Which did you find harder, uni or work?

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The placement student at the local community center was trying to convince me to get a degree. She said uni would be less difficult than I thought it would be and I won't be exhausted or have 0 free time (she did but only because she worked retail at the same time).

I thought about it and decided maybe she was right, maybe it would be less difficult than I'd previously thought it would be but the stumbling block was that a degree is supposed to lead to a career (preferably in the same field) and maybe if uni is not quite so hard maybe the corresponding career would be.

I mean, unskilled jobs may only be eight hours per day (that is if they're full time in the first place) but I keep hearing about professionals who start at 9:00AM and yet work far into the evening. So does that mean the 40 hour week is not intended for professional jobs?

Anyway, getting back to my question, which did you find harder, uni or work? Bonus points if your job is in the same field as your study.

I found both uni and work both challenging and stimulating.

I struggled in school growing up and my first year at uni, but, I was worn out from my restaurant and retail jobs and was far too short on sleep and food. Going back as an adult, I really enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, the deadlines and conflicts with other students (not in my degree classes, but, in gen ed requirements like ethics and group projects in other classes) did stress me out, but, it was very stimulating and I am glad I did it.

My current job is in computer science, which was what my degree was for. We only programmed in vb.net at school, but, I do html, xml, sql and js here, but, the principles are the same, once you've got the workflow from the classes, they translate okay.

As for the hours, it depends on your work and your company. I've mentioned in other threads that the type of companies I apply at are not going to have those long hours (I wouldn't mind, but, as long as I've got kids at home, I can't take them). I could make higher wages working for a services provider, but, at the expense of unpredictable schedules.
Or, as in my old industry, it seems architects always worked long hours, engineers did not seem to as much. The builders' hours varied by jobsite. If you did residential work, you could keep normal hours, but, if you worked construction on hospital or university campuses, you'd have to work at night or weekends. ~shrugs~ But, again, as I worked for the client, I worked my normal hours and went home.

LOL....I wouldn't have minded if I went to a Uni like Cambridge or Oxford. Alas, I went to a college named Marymount.

I think both have their peculiar challenges. I enjoy the Uni experience, but not the Uni papers LOL

Opposite here. Essay questions and research papers are the only reason my grades were passable in school.

I also made friends by helping them edit their papers (a couple tried to get me to help them do their work, but, I don't do the whole dishonesty thing).

I actually did quite well in the papers---but they were time-consuming, despite the fact that I'm a good typist. I probably have some ADHD traits.

In my opinion I would trade going back to school full time with working in a heart beat. Granted you had homework and tests and stuff but you could dictate how many classes you took on and when you wanted to do those classes. A regular 9 to 5 job leaves you little time for yourself or your special interests despite the illusion of no homework or tests .

I'm in uni at the moment and can't say I like it. I'm looking forward to finishing my degree in the hope that an job I can get afterwards will be better than working in McDonalds where I was before.

But yeah, uni is a challenge. There often isn't a lot of structure and you have to be able to work on your own time without people telling you what to do. Tbh it's more difficult than it probably sounds to some people, and I find it stressful. And I hate exams so much too.
Then it really doesn't help that I completely fail at the social side of it. I hardly ever leave my room, and the partying is very unappealing to me.
And I also feel like I've become really stupid. I went from being one of the smartest kids in high school to being bottom of the class most of the time here. It has knocked my confidence quite a bit, and compared to school, you get minimal help if any at all, when you struggle.

Uni is easier.

If you do A, B and C, you get D. They can't screw with you on that if it's in the contract of services.

Jobs make you do A, B and C with no assurance that you will get D because X and Y were not met, but nobody told you about X and Y.

Of course, uni screws you over because they don't bother teaching you how a job works so that you realize you need to learn about X and Y so that you can better adapt to the work world once you graduate.

You did both at once?!

Ah, it seems like I've gotten into a habit of repeating myself but when I'm ruminating on something I get stuck in a mental feedback loop. It seems like I'm proceeding at a glacial pace. I lost the forms the employment agent and I wonder if it's worth signing up if I'm going to study something later but it might be good to add another job to my resume.

And to think, from age 12 to 14 I aspired to be an architect. Maybe that wouldn't have been the best job for me. At 15 I got burnout and aspired to do nothing. That plan went horribly right. At the moment I have a job so insignificant, it's practically the same as being unemployed.

