**Disclaimer: This rant is by no-means an answer to Folwren but rather, a rant on why life is so hard on us University/College students. She has the right of doing things whichever way she wants, and of course, once she gets to University she might have a different experience than mine. This rant is just 'cos I like ranting**
Let me give you a quick run-through of the life of a University science student.
Let's assume for a moment that I am taking 5 courses. Not only that, but 5 third/fourth year science courses, which means that they all have a lab.
Now, The lecture portion for each course is about three hours a week, times five, 15 hours a week. Then we have a three hour lab for each course, times five another fifteen hours.
Here's where the fun begins.
Before each lab you need at the very least, to read up on what you are doing and sort of figure out all the procedures, if you don't know them, read them up. That is if you are lucky. If you are not, you also need to write a pre-lab exercise. A pre-lab exercise may take more than two hours and a half, reading up on the lab may take a bit more than an hour... let's make an average and call it two hours per lab. Times five, ten more hours.
Having fun yet? because after each lab you need to write some sort of report... a formal lab report may take more than ten hours of work (MUCH more if they want a detailed one) but that's only once a term (usually)... let's make it an average of three hours to make all calculations and the short write-up for a report that's not the formal. That's another fifteen hours.
Let's sum it all up 'till now. 15 hours of lecture, 15 hours of labs, 10 hours of pre-lab, 15 hours of reports.... 55 hours and counting.
Yes, that alone is more than a full-time job. But there's more!
At university they recommend that you study three hours for every hour of lecture. Now, I think that's a bit too much, but all in all it usually winds up to two hours per hour of lecture. Not all at the same time, some weeks I need to read more for one class, some weeks more for another, but that's about an average... and it adds up another thirty hours.
That's 85 hours
a week of schoolwork. Divide it by seven and you get about 12 hours
a day.
I suppose that, as
Folwren hinted, if you are willing to leave 4 hours to "live" (including eating and traveling to and from your classes) that's about ok.. but let's face it, IT'S UNIVERSITY! (College for you Americans). Parties, Friends, Socials, Events, Sports.... Barrow Downs... No matter how hard you try to avoid it, sooner or later you
will show up at a party, or go watch your school's team, or just hang out 'till late with your friends.
And I mean, what's an hour of sleep, if you can spend it with your buddies relaxing?
A friend of mine who is in Engineering (a rather hard career if you ask me, if they take a bit MORE than a full course-load every year it takes about three years to graduate, if they take the minimum they must to stay in the faculty it takes eight years) said very wisely: "These can be the worst three years of your life or the craziest eight. You need to find the point that will be the best for you."
Moral of the story?
a) DO NOT be a science student... even though Arts students have big papers to write... trust me, labs are twice as much pain, and the formal reports are not any shorter.
a2) If you
are a science student, don't take a full course load after first or second year!!!
b) Whatever branch of studies you choose, try to enjoy it as much as possible! There's more to University/College than books and grades... find out a nice balance of fun and hard work and your experience will be quite enjoyable.
Did I find that balance? Not yet... but I'm working on that
