An issue that affects my life as a student

As a university student, running out of time is an issue I face every day. Twenty-four hours never seems to be enough for me, as I spend an average of nine hours on weekdays attending lectures and doing laboratory practicals on campus.

Let me say more about why I regard time as a such a precious, yet scarce, natural resource: The first lecture of the day starts at 8 or 9 a.m.. Each period lasts 50 minutes, and students are given 10-minute breaks between each two consecutive periods. A lunch break commences at 12 noon and ends at 1 p.m., followed by lectures or laboratory practical sessions that run until 5 p. m..

Having lived in Jakarta while studying in BSD City, traffic jams on the way home are inevitable. The first traffic jam stretches along Jl. Raya Serpong until the entrance to the Tangerang - Kebon Jeruk turnpike. Upon exitting this road, heading towards Puri Indah, I am faced with another traffic jam on the Outer Ring Road near Puri Indah Mall. Because of these circumstances, I waste an hour or more every day in traffic. It is pure luck if I get home by six in the evening.

Then, once I get home from university it is not be long before dinner time. After dinner, dirty dishes await me in the kitchen. Chores in the kitchen often keep me busy for almost an hour before I can finally attend to my studies and assignments. Although most of my stamina has been drained while traveling home from campus, I have no choice but to put up with it while I engage myself in textbooks and my laptop, studying for tests. Apart from tests, working on lab reports can also be very stressful especially when I have to input lots of data and implicit calculations into reports. One lab report could keep me occupied with inserting equations for days, and could even take up my weekend.

People say time is so precious that once you lose it you cannot get it back. I could not agree more. Most of us have a tendency to postpone things until we eventually realize we don't have much time left. Even money, which can buy almost anything in the world, is powerless against it.

Yamin Thwin

The writer studies food technology under the school of life sciences at Swiss German University in Serpong, West Java.