WORKING 9 TO 5
How to survive the "adult" schedule.
Wow. I never expected the typical working hours to be so long. I really liked what I was doing in the lab and at my internship, and most days flew by. Even so, I would get home between 5:45 pm and 6:00 pm, go on a run, take a shower, make myself dinner and eat, and next thing you know it’s 9:00 at night. Time to start thinking about bed. Where did all my time go? How did I manage to have so much free time in the past? What was so different? I felt like I wasn’t getting enough out of my weekdays. It got very frustrating. I constantly tried to figure out why my days seemed so short and why it felt like I spent the majority of my hours in the lab.
After breaking it apart, I realized that it got dark by 5:30 pm during winter in Sydney, so I didn’t have the daylight to do anything. I wasn’t living on a campus, so I didn’t have friends two minutes away that I could hang out with. When I got bored, I couldn’t call or text anyone from home because everyone was asleep. I didn’t have to fill my time studying and, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t playing soccer. It was starting to make sense to me why my world seemed so off-beat.
So, what could I do to change this? And what can you do if you ever find yourself in this situation? It may sound cliché, but my best advice is to get involved! I eventually found a soccer team to play on and I actually joined a (flag) rugby team. Although rugby was out of my comfort zone, I am very glad I did it because it was extremely fun and I wasn’t terrible. By adding two hour-long games a week, it already made my weeks more enjoyable. I had something to look forward to and it brought of excitement to my day. Once I joined these teams, my time in Australia started flying bye!
I also went to events that the school was putting on. There were new student and international student fairs that they held as well as several seminars on many interesting topics. Again, little activities like this helped me keep my weekdays busy.
While I didn’t join a club, the University of Sydney is home to hundreds of clubs from art clubs to political clubs to book clubs. There is practically a club for everything. I would highly recommend looking into clubs if that something that peaks your interest.
My other large piece of advice is to utilize your weekends! Working 9 to 5 means not working on the weekend, so take full advantage of that. Plan weekend trips and day trips (on Sunday with dirt cheap transportation) to explore. Again, this really gave me something to look forward to. Unfortunately, I jammed packed my weekends so full that they would fly by and next thing you know, it’s Monday morning again. But, hey, then I had a new adventure to look forward to the next weekend!
Although it is an adjustment, the 9 to 5 job won’t take up all your time and it’s not the end of the world. You will have plenty of free time to explore what the city has to offer and to keep your life exciting. It is up to you, though, to get involved and make your valuable free time enjoyable!