For those of you who don't know me well, I NEED my sleep. I'm one of those guys who consistently needs a good night's sleep (9-10 hours a night) in order to not feel like shit throughout the day. I no longer register for classes before 11:30, and I wholeheartedly believe that a good night's sleep may be the single most important factor into how happy, efficient, and productive I'll be at nearly every aspect in life.
Today is Saturday night. Following completion of this blog, I will be getting a good night's sleep for the first time in over a week. I've had to wake up before 830 for eight consecutive days now--ultimate frisbee tournaments (yeah juice!), finals week, and working for commencement housing does that to you. Needless to say, I've been pretty worn out this week, pretty much running on fumes all week.
Earlier this morning and last night, due in large part to my exhaustion and lack of sleep, working for Commencement Housing felt like the worst thing ever to me. We were pretty much the university's bitches--doing things like cleaning rooms, lofting beds, making beds, hanging up signs, etc. Don't get me wrong, my bosses and co-workers are all really chill and understanding and I'd much rather be here than sleeping in someones basement god knows where, but 6 people having to turn 75 freshman dorm rooms into 75 hotel guest rooms in a 36 hour period... its a shit ton of work that takes much longer than you think it would. So we were in a major time crunch--we started at 5pm on Thursday (move-out day and the day after my last final) and worked nonstop (with short food breaks) til midnight. The next day, Friday, we worked a nearly inhumane 15.5 hours from 9am nonstop til 12:30am Saturday Morning. I guess it wouldn't have been that bad if I had more than a one hour turnaround period from moving my shit out from my dorm and taking finals the previous day, both of which i was up bright n' early to get done. The bottom line is, during that work late Friday night, we were all roasted, done. But we couldn't complain, we all had to work super hard and efficient and get the job done, because if we didn't, we'd just have to work longer and prevent our already exhausted bodies from getting more sleep. It was literally the hardest that I've had to work this semester (including academics during finals week), and instead of feeling accomplished after completed it, we were feeling more relieved that we got to finally go to bed.
As we were working, Emory also assigned a bunch of the custodians from other buildings on staff to help clean the dorms being flipped into hotels. One of the custodians was Patrick, who happened to be the guy who cleaned my residence hall throughout this past year. Patrick and I had been friendly with one another as the year progressed, routinely greeting each other in the hallways and conversing in small talk. It wasn't until this past week, during finals, when we finally got to knowing each other on a first name basis.
So anyways, I was talking to Patrick as we crossed paths in the freshman dorm/hotel this (Sat) morning. I talked to him about how much I'd been working, referring to the 15.5 hr shift I worked resulting in me going to bed at 1:30ish and having to wakeup at 7:15 this morning, and my general state of exhaustion.I tried to imply to Patrick that this working gig was way harder/exhausting than school for me, finals included, but wasn't sure if I actually got those words out to him.
Patrick's response to my comments is what got to me. In his friendly manner, he also talked about his long work hours (he was called to work overtime till 11 Friday night on the the hotel/dorm as well, he usually gets off at 3pm), and similar to me, he talked about how he couldn't get to bed until 1:30am last night (to watch the end of the grizzlies/clippers game, for that matter). He also had to wake up early for extra hours this morning...at 4:30am. 3 hours of sleep. Then back to work.
And just like that, I realized I had momentarily become everything that I spend so much time preaching against. There I was complaining about how hard I'd been working and how tired I was only to be completely one-upped by a guy who does this kind of work for his career. At that split second, I realized I was a huge bitch. There I was, the one who APPLIED and CHOSE to do this bitch-work for commencement housing for a week, making $10 an hour, getting paid meal breaks, provided meals, a furnished room to sleep in on campus, etc, complaining to a guy who does bitch work everyday, brought his own meals, probably doesn't get paid for a meal break, has no furnished room to sleep in on campus, and probably does his job because he has to put food on the table, not cause he wants to make some pocket money for the summer. Yet he had the smile on his face, just doing what he had to do.
Here's what I (re?)learned out of this whole shindig. I have it real good. I lived a privileged life, I study at a top university, I have a caring family with enough money. Yeah, school can really suck sometimes, but in pure honesty, it's not that bad and is often really fun. Who wouldn't want a life revolved around an awesome and beautiful girl, basketball, frisbees, partying, and chilling with a bit of academics sprinkled on top?
School might be THE EASIEST JOB WE'LL EVER HAVE, definitely easier than doing nonstop bitch-work for commencement, and probably easier than any "real" job. My life's always going to be more privileged/easier than the likes of Patrick's, no matter how poorly I did on my last final, no matter how low my GPA is. Not only that, but my high status in society has much less to do with my efforts in getting here than society makes us believe and much more to do with how everything in my life was put in place for me to get to where I am today. Basically what I'm saying is we didn't HAVE to work extremely extremely hard (relative to people like Patrick, who work much harder than us on a daily basis) to get where we are today... it kinda just happened.
I'm not saying we shouldn't work hard or make the best of what we've got. I'm just saying that whatever we do (especially while we're still in college), we should appreciate and enjoy it more and be happier while we're doing it. Yeah some times are gonna suck and be rough, but during those times, it's important to keep things in perspective and look at the big picture, because the truth is, we've all got it real good.
--JTF
My future posts will be less long/intense. I promise. --JTF
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