This is a guest post
Being a student is hard work. It’s also expensive and leaves you with a heap of debt after you graduate. But before you get your violins out, there are also many, many perks of being a student. In fact, it’s been said the years you spend being a student are the best years of your life.
Do you want to know why? Let’s have a look below at some of the perks of being a student.
Full-time means about 12 hours – ‘Full-time’ in student land is about 12 hours a week, compared to the 35+ hours of a full-time working week. True, you are expected to study around those hours but what would you rather do? Go into university 12 hours a week or sit in an office for 40 hours a week?
You get your independence – Sure, having your independence means leaving home for the first time to go living in student accommodation and not having anyone to cook your dinner or do your washing, but it also means staying out as late as you like and not having anyone moaning at you for leaving your clothes on the floor or for eating leftover pizza for breakfast.
The world is full of student discounts – Hopefully, you’ll have sent off for your student discount card as soon as you were able to, but you’ll find student discounts everywhere. Even if a shop, restaurant or bar doesn’t advertise a student discount, you may find they’ll give you a discount anyway if you ask for one nicely.
You’ll meet new people – Going to university is part learning/part meeting new people. You’ll meet people on your course, in your student accommodation and at events from different counties, countries and cultures. Some of these people will become friends for life. Some of them you’ll never want to see again, but you can’t have everything, eh?
You’ll be able to sleep in most, if not all, days – Everyone thinks all students do is sleep, so why argue with them? Unless you have a lecture or seminar at 9am in the morning (which has been known to happen), you’ll be able to sleep in for as long as you like every day (or until your lecture starts, anyway).
You get long holidays – You’ll never have so much time off when you start working full-time. Not even teachers get as much time off as students. You’ll get four months off over the summer and then more time off between terms and reading weeks throughout the terms, too. If you don’t miss anything else about university life when you start work, you’ll miss the time off.
You can wear what you want – Although there are plenty of modern, progressive companies who don’t require their staff to come into work suited and booted like it’s the 1960s, there’ll probably still be some restrictions on what you can and can’t wear at work. When you’re a student, if you want to go to a seminar in Crocs, a cow onesie or clown costume, there’s nothing to stop you.
You’ll learn stuff – Finally, the best thing about being a student is what you’re actually going to university for – to get an education. You’ll have chosen your subject carefully, so you’ll be going safe in the knowledge that you’ll be learning stuff you’re eager to soak up.
As you can see, there are so many perks of being a student, you’ll never want to leave university and enter the working world!
