The Daily Grind

Back when I still was a student, during my freshman year and my second year in school, we almost were been treated like academic slaves. We had lectures all the time, from morning till evening. There were days where I would be so exhausted, that all I wanted to do was sleep until the evening of the next day, but nope, I had to wake up early in the morning the next day and just start it all over again.

To me, that was the expected life of a student, being busy all the time, trying to have good grades and all that. I remember during the second semester of my year two where we had been so stressed out that I had told my friends that if we didn't fail this semester, we would never fail any semester in this school and they had all agreed with me. Luckily for us, the majority of us ended up passing and that was probably the last semester where we allowed ourselves to be that stressed.

You see, I happen to be in a department dominated by guys (Electrical Electronics Engineering) and during our third year in school, we decided to let the school know that a department where more than eighty-five percent of its students are male, we will not be easily controlled.

So what we did, starting from that third year in school was that whenever the school time table came out for each semester, we would modify it ourselves in a way where we don't get to have lectures on Mondays and Saturdays, so our lecture days were from Tuesdays to Fridays.

_{photo by Estée Janssens}

Now while it felt like a great idea to have three free days to ourselves, the rest of the school days (Tuesday to Friday) were hell for us because we had to make sure all of the courses that we had will somehow fit in those available days, and this included the courses we were suppose to have on Mondays and Saturdays.

I remember how much I always looked forward to the weekends due to how stressful my weekdays were. The funny thing was that during the weekdays, I always regretted the fact that we did what we did, but when it was the weekends, I get excited and appreciate the fact that we did what we did. It was always a mixed feeling.

Now if you're wondering why I'm telling y'all about all this, well it's about the question asked in today's contest, if we'd prefer having to work four days a week but with longer hours or five days a week with the usual working hours that we have now.

Personally, I really don't have a 9 to 5 job but if I did and it truly was a job that starts at 9 and ends by 5, I really don't think I'd want to work for just four days with longer hours, although I know that staying at home on Fridays, doing nothing might be enticing and tempting, those four days at work would be terrible for me, and the way I see it, having four terrible days at work just so that I could have one peaceful day at home is a bad math for me.

Instead, I'd rather leave things the way they are, and just lessen and share the workload within the usual five working days.