Not who you asked but I was working full-time and started full-time community college night classes. Monday from 6am to Friday 3pm I was 100% dedicated to work and study, I would get maybe 5 hours of sleep a night and crash when I got home Friday.
The friend group I hung with treated me like an outcast and out of about 6 only one is still friends with me some decade later. I also had to pick and choose family get togethers and some of the last years of my parents life.
I did it because I saw their health ailing and I wanted to be able to fully support myself and my brother by being more than a minimum wage retail worker, it just sucks that that coincided with them all ailing so rapidly and eventually passing by the time I was a senior in college.
In this situation, YOU got a free education regardless.
I paid every freaking dime for my education out of pocket by sacrificing my nights and weekends during college. For plenty of people, college was a time where they made a ton of life-long friends. For me? College was a time where I spent half my time on campus passed out in the student union or library trying to get a bit of a nap between classes so that I could work an 8-6 schedule at night.
That's exactly what I did, funny we posted at the same time. I worked 30 hours a week with fulltime school too. I was able to pull through it though and graduated. Took me 6 years instead of 4 total, but looking back, I would've purposefully taken even longer had I known it was actually one of the best times of my life. I had the benefit of starting at a community college though, which saved money, and those 2 years were easier. I also took other classes at other local community colleges to transfer the max into my university as well once I was there.
Yeah, you're right on the time management part for sure. I was the most efficient with my time during that period of my life than I've ever been. Basically work, class, study in library, repeat. It's not that bad, people are capable of more if they choose to. Best time of my life. It doesn't get better for sure. I've worked like a slave since then, with zero intellectual stimulation as I had at school other than what I seek out on sites like HN.
My last two years of high school had 8 hours a day in class, one to two hours of homework a night (including the long term projects you mentioned), a 20 hour a week part time job, and three extra curricular activities that ate probably about 20 hours a week in meetings, fundraising, and practice.
So, all, told, I was working _80 hours a week, minimum_ in my high school years. I graduated top ten in my class, and my parents were astonished that I took two years off between high school and college going to a technical school eight hours a week with a 40 hour a week job. I had cut 32 hours of work a week out of my week, and I was only 19!
When I finally did go to college, the weeks during the semester were about twenty hours a week between classes, studying, projects, and tutoring and a twenty hour a week part time job. I can understand why you felt like college was a vacation because I felt the same way!
The downside to all of this is that I was very poorly socialized, compared to some of my peers, when I started college. Luckily, since I had a bunch of free time, it was easy to catch up, but the first semester was difficult for me navigating all of these unstructured, unsupervised socialization opportunities. A part of me regrets that because that stunted my ability to network from the start of college - I have no idea what opportunities I have missed out on and will miss out on in the future as a result.
Several people that graduated in that top ten with me who had the same 80 hour a week work week in high school could not handle the unstructured free time in college. Two dropped out of college but have none-the-less worked their way into lives that seem to make them happy, one got heavily into drugs and is still in jail, one committed suicide, and the rest graduated and seem to have kept on the track.
I was thinking the same thing. I was definitely someone who had a lot of free time to do extra stuff, so maybe this is just my guilt speaking, but I had a lot of friends that had 0 free time between class, work, and/or family obligations. If anything, they were way more dedicated than I was, because going to college was already a major obstacle.
I was a former stay up all night kid. Honestly the reason was I had no time for myself at all unless it was the end of the day. From the morning until like 9pm you are tied up with school or homework and forced to do crap you hate, and you get in trouble for doing stuff you like. I was astounded at how much free time I ended up having in college, to the point it severely backfired and I had to relearn how to actually study and manage my time after a few bad semesters. Its like what was good for me as a student was always at odds with my mental health since the school system doesnt have a concept of “self care” that therapists speak of.
I was studying at the university, and my dad was fired, so I "decided" to work (during the day) and study at night and I found a different new world. I wasn't the only guy that did that; it was hard but not impossible. I also worked on summer in one of the worst schedules: 12 hours per day x 7 days per week. Am I mad?. Not really, I really enjoyed working and studying, I earned experience (and money), and when I graduated, I already had a job, expertise, and money (and contacts).
Now, if you say that it's hard to study when the study is your only concern..
