Posts Tagged ‘hours’
My life is playing out exactly the opposite as I had figured it three years ago. I’d have a comfortable living, working just enough to get by. I’d spend most of the rest of my time with my laptop. I’d spend whatever was left as another bored 20-something.
Yet by Friday, I’ll have clocked almost 60 hours — a third of that time-and-a-half, some of it even double time — over five days at an unsalaried job, and I spend nearly a fifth of that time driving. For fun, I spend on average 15 hours each week playing my trombone or hanging out with other band people — especially the really old ones.
I spared a minute or two to stop by a bridal shop to buy myself a tuxedo between work and rehearsal. In the same trip, it took another minute or two to replace my belt — never buy reversible belts with a built-in hinge, because expensive does not equal reliable — and I only had the time for both errands because the stores were right on the way to band practice.
I’m busy.
Perhaps the best illustration: Because I’m the responsible sort, or like to think so, I don’t answer my cell phone while on the road, at rehearsals, working, sleeping and showering. Save for the 12 minutes I spend waking up every morning and perhaps the better part of my weekends, it’s impossible to get ahold of me.
I’m really busy.
Because I’m not salaried, I have no work responsibilities shoved on me for over my weekends. On two days of the week, I can spend as much time as I want reading long-winded histories and long-winded fiction, checked out from my local library.
I never achieved this sort of freedom in college. Owing to professors’ busywork, my frenetic schedules and a sadly delinquent campus library, I was doing almost as much as I am now, but it never seemed to matter as much. Papers were just another hurdle, over which I’d leap; going to class was just another sand trap, around which I’d aim.
Now, working matters. Now, I don’t have to worry about artificial deadlines, arbitrary assignments, fundamentally useless paper pushing. I’m doing it for real, now, and all doors are open — that’s liberation, and it changed my whole paradigm. I hated work, but now that I’m busier than I’ve ever been, I love it.
Funny how that works out.
I met a science teacher who has his students log how much time they spent preparing for his tests as such:
In case you haven’t brushed up on math, lately, this is the notation for the number of hours spent studying to the power of the number of days. He with the largest total value is he who spent his time the most efficiently and effectively.
Writing down your prep time is part of your grade in his class. Honesty is encouraged, as exaggerating the time you spent studying earns the same credit as avoiding such a foolish lie. Over time, he says, students figure out that the highest grades on the tests tend to go to students who don’t cram in the last day, instead spreading their 24 hours of studying over several days.
It isn’t a perfect aid — it falls through with the student who spends less than half an hour studying — but it’s close enough. I’m tempted to crib it off of him, and I teach social science.
I knew there was a use for this math stuff.
