The rewards of being a student
January 14, 2010 11:10 AM
Unless I fail all my courses or decide to go on to graduate studies, I only have four months left of being a student. Boy, am I ever going to miss the discounts.
It’s pretty much an unwritten rule that students are supposed to straddle the poverty line while in university. In fact, it’s this perception that gives students the same benefits as senior citizens and makes buying tickets for movie theatres, museums, and Acadian Lines all that cheaper.
Even our Student ID is like a magic pass of pity: show it to any retailer and they will give you a sympathetic sigh letting you know that they’ve “been there” while giving you 10 per cent off on your Susan Boyle CD purchase. There are even student discount cards that guarantee buy one get one free deals practically everywhere. It’s fantastic.
However, there is a lot more to miss in being a student than just discounts. We all come to university under the pretense of getting educated so that we can either get a good job or change the world. And what we end up finding is a community of like-minded individuals all around the same age trying to figure out just what they want to do with their lives and where they should go from here.
Plus, it’s one of the few places where we exert total control over our lives and make our own decisions. Don’t want to go to class? No problem, except for you GPA. Want to spend more time asleep than conscious? I salute you. Want to drink before noon and have it be socially acceptable? Congratulations, you’ve come to the right place.
The control we have as students doesn’t really translate properly once we leave Antigonish and get into the workforce. Coming into the office on a Monday morning hung-over and in pajamas strangely doesn’t fly in the corporate world. The control we have over our lives in the four or more years we spend at university we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture.
Admittedly, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows being a student. Shared washrooms in residence shouldn’t be used without a biohazard suit on. Student diets steer us dangerously close to contracting scurvy. The infinite obligatory conversations that we have to have with our parents’ friends that always begin with “What program are you in?” and end with “What do you intend to do after you graduate?” There are also the seemingly endless readings, assignments, essays, midterms, and exams. And on top of all of this, we don’t make any money.
That’s probably the biggest complaint about being a student: no money and accumulating debt. Instead of learning about ionic bonds or economics for a fortune each year, we could be making a decent chunk of cash.
And working is arguably more comfortable than being a student: there are no difficult decisions whether or not you should turn on the heat, you won’t have to pay quarters to do laundry, and probably best of all, you don’t have to divide you attention between multiple subjects and homework assignments.
It does sound pretty tempting. But that’s where the benefits come in. Discounts, GST cheques, waived bank account fees, and Student Price Cards are all designed to make our cash-strapped lives a little easier and delay us from entering the workforce for a little while. We have a lifetime of employment ahead of us and only a few short years of education: endure the disgusting washrooms, terrible food, cold weather, and in the end you’ll make a fortune.
Now then, I’ll see you in forty years when we get our discounts back.
