I am still a student and i just reflected over the past year. Consistently leaving home at 7 to 8 and coming back home 12 hours later.
It is so exhausting and it literally feels like the life has been sucked out of me. Then i realised that adults who are working would literally do this for decades and have no breaks like june holiday or the december holidays.
I would literally die.So how do you all do it?
Work hard to retire early
Yes we literally do that. Literally.
Well, we all have different approaches to this. There are people who choose the “I grind very hard now by doing a lot of sales so I can earn money faster and invest and then I will retire earlier” but it’s really a lot of hard work and maybe a bit of “conning” people along the way.
Most of us, we save cash and also let our CPF accumulate (for us to pay housing loan). Buy some insurance to cover ourselves for emergency like critical illness, hospitalisation and accidents. And we just roll with it. We do get holidays by using our vacation leave but it’s definitely not as much as your June or December hols.
When you grow older and older, life will really wake you up by force if you’re a normal household who have loans and recurrent bills to pay.
Enjoy while you’re being a student even tho academic pressure is also smth for students to handle.
Have hobbies and friends
Find a career and job that pays decently, offers flexibility and has hours you are ok with. The ability to do that, is unfortunately a function of all the efforts you’re putting in now as a student, albeit with other variables. So hopefully that can keep you motivated.
Honestly if my mum had reworked “if you don’t study hard you’re gonna become a roadsweeper” to “if you don’t study hard you’re gonna work in a family-run sme for a boomer boss located in an industrial park that requires 3 buses to get to”, I would have hauled ass in double time.
Also, have hobbies and friends.