Time! Or lack of it.

[ambersalamander]

This is what you get if you attempt to combine a paid job that you have to travel to, a voluntary job or two, a Masters degree, a long distance relationship, a passing attempt at a social life, a football team you are absolutely dedicated to, and a household to maintain by yourself. I shall now have a rant dedicated to [shadow=red,left,300]TIME, THE UNIVERSE'S NUMBER ONE VILLAIN[/shadow]

rant alert

There are 168 hours in a week. This is not enough.

I have to spend 37.5 hours of that week earning money to feed myself and anyone else who needs feeding . That leaves me with 130.5 hours.

I will spend at least 9 hours a week travelling to work and uni once I've started my Masters course the week after next. I shall have 121.5 hours remaining.

I need to spend about 20 hours a week studying, including attending lectures. This leaves me with 101.5 hours.

As membership secretary of the Sutton United Supporters' Trust, I need about one and a half hours a week to process memberships. I now have 100 hours left. Technically I'm also the Community Liaison Officer, which I ought to spend an hour a week on, but haven't for a while

I live on my own so I have to cook every day (don't ask about takeaways; I have no money). Including cleaning afterwards, this will take about 2 hours every weekday. 90 hours left.

Housework, bless it, will also take up an absolute minimum of half an hour a day, and an hour on one day. This leaves 86 hours.

Must have time out. If I go to the pub once a week for 3 hours, including the walk there and back, I have 83 hours left.

Shopping for food will take up about 2 hours a go, leaving me with 81 hours.

I will spend about 5 hours a week having baths and getting ready to go out. That's a conservative estimate, and leaves me 76 hours a week.

Football, an absolute necessity , means at least 6 hours a week, probably more. 70 hours is the most I can have left.

Being in a long distance relationship means it's very very very important to spend time together when you can. I'm going to call it 12 hours a week, not including sleep. And that's if I'm lucky and includes travelling. 58 hours remaining.

I spend about an hour a day eating and trying to relax so that's 51 hours left.

Moderating a footie forum is another job of mine, although I don't have to do much moderating since you lot are nice. But I also use other fora and email a lot. I spend about an hour a day online, not including the time when I should be doing other things. 44 hours left.

I need about ten hours' sleep a night to be happy, but I usually end up with about seven. I estimate that I need 50 hours a week. That leaves...um... -6 hours.

I try to see my long-suffering friends once a week, for at least a couple of hours. That's -8 hours.

I also need an hour to go to the library and get study materials. -9 hours.

So even if I have no breaks at all and don't ever have any treats, there are still nine hours less than I need in a week

AND I just spent about 20 minutes writing this! Doh!

[amberaleman]

Much sympathy with this. There's lots of stuff that I'd like to do, but simply don't have time for.

One strategy I've adopted is to operate in fortnightly rather than weekly cycles. Instead of saying that I need to spend 4 hours a week doing x, I can get away with doing 6 hours of x a fortnight. This approach actually ties in quite well with football, where you tend to have one Saturday home game (i.e time before/after match) alternating with an away game (little time before/after match).

Luckily I don't have to make time for a long distance relationship. My last such endeavour foundered because my priority at weekends was watching Sutton. Sometimes, you've just got to get your priorities right!

[medibot]

I have sympathies, i had a similar schedule of uni, assignments, job, footy and travelling that allowed about 6hours sleep at the start of this year and it as you can imagine kills you somewhat.

For me it only lasted 6/7weeks before i freed up a bit of time but by that point people had forgotten to remember to invite me to places and stuff

Painting a lovely picture aren't i

If anyone i know can manage it it's you though

Let me know if i can help with anything too.

[ambersalamander]

Uni, assignments, part-time job, footy and travelling I could just about cope with when i was at sussex. It's the other stuff on top that kills!

[medibot]

Yeah, you can usually nab a few hours here and there. I'd've been f*cked if i had to anything as time consuming as maintain any sort of relationship with anybody, fortunately as my course is devoid of anybody i actually fancy and it is quite hard to pull at WHSmith when you work with two other blokes, such an issue never arose

Incidentally, i read a survey saying that the chances of gaining a 2:1 or a First at uni fall dramatically as soon as you get a part-time job, something i can definitely sympathise with having had to resit some of my first year, mainly the bits i could have been doing had work not taken up 16 hours of my week.

[ambersalamander]

Interesting. I had to chuck in my part time job when I was doing my BA because it was making me ill through stress