Written by a BC Nurse.
“You have to think of school as your full-time job.” I’ve been hearing this glib piece of advice since the first year of study, usually from academic advisors. When I hear it from my own peers, it’s always those whose living costs are covered by their families. As a full-time student, working part-time at a nursing home, and part-time doing deliveries, I can’t help but roll my eyes. Unlike these students, the money for my expenses needs to be made in real time. There is no Registered Education Savings Plan in my name, nor does my family have the means to top up my bank account as needed. My struggles clearly stem from a lack of money. The idea that all could be remedied by changing the way I “think” about life is just absurd.
Working to make ends meet as a full-time student is best summed up by this constant feeling that your life is being held together by duct tape. It’s walking out of a lecture and realizing I didn’t retain a single teaching point. Instead of listening, I was accounting: adding up my medication refill, plus that parking ticket from way back, plus the upcoming tuition deadline which I might not make as my latest paycheque was swallowed up by rent. The uncertainty of it all is impossible to ignore. It’s getting home from a nightshift to sleep a few precious hours before getting back to studying. I may have a paper due at midnight, or a group project meeting that day. By now I’m pretty good at keeping myself from nodding off during group work. My favourite trick is biting a knuckle when I start to fade out.
I wish I was making this up. Indeed, it would be ideal for school to be my one full-time job, where I could concentrate my full attention. I would get so much more out of my education that way. And really, work is work, whether in school or at a job. It’s a shameful fact that only one is paid, when both (with some exceptions) benefit society.
