To whom it may concern,
You call us lazy, drunks, tell us our stress is a fraction of what is to come, worry about the future with us in charge and think we are being spoon-fed virtually everything. I want you to take a moment, put on my Nikes and spend a week in my shoes.
Currently, I work two jobs and enough hours to be considered a full-time worker. When I am not working, you can find me at the library or anywhere with internet connection, my face buried in my laptop, textbooks, and notes. I am also a full-time college student which means I am enrolled in at least 12 credit hours. (Next semester I am taking 17.) However, full-time in a sense, means my time is 100 percent full, so am I at 200 percent? Let’s crunch the numbers.
There are 154 hours in a week, full-time workers work at least 40 of these, docking us down to 114 hours left. As human beings, we need sleep and it is proven that 8 hours a night is the Goldilock zone to run efficiently, so 114 - 7 x 8 = 58. Now, as aforementioned, a college student is full-time when they take 12 credit hours. This generally means how many hours a week a student will spend in the classroom, so 58-12 leaves me with 46 hours. Well that’s not too bad, right? Almost two full days of free time left over! Wrong. We forgot to add in all of the other human things required throughout the day including eating, grooming, cleaning and commuting. Although studying isn’t essential for life, it is essential if I want to pass my classes, taking away even more of my dwindling hours.
However these numbers aren’t completely accurate and can be varied, sleeping less, skipping meals, not studying as much as we should… This does show however, that those of us in college who don’t live off of daddy’s trust funds work ourselves down to the bone. Yet, people wonder why college students have record levels of anxiety and stress. We’re taking out loans for money we can’t even comprehend. We’re told to prioritize school over work and when we are broke we are told to budget better or make work a bigger priority. It’s no wonder we go out for drinks on the weekends which, for some reason, is frowned upon. This isn’t any less acceptable than having a drink after a bad day at work where Suzie wouldn’t stop talking about Erica and Jim, the copy machine got jammed twice, and the coffee pot overflowed spilling all over the floor. As you can see, our stressors are relative.
Perhaps the biggest stressor of all is the fact that with all of this going on, we are supposed to decide what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing. So, next time you look down on college students, remember these things: we’re lazy because we work so hard, we’re unorganized because we’re overwhelmed, and we’re stressed because of the pressure put on us from you and society. Also remember, we’re going to be the ones to deal with the shambles our economy has fallen into, yet you don’t see us pointing fingers at who is to blame. The majority of us are here to further our educations and better ourselves so we can then better the world we live in and we are working hard to do just that. So please, if you would, cut us some slack?
Sincerely,
College Students Everywhere
