Do you think college is easier OR harder than real life?

College Confidential Community
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<p>The general public perception amongst laymen is that college is a 4-year vacation where you get laid and experiment with drugs and skip class. Part of this I think is because the media and such are liberal, and most writers sorta have degrees from private schools where they probably smoked a lot of pot. They don't see things from the perspective of the nerdy student or the fat girl who has 2 jobs while going to school. For most nerds, college is very hellacious and they never, ever get laid. Ever. It's almost as if their intelligence is a curse. I see a lot of miserable people on campus. A lot. </p>

<p>I think the instant you have to get a job that isn't some cushy on-campus thing to pay for your expenses, college is automatically harder than RL no matter what your major is. And if you have a really nerdy major of course college is harder than anything you'll do compulsarily outside of college. And even for the CC-maligned liberal arts major--if he actually does his reading and it takes him more than 30 seconds to read a page, that's a massive time commitment. Massive.</p>

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<p>College is in real life....</p>

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<p>College is much easier than real life. Enjoy it while you can.</p>

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<p>By virtue of going to college, real life becomes easier for you in the future.</p>

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<p>College is like a 4-5 year vacation.</p>

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<p>Thats not really true Hippo. With so many people going to college these days. The wages for jobs that were meant for college educated folk are going down, college educated people are getting paid less. While those who choose trades and manual labor are going up. I have friends from HS who chose not to go to college they are 22-23 and already make 80K a year fixing elevators.</p>

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<p>You talk constantly about how hard you work as a student. gdiaf.</p>

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<p>One important difference between college life and the working world lies in the number of people you are responsible for. In most cases (not all, certainly), you are only responsible for yourself when you are in college. You may be working your but off studying and working part time, but the only person who suffers from your shortcomings is you. That all changes later, and the difference is significant, though that is often not believed by those who have not experienced both. Being responsible for others, whether it is your children or clients or employees, adds new meaning to what is "hard" and what is "easy."</p>

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<p>I was that nerdy fat kid who worked while getting two degrees in Electrical Engineering, not usually thought of as one of your easier majors. Believe me, college is a good deal easier.</p>

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<p>But what about the fact that you always get weekends off and never have to do ANYTHING. And you're never doing your job from 7am to 1am, are you? If you did you chose an exorbinantly stressful career.</p>

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<p>College is much easier. Its kind of hard to justify partying four nights a week, going completely wild at football and basketball games, streaking etc. when you have a job and a family.</p>

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<p>It's a matter of opinion I guess.</p>

<p>Not everyone in college parties four nights per week.</p>

<p>I don't really enjoy school, but I should enjoy the type of work I want to get into. And I'll make money. yay</p>

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<p>Weekends off? Never have to do anything? Ha. That's a good one. Home maintenance, dishes, food shopping, auto maintenance, getting kids back and forth to wherever they need to go until they can drive themselves, wondering whether they have killed themselves in a car crash thereafter, banking, bill payment, walking the dog, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and that about takes care of Saturday morning. Which is a good thing because I still have a day and a half to do all the other things that need to be done before Monday. This week, it involves a lot of yard work, raking leaves, mowing the lawn, a trip or two to the recycling center, a visit to Home Depot to get a faucet to replace the one that no longer works so well and some things I need for tomorrow's efforts, another hour playing amateur plumber and, if things do not go well, perhaps another hour after that finding a professional plumber to come out and fix my mess. Maybe an hour or so to try to figure out whether the financial portfolio needs adjusting in light of the recent market collapse. Another meal and, if I am very lucky, perhaps enough time to watch a DVD before bed. Sunday involves doing a bunch of stuff to get the house ready for winter so that I may be able to keep the heating costs below $1000 per month. If I remembered everything on yesterday's trip to home depot, it may only be six or seven hours of hard physical labor involving ladders, insulation, caulking and walking across steep roofs. If not, add in another trip to the store, and while wandering up and down the aisles in search of weatherstripping, I will probably notice another couple of items that remind me of other jobs that need to get done. Respond to a call from an ailing parent or in-law who needs help with something that may be a matter of life and death or may be completely inconsequential, but will be impossible to differentiate until I have taken a half hour to drive over there, spent an hour or two visiting and helping them do things they can no longer keep up with, and another half hour driving back. Hopefully avoid the dreaded trip to the emergency room, which will mean staying up until 2 or 3 AM before getting up at 6 to go to work the next day.</p>

