A wider education
University is, however, not just about the course. Even the most conscientious student is only likely to work for eight hours a day, six days a week (and for some it’s more like six hours a week — not to be advised).
That leaves 120 hours a week (or more than 70% of your time) to do other things. Admittedly, one of those things is likely to be sleeping (probably at strange hours), but even that can be fun if you’re doing it with the right person. Let’s say that you sleep for another eight hours a day. You’re still left with 64 hours to fill every week, plus long vacations.
The university experience is as much about those 64-plus hours a week as it is about the course. That time is filled by your social life, for a start — and imagine the social life you get when you put several thousand like-minded people together in a place with cheap beer.
The time is also spent doing other non-course stuff which, while it may be all very sociable and fun, is too worthwhile to be called a ‘social life’. We’re talking about extra-curricular activities from sport to religion, music to travel. These include things that students have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to try and things they do simply because they want to — but which also, at the end of the day, turn up as extra points on their CVs.
Even if the course and the career boost weren’t convincing, the fringe benefits should be a good enough reason to choose student life, for three years at least.
Last updated on: 12 November 2008