Throughout the last decade, people have been putting in a lot more work, and having a lot less breaks, although, there are a limited amount of hours in the day. More specifically, many college students are forced to balance five college courses each semester, a job, after school activities, and a social life. With so much on one’s plate, it becomes difficult to do each task at hand well which in the end all leads to stress. This outcome is referred to as role conflict, which is a person’s feeling of frustration when one command interferes with the commands of another. With student loans and bills to pay for, college students are finding that it’s impossible to go through college without having a job. Also, students are made aware that it’s important to build up a resume through after school activities or experiences that help make one student stand apart from another. It has come to the point where there is too much pressure on people to complete every given task in the day. It has been repeatedly drilled into our heads that we always have to do more in order to succeed and to stand out from the rest. Without adding one more activity or task in our day, in most people’s minds, it then becomes a risk for the future of finding a job. Society has become concerned and surrounded around wealth, and we’ll do anything to succeed wealth, regardless of high stress levels.
Being a college student, I constantly feel that there is pressure to complete an impossible amount of things in a day. Although, my days are filled with going to University, having a job, and taking separate non credited courses at FIT, I still feel as if I’m not doing enough. Especially with the difficulty of finding a job due to the economy, I feel an increase in pressure and the feeling that I have to do even more in hopes to stand out.
Being a college student, a son, a brother, a boyfriend and an employee I have to deal with many obstacles and stresses through out a given day. Society has given education a bigger meaning than it was many years ago. Many employers have raised the bar in order to hire “the crème of the crop”. Doing so has substantially increased the number of college graduates around the world. Society has set a bar for students and kids while growing up, that in order to get a good job, students have to go to college, volunteer, do internships, extra-curricular activities such as sports, clubs, and also work part time. Not including personal time with your family and loved ones, this alone can take up majority of your day and energy. Role conflict is a normal way of life for many students. Because of problems with the economy and the job market, many students recently graduated have had to wait 8-12 months before they can even obtain a decent job. Another problem that many individuals face is the significant decrease in retirees, which does not correlate with the number of, graduates that will soon take over their positions. Because of this, there are not as many job opportunities available for those that have recently graduated, due to the fact that the amount of people retiring are un-equivalent. Therefore, this sums up the amount of stress and role conflict that a student faces in a given day. This stress can have positive and negative effects on the student’s body physically and mentally.
It boggles my mind how some people can juggle so many activities and still be a functioning human being. It always makes me feel like maybe I’m a lazy person (though I know I can be hard-working if I wanted to/found something I was super passionate about). It is kind of crazy expectations for standards keep rising. Twenty years ago, you would never expect a person to be able to complete most of the things that are just routine for us now, but they also didn’t have the technology that we have now. Still, I can’t help but think we may be going out of our minds to try to do so much just to impress others so that we can have more things to pile on to our to-do lists.
I remember a friend of mine from a previous school who worked (in food industry, FOH and BOH) while taking the maximum number of classes possible in a pre-med program. While some people are fortunate enough to not have to worry about tuition and loans, he did not have a choice, and had to work in order to help pay the bills at home. He was a full-time student as well as a full-time employee. He was pretty much superman to me. Eventually though, the stress of both took its toll on him and he dropped out of school and devoted his time to working 2 full-time jobs. The food industry is pretty competitive and you always have to prove yourself by working harder, and more hours to get promoted — a job that is constantly on-your-feet. He worked an average of 80 hours a week, and still it wasn’t enough.
It was sad to see him have to drop out of school and work double full-time because of all the demands of life on him. He had a lot of potential as a doctor too.
I totally agree and can relate to everything you’ve mentioned. At times I wish there were just a tad more hours in a day in order to accomplish whatever I need to get done, and hopefully still have a little “me” time. But unfortunately, with the 24hrs that we have, reaching for success just seems so unreachable at times. Consequently, taking fives courses during a full length semester, as well as working 30-40hrs a week, not to mention an additional 15-20 hrs a week interning. What else can possibly get done? Still need time in order to study, but there is hardly any. Still try to get at least 4-5hrs of sleep a night if I’m lucky, and more profoundly, still try to enjoy life and not let it fly by constantly being so productive. How can one possible achieve a level of success that suits them if the time we have conflicts with the roles and duties we have in order to pursue that level of success, assuming that particular level of success requires a vast amount of work. We’re expected to maintain a 3.5 GPA, intern at the most elite companies in our field of work, maintain a job that pays in order to support ourselves, and have a full nights rest in order to accomplish it all over again. One’s left to think how is it even possible, yet we still strive for the unreachable interestingly enough.