Monday – Thursday

Wake Up: 2:30 a.m.

Work: 4:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Class: 12:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Homework: 4:15 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Sleep: 8:00 p.m.

This is my weekly schedule. On Fridays, I have work but no class. This is if I do not get sick, have extra projects, chat with people or have other things that keep me busy. It is very stressful at times and because of how expensive life is, I am looking for a second job. This would fill my Fridays and weekends, making life even more stressful and leaving even less time for school obligations.

I do this because life is, as most of you know, expensive. Especially school. Buying books, parking passes, tuition, gas to get to class, and everything in between can add up pretty quickly: more than people not in school can imagine.

I struggle with this balance on a day to day basis, as I know most students do.

Those in college already have it tough because so much of their day is spent working on homework and in class that they barely have time for anything else. Paying the bills while in college can be even harder when when the businesses they work for are reluctant to work around a school schedule. Why would a business hire someone with only a few hours available here and there when another possible candidates may have open availability?

The flip side is some students may not be able to afford only working part time with the current cost of a higher education, and for the students who want to work full-time, a job with those kind of hours is harder and harder to come by. Companies are reluctant to hire anyone full-time because of the costs of providing benefits, so hours are cut along with the pay for the people that really need it. This makes it almost impossible to live in a decent place since the cost of living is so high, forcing people to try for a second job.

Students just don’t have the time for this. If you add a child, a marriage, a pet or anything else on top of all these strenuous activities, it is enough for one to go mad or just drop out of college altogether.

The education system in this country needs to take a step back and realize that students are not robots. We cannot live on a few hours of sleep a night and maintain a right state of mind. If the CSUs cut costs of student fees, activities on campus, parking passes and textbooks even by a mere 5 percent would greatly help college kids.

According to the American Institute of Stress, eight out of ten college kids have experienced some sort of stress during their time in school, and the National Institute of Mental Health has found that 30 percent of those in college had in some time in this past year been so depressed it was hard to function.

This is depressing in itself and the Department of Education and the CSU system should do its part in helping these statistics immediately.

I am stressed and have suffered from depression, and I know that I am not the only one on campus feeling this way. It is time for those who make the budget for college campuses to see what is really happening to the students who are lining their wallets with more money than they deserve.