It’s hard to escape a quick boogie on the vinyl floor on Pryzm without hearing some familiar tunes blaring out: ‘Come on Eileen’, ‘Reach For The Stars’ and of course, Dolly Parton’s classic ‘9 To 5’. Released in 1980, Dolly sings about the hardships of working from 9am to 5pm, five days a week, and people all over the world sang along to the strains and stresses of this. Now, fast forward almost 40 years, is the thought of this 35-hour week an idealistic dream?
Think of your uni life. Lectures can run until 6pm in the evening – a whole hour past what Dolly deems somewhat acceptable. And how many of you take your weekends off and relax? Most likely not – you are probably still in George Green library well into a Friday evening, and back again on a Sunday afternoon. Furthermore, who really switches off at 5pm? For most, that is when we are just beginning to tackle assignments and essays, with all-nighters facilitated by the 24-hour library service during exam season.
Even outside of university work, jobs nowadays rarely follow a regular time-frame, with an increase in people with zero-hour contracts (almost 900,000 people across the UK!) and people working anti-social hours. I know from experience, I have done shifts beginning at 8am in the morning and finishing at midnight. When we are not in lectures, we are studying, and when we aren’t studying, we are holding down a part time job. In this hectic 21st century, the idea of the 9-5 has certainly faded out.
So, is it possible to try and bring this back? For me, I’ve started to try and take my weekends as, well, weekends. I work hard at the library during the week and try to get my work done then, and I actually use my weekend to relax, do my washing and shopping and see friends and honestly, it makes such a difference to your life doing this. I actually wake up on a Monday feeling ready for my lectures and the working week. Also, trying to give your week structure can help – get up at a regular enough time during the week, even if you don’t have a morning lecture and this way you can get more work done during normal working times, instead of messing up your sleep and working mindset. This way you can set a time, like 8pm where you can switch off from work for the day and then be able to enjoy your evenings spending time with friends and not feeling guilty about not doing work.
In Finland, students repeatedly get high results (ranked sixth in the world for reading, maths and science), and this is apparently related to not giving out homework to kids, where the more holistic approach to education allows students to spend time benefiting themselves by doing hobbies and expanding social skills – valuable qualities that can be lost if we neglect taking time to go to societies and volunteering.
I’ve also heard of many schools in Panama have started not setting exams on Mondays, as they appreciate that the weekend should be spent with family. I think these healthy structures should be implemented more into the UK education system to give students a positive view towards obtaining the work-play balance.
Of course, sometimes we have a crazy deadline or are super busy during the week, so have to bang an essay out late on a Sunday evening. But the idea of obtaining a normal working week is in my opinion, far too underrated and I firmly believe it is necessary that we don’t stray too far from the wise words of Dolly Parton.
Zero hour contract figure- Business Live
https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/number-people-zero-hours-contracts-16749153
Finish school system: BBC News