I wouldn't mind working nights. What I'd mind is working days and nights. Unless that's what you meant in the first place.

That's kind of the whole problem. I built in up in my mind that maybe uni would be fun but then I thought, you stay there for three or four years and then you get a professional job in the corresponding field which might be less fun... but I couldn't justify going there if it wasn't to get a job in the first place.

And that's the other thing, I already have hobbies and a social life. A 9 to 5 job would almost kill those and drive me insane, to say nothing of a 9 to 9 job or a 9 to midnight job and those with degrees are more likely to get jobs in those last two categories, or so I've heard.

I guess I just have to chose the right field (another thing proceeding at a glacial pace). Most of the engineers I know work 40 hour weeks. I wouldn't mind doing that if I wasn't bad at math.

Maybe since the employment agency is keen to get me a part time job I could just do that for a while as I do some type of math course before entering into a full major.

It was just that due to my advanced age I felt like I have to do everything straight away.

McDonald?s would be an improvement over my current job.

That sort of sounds like me at 20 when I dropped out of community college. It wasn't just the amount of work but the way it was presented. Sometimes I sort of struggled to understand their instructions before I could begin to follow them. I was doing IT. I understood about 99% of the computer stuff but some of the bureaucratic stuff like how to write a mock report befuddled me. Then again maybe my writing skills have improved since then. In spite of how stressed I was I passed every subject then chickened out when they said the follow up course was going to be both harder and less structured.

Anyway organisation is my kryptonite.

Yeah. That reminds me of a study I read that in exams, confidence is more important than skill. The same is true for getting promoted. So the most confident (arrogant) people do very well in their careers and then you have an arrogant boss. Also the most workaholic people get promoted to the top and then you have a workaholic boss who thinks everyone else should be a workaholic too.

I don't think I'd even bother living on campus in the first place.

Maybe the upside to that is that at least you're not surrounded by idiots all the time like in school. As for me, I peaked at an earlier age. I was leagues ahead of my peers in primary school than bottom of the class in high school. When I was 8, I had the intelligence of a 14 year old. When I was 17, I still had the intelligence of a 14 year old. I almost failed year 12. In fact my randomly chosen subjects weren't of much academic value anyway. I sort of feel like in primary school they didn't give me any challenge so I got through with absolutely no effort and then in high school I was shocked when I had to do something that was actually challenging. I had a nervous breakdown at 15 and instead of giving me proper counselling they got the gym teacher to convince me to come back. Making the gym teacher a councillor is sort of like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. He was almost as bad as the motivational speaker they got to come in every February. His senseless optimism was nauseating (?You can do anything? ?nothing is impossible?, stuff like that). And the regular councillor (must've been her day off that time) seemed to be clueless in matters like career advice and subject choice.

Maybe I should've asked for more help but back then I had problems that I wasn't even aware off.

I already got minimal help at school. It gets even worse?

Well I guess I have a few more months of changing my mind every five minutes about if I'm making work and study seem harder than they really are because I'm trying to come up with an excuse to get out of work or if I'm exaggerating the importance of career in self image because I'm trying too hard to confirm. I feel like I have contaminative bias but the problem is I don't know if I'm biased in one direction or the other.

Motivation is difficult for me because I already have enough money to live on without working.

Work has always been a challenge for me. I dream of finishing my University studies, but it's unlikely I'll be able to any time soon.

Most universities-- descent sized ones anyway-- have some group of like-minded geeks one can hang with. Most day jobs are not like that. I managed to find one that is sort of like that, but still not quite.

I was screened for a job at the Philly Orchestra, which would have been like heaven for me. Alas, I wasn't even picked up for an interview.

