they quite haven't grasped onto yet. When you start to leave, they wish you could stay longer and it makes you realize why you do what you do.
9:00 a.m. You have some time to kill before class, so you head to your other community service project to volunteer for a different class. You have to obtain at least 30 hours of community service for this class, so you'd better stay and help for as long as you can. It basically counts for most of your grade.
10:30 a.m. You head to class and struggle to find parking at your oh-so-liberal university, so you're a couple of minutes late to class.
11:05 a.m. Class began five minutes ago. You waltz in all sweaty and breathing heavily because you didn't want to miss roll call or else you'll be counted as absent. Social work professors are huge on professionalism and acting as if the classroom is your professional workplace. No texting in class. No tardiness. No food in class.
12:15 p.m. Class is supposed to be over, but you are still sitting in class listening to your professor babble on about something that won't even be on the test. Wait, did we even talk about anything that would be on the test? Of course not. We talk about our service learning experiences thus far, and read our textbooks ourselves on our own time, and teach ourselves the material most of the time. You have work at 12:30 p.m., so let's hope you aren't late.
12:35 p.m. You eat your to-go lunch in the car on your way to work; most of the time it is a sandwich or Lunchables. You are five minutes late to work, but it's a good thing your bosses understand you are busy. They work around your crazy class schedule very well. You forgot to take off for the days and hours you have to be off work in order to complete your service learning hours, and they lecture you about how they expect you to be there when you are scheduled. Sigh.
6:00 p.m. You've cleaned up and clock out of work after a crazy day of dealing with babies at the daycare you work at (or any other job you might work at). You head to your apartment/dorm/house to scarf down some food before your next task has to be done.
7:00 p.m. You attend church or your other meetings, depending on what day of the week it is. This usually takes about 2-3 hours depending on what you're doing.
10:00 p.m. You're finally back at your apartment. You have a social issue report due by Thursday, an exam to study for in Human Behavior, you have to practice your speech which has to be perfect and 6-8 minutes long, and you have to take notes yourself in three chapters of Family Development because it is an online class. You have a devotional to do from your Bible, and you still haven't eaten dinner yet.
Laundry hasn't been done since the weekend, and neither have the dishes. You forgot to call your mom today, but she's probably asleep by now. There's way too much that's been posted on social media since you've been away to keep up with anymore.
2:00 a.m. You finally get a majority of your work done, but you start to feel a little sick. Hopefully you don't catch a cold or else you can't do all of your tasks efficiently.
6:00 a.m. the next day It all starts over, except you have different classes and a different work schedule. But there's still barely time between classes and work to do anything else because when you're not at one, you're at the other.
And this repeats for the whole semester, as well as for the rest of our careers. Please tell me that my major is easy again. Please.
