Christmas is coming...

... and I'm buried in a shitload of work (both workwork and schoolwork). I've already done ~11 hours today (~8.5 hours at work, ~2.5 hours of school stuff) and I've yet to get anything finished. The Software Development Methods phase 4 deadline is on Thursday at noon and that's going to take at least a couple of hours more today and about six hours tomorrow. Then I have to get my hours for this week in at work and that means going in on Friday. And on Saturday I have my Accounting & Profitability exam for which I've yet to start preparing for. Yay! Top that with some social obligations tomorrow evening, and there's no more spare time.

And if that wasn't enough, the CN course exercise is due on the Friday, December 2nd, and that's turning out to be slightly more tricky than I had predicted...

Now for some interesting math... I would guesstimate that I do about 30 hours of work-work a week and something like 35 hours of schoolwork on top of that. That's about 65 hours of work per week. Now, the student allowance for me is roughly 320 euros/month and I get paid for something like 20 hours per week at work and that's about 900 euros/month of salary for a total of 1100 euros/month minus taxes. Now, 65 hours/week equals 9.3 hours/day (if spread out evenly through the entire week) and with 30 days in a month, that's about 279 hours/month.

Now divide the 1100 euros/month with 279 hours/month, and you get about 3.95 euros/hour minus taxes. That's less than what they pay at McDonald's. And according to Kela, I make way too much money and I get to pay back the student allowance eventually. So overall I earn about 3.22 euros/hour minus taxes. There's something inherently wrong with the system. In order to study and live a decent life, I need money. And because of the small amount of student allowance I get, I have to work part time to earn a bit more (and I'm being paid too little at work, too). And then Kela decides that I am too rich and I have to pay the aid back. Amusing.

All the while the leaders of the country want students to graduate faster and get employed right away in order to start earning more money which can then be taxed at a higher percentage. And in the meanwhile companies also want us to graduate, but that's not enough since we should also have work experience on the side. And right now that I'm gaining more work experience and furthering my studies, I get slammed by the government, which wants its money back, and by the company, which pays me too little.

Ah, it's certainly fun to be a student.