Yes. As in your last line, you speak of motivation? I lived with my Mom from Jr High through High School and became ill with a moderately severe disability when I hit puberty. When I was about 16, my Mom made a choice at work that basically lost me my medical coverage, so, I'd gone a couple of years with very spotty medical care. Self preservation kicked in. When I graduated high school, I got a job, then my parents asked for rent, so I said, f that, if I'm paying rent, I'm getting my own place closer to jobs and school.
I didn't have a social life, so I just packed work and school into my time (made minimum wage, which obviously isn't enough to live on, so I worked two jobs. No financial aid because my parents were pizzed at me for refusing to pay rent and refused to sign on my FAFSA), kept my head down and plowed through it. I was uber stressed from my bosses, customers, teachers... luckily my fellow students ignored me. My grades weren't very good, but, I kept passing by the skin of my teeth. I wasn't that great when customers were mean to me, but, I did all the carp jobs no one else wanted to do so my bosses kept me around.
I didn't have any other choice, I had to have medical coverage and a desk job or it would be fatal. Looking back, I still don't know how I did it and I wouldn't advise anyone else to. The sleep deprivation was not healthy.

lol, I know the mental loops, man. It's how I spend hours organizing and going over things that aren't important.
I say anything else on your resume is definitely good. I only had one (professional) job on my resume for the longest time and always wondered if I was judged by that.

Ah, no, architect would be soooo bad for aspies, etc. The amount of communication and grunt work and rework, SOOO frustrating and pointless and inefficient. It would be horrible, even without the long hours.

lol, no, I meant working just nights. My last job, I kinda envied the guys who worked 3rd shift. They just came in, got on with their work, and didn't have to deal with hardly anyone for 8 hours straight.

Also, regarding the social life? I've got one now... 99.9% of my friends and activities are involved with people I have met through work. The after hours learning events, local and national conferences, etc are all 'work' technically, but, I do it while hanging out with cool people (and there's usually alcohol, if you're into that). I ended up marrying a guy I met at a conference, and we know all the same people so there's no social stressors there. It's great. And they're all weirdos like me. So, long story short, work can be treated as a social event too, ime.

Best of luck.

I like it when you relate your autobiography. Very Interesting.

(I wish you knew Arte Johnson from "Laugh In," who said "very interesting" very interestingly.

...My problems seem kind of insignificant now. Sleep deprivation? You mean to say that your combined work/study load exceeded 16 hours a day?

I'll try to complain about my life less, this sort of puts things into perspective.
I'm impressed that you got through that with your sanity intact. If I went through that my brain would melt.

And to think I had a nervous breakdown just because of year 11 and I wasn't even doing any extra curriculars.

Social life at work? Not a bad idea. That would explain how those double full time guys don't turn into recluses. Cool events? All I get is lame office parties a few times a year. I met only one of my friends at work. Oh well, could be worse.

I wouldn't say anyone's problems are insignificant. There are many sources of stress and motivation. If I hadn't gotten sick or been on the outs with my parents, maybe I never would have experienced the benefits that came with being forced to be out on my own. ~shrugs~
I haven't always felt like I did. Still suffer from night terrors and flashbacks to some of the more 'enjoyable' parts of my life, but, in the daylight, I keep it together and provide better for my kids.
My cousins had it worse, abuse and less nice accomodations and less time with more loving and caring relatives (I spent many years with my grandparents, they were wonderful and never made me feel bad for my quirks).
[edit: Um, yeah, sometimes I'd work 2-3 jobs in one day, and take multiple classes, that's across four different towns, so, the only sleep I got would be in the common room at uni or in my car at work. Like I said, not healthy.]

~chuckles~ It's funny, my coworkers talk about their golf clubs and extracurriculars growing up and their honeymoons and 'first dance songs' and all the stuff they have their kids signed up for. Totally foreign to me, all of it.

Oh, and lame office parties? I've been to a couple of those.
Most of mine are related to work but not directly sponsored by my employer. Say, the General Contractors Association puts on a Modeling Expo every year. Say, half a dozen classes on local projects or new equipment or software, but, plenty of time between classes to chat, and a mixer afterward.
Or a software users group that hosts lectures with a mixer, so, people from many companies. I actually started a software users group here a few years ago. I eventually let it die, but, lots of folks got to know each other and started offshoots, which I attend (but, don't have to work at ).
I certainly didn't expect to find social opportunities this way, I was actually looking for education, because once I'd learned everything my mentor could teach me, I found I still needed to know more, and a professional organization was the best way to go about it. I started online though, for a couple years before I got to the point I could meet people in person.

Last edited by MissDorkness on 27 Jun 2014, 3:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm glad you think so, looking back, it appears I got a bit wordy... again.

I didn't find it wordy. I know what wordy is.