<p>Get back from said job by 6 PM or so if I am lucky, an hour or two later if something comes up or we are in a particularly busy stretch. Walk the dog or prepare a meal if it is my turn. Spend some time with the kids if they are not too busy to fit me in their schedules. Maybe watch a few innings of baseball while posting to CC or reading up on the news. Maybe not if something unexpected comes up that needs immediate attention. Six hours of sleep on a good night and repeat four more times before doing the weekend thing.</p>

<p>What about vacation, do I hear you say? I get three weeks of it a year and usually spend one of them at home catching up with everything that still needs doing. I would have been getting four by now had I not gotten laid off from one job and started over somewhere else, but in another six or seven years I could still get there. You get how many months? Additional time off between fall and spring semesters? Another entire week in the spring and almost another around Thanksgiving? You have something like 150 days per year of school in college. I work 225 or so in my day job, then all the other chores kick in. </p>

<p>You are also likely to be in the best physical shape of your life in your college years. Try taking on a real workload when you have the typical assortment of ailments that cut in after you reach age 50.</p>

<p>Good luck to you, football, but if you think things are going to become much easier after graduation you are likely to be sorely disappointed. They may not get much worse for a few years and you may even think that they have gotten better if you manage to get a well-paying job right out of college and live in an apartment where all of the maintenance is taken care of for you. Once you take the step of owning a home, getting married, raising kids, or when your parents start to age and you have to spend a fair amount of time taking care of them, things may look a little different.</p>

<p>hm, short lunch break for me today after writing this...</p>

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<p>I was just talking about the workload mainly, and the difficulty thereof. And anyone who goes to school full time while working part time automatically has less free time than you unless they're a communications major or unless you work at LEAST 60 hours a week. Yeah, we get a lot of time off, but that hardly makes the semester any easier unless the free time is amid the semester, which it isn't.</p>

<p>Also the fact that you post on a message board leads me to believe that you are rather unfit from a physical perspective, especially with this being a college message board. I am certain I could do all those chores much faster than you can.</p>

<p>I just have a much easier time with work because you don't have to push yourself so hard to do it. Same with writing a paper or doing an assignment vs. sitting with your notes and just memorizing for hours. It's much easier to motivate yourself to do something when you at least have the incentive of satisfaction that you're accomplishing something instead of filling your brain with useless knowledge.</p>

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<p>Football, your comments to BassDad are completely uncalled for -- as well as totally irrelevant. Why on earth would you assume that posting on a website makes a person physically unfit? Michael Phelps blogs and he isn't exactly in poor physical condition! And you yourself post here -- yet you're in such an amazing physical condition that you are CERTAIN you can do those chores much faster. You're just contradicting yourself.</p>

<p>And many parents post here on CC. Yes, it's a college message board but it's open to all who are interested. And those of us who pay those big bills are certainly interested.</p>

<p>I happen to agree with most of the other posters. Regardless of what classes you take (and I was a civil engineering major) and whether or not you work part-time while carrying a full course load (which I did) and if you party a lot (I didn't), pursuing a career after college -- and paying your own bills and raising a family and all those other related things -- is much, much harder than attending college.</p>

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<p>College is easier than high school.</p>

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<p>What exactly is so hard about paying bills? You just have to remember to pay them and have sufficient funds to pay them. It's not that hard at all. Guess what? I have bills too. Rent, utilities, auto insurance, and internet so I can post with y'all lovely folks.</p>

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<p>On an hourly basis I worked more in college than currently at my job.</p>

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<p>college is definitely easier than "real life" considering what happens to most people is that their parents give them money and all they have to do is learn.</p>

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<p>football you are just to spoiled to get it.</p>