¯\_?_/¯
We can't raise as a good adult if we don't give our best shot.
My workload in college was insane. For one of my semesters I had zero social life and slept a day out of two, one out of three near the end. It was awful. I didn't have a job and lived with my parents who handled food too. Not many people made it through. Was a shitty community college. I would have had an easier time at MIT, heh.
Lets have fun with "scare quotes". No one told me I "had to" "either" attend university full time or drop out completely, so crazy me, I chose the 3rd option.
I ran out of money and motivation after about a year full time, man cannot live on ramen alone, got an offer for about 1/2 the pay of a real job but full tuition reimbursement while 1/2 real pay was still a modest integer multiple of minimum wage, so needless to say I jumped. Dramatic increase in standard of living, etc.
Personally I found one weeknight class (typically 2 hrs tue/thr or mon/wed) and one weekend class (typically a brain numbing 4 hr saturday morning/afternoon) was about right when things were boring, but family + work pressure etc occasionally resulted in only one class per semester. I knew people who tried to pull off 3 or even 4 classes with a full time 1st shift job, but they suffered horribly.
I studied and did homework every lunch time at work and very rarely did homework at home other than the occasional term paper.
My time in college was the easiest time in my life. I carried a full course load, did extra activites (math club, sports, fraternity), and worked part time (full time during breaks). We were independent for the first time, partied, made friends for life, ran a small business, oh, and even went to class. I graduated, got a job, and paid my bills.
Stressed in college? Wait until you have to be at work on time every day, put up with who knows what at work, pay your bills, pay your mortgage, get along with your spouse, spend time with your kids, take care of your health, and smile the whole time. Did I mention going to work and paying your bills? Oh yea.
I'd like to have empathy for those with hardships, but this just doesn't compute for me. Why not just do what you're supposed to do in college: grow up and get on with it.
I had to transit anyways, and I found it hard to work in transit. In hindsight, I had terrible sleeping habits, and eventually, it forced me to start taking naps wherever I could. A schedule materialized organically and became the norm when I gained the trust of my instructors.
And yeah, it was for a competitive advantage. Not within my school, but for college. I didn't understand how college or scholarships worked until my 10th year, which meant that I had to become competitive much quicker than other applicants.
On a side note, the worst periods were phasing in-and-out of schedule during winter and summer break (I worked a 9-to-5 on breaks), which I did three or four times.
I followed close to the same plan as the original poster, rarely going to classes. I had a medical disability note so I was able to do so without repercussions, but used my time off to focus on research which landed me a great job once I was done.
I'd probably do the same. Between trying to keep up at 18cr/semester, minimum wage work-study, and part-time jobs either my health or my grades were suffering at any moment. Part of it was my overly eager major (yes aerospace majors normally take 18credits of mindbreaking classes), and naivete as a freshman.
On the other hand, as a family and career man I find I have even less free time than I did in university.
Many full time students are employed throughout college. As someone who attended the state colleges my family could afford, most students had part time employment and many were working full time.
I had a few friends at university who got really into polyphasic sleep. Turns out college is a terrible time to set your schedule with that much discipline.
I tried doing this in college too but it broke down immediately. The way coursework and exams are conducted almost forces you to burn the midnight oil and sacrifice sleep for forcing another three or four things to memorize into your head.
That’s what it felt like, like I had very limited time to shove x amount of things into my brain which only processes at y rate, so if I had too many things to shove in at a time due to taking a full courseload, that meant staying up since I cant change the rate my brain digests information without abusing stimulants like some of my friends.
So then you end up with a few nights of 5 hour sleep which you pay for by sleeping for 13 hours on the weekend. Not healthy, but it became a matter of necessity due to also having to make time for a part time job.
Taking classes full time was much easier. Even with the mental whiplash of subjects and classwork to do, I at least had the freedom to figure out the best way to work my schedule around it. Not so easy when I have to be at my desk at 8am every day.
The friend group I hung with treated me like an outcast and out of about 6 only one is still friends with me some decade later. I also had to pick and choose family get togethers and some of the last years of my parents life.
I did it because I saw their health ailing and I wanted to be able to fully support myself and my brother by being more than a minimum wage retail worker, it just sucks that that coincided with them all ailing so rapidly and eventually passing by the time I was a senior in college.
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