DO you know what I hate? Working at the weekend… every weekend. It’s not that I can’t go out; it’s just that I would love to just have a job in something I like doing.
Surprisingly, the store checkout job isn’t quite it.
Of course, you know what I wish for; I wish I could have a job as a journalist, or ideally a columnist. I can’t stand the monotonous bleep of food retail, where the biggest challenge of the day is making sure the local drunk has enough money to pay for his four cans of bevvy he buys every day.
It isn’t just the work; it’s the hours and the days. It is every Saturday until ten o’clock at night and every Sunday until seven o’clock at night. Help.
It isn’t just me that feels this way. Nearly everyone on my course wishes they could be part of their chosen profession right now. With all our experience and grades, we feel we could be doing more than working behind a bar.
Not that a recent change in the timetable is helping much. It’s meant a clash for me: my work wants me, my new timetable wants me. You choose one, the other gives you grief.
Working is why many of us are in any position to put ourselves through uni in the first place.
Every single one of us would probably prefer not to work, we would prefer to be making money in something we are good at, something we could be adding to, something that would make us feel worthwhile; not cleaning aisle seven when someone has dropped and smashed a jar of tomato and garlic pasta sauce. That is not using my qualifications and general work experience to the maximum.
Working every weekend through in Glasgow means there is a strain on the relationships and work experience I could provide myself with through in Edinburgh, and the rest of the UK for that matter.
Everyone on my course feels the same. For example, the magazine module we are doing this term, we have to raise money to fund the content and the distribution, so as to make it far-reaching and just as attractive as the free magazines you may pick up in a cafe or a hairdressers.
In turn, we have decided on a number of ways to raise money; there are a number of bake sales, a pub quiz, a club night, a ceilidh and a launch party, to name just a few. The problem is that we are peer-assessed on this module. If someone asks me to take part in or help co-ordinate a fundraising event over the weekend I will have to tell them No because the store has called.
The resistance to hand in that week’s notice is getting weaker and weaker but unfortunately I need the money…
Lisa-Nicole Mitchell is a third-year BA in Journalism student at Edinburgh Napier University.
