Coping With Workload

Our program is the most demanding one in the University, but it works a little differently from other high-workload programs in various universities I've heard about before. Here, the demands are just constantly coming at you. The core of our program is a class called Studio, which runs three to four hours each day. Actually, I've forgotten exactly how long it's supposed to be because no-one leaves until long after it has "finished". Profs often stay there for a long time too, which we appreciate because of the help they can give you and the things you learn just by hearing some of their insights into the particular projects people are doing at the time. Studio is a big area, with up to 100 people there at the same time. We have other classes as well, but the portfolio you build up in Studio matters more; you really need it in order to get a job when you finish here.

In the first year, typically, you'll be given some work on Tuesday, say, which has to be completed in a couple of days, on the Thursday. So there's not much opportunity for procrastination. Actually, we used to joke that it's constant forced procrastination: you can't even begin on the work for Thursday, because there's only just enough time to get the work for Wednesday completed. So by the time you even begin the Thursday stuff, the time available for it has already shrunk so much that you have to hurry again to get it done in time. You are always doing things at the last minute -- not because you put it off, but because there is so much work that you have to work constantly to get all of it done. It can happen that time just runs out, and either you have to throw something together at the last minute or even, in the worst case, just not do it.

The idea of this curriculum is that the Profs are progressively making you more and more self-reliant. Second year, the deadline will be a week instead of two days; third year, two weeks. By your final year, your entire term is spent on one project. But by now, you will have developed the skills necessary to pace yourself.

I find it is like two different worlds inside and outside of this faculty. The typical college scenario seems to be one of procrastination and putting things off. For us, that's not an option. There is just no time. We can never just let things slide – that's passive procrastination, and disaster would promptly ensue. What we have to do is active procrastination, which we often think of as “true procrastination”, and which we have to become masters of. We decide, usually collectively, that we've had enough, and we're going to pretend we're just ordinary University students out to have a good time. We need to have a purpose for procrastinating and we have to be successful at procrastinating: when it's over, our real life of constant demands and frantic work begins once more. Procrastination becomes a series of discrete episodes rather than a state of mind.

In our program, you can't do a competitive sport. There wouldn't be time. But people do find a way to play, and do recreational activities like ultimate frisbee. A couple of friends and I started a theatre group. It was interesting, and it was a new thing: theatre for people who don't have time. Other people may do the Arts and Adventure group, or the Citizenship and Community group. Each involves a theme, and people participate in activities around the theme. Some people join Fraternities and Sororities. Not the ones who get good marks, though. One thing the University doesn’t do is house all of us together. At first, I might have preferred if they had. But two weeks into the program, I realized it was better this way, or nobody would be there for most of the time, and ours would have been a ghost dorm.

Back to Studio. A lot of people purposely sacrifice other classes for the sake of Studio because they perceive that these are the marks that will count. But that’s not necessarily wise; the university attaches the same weight to one credit as to another, and some of these other courses are compulsory; they're part of what you need to graduate. Studio is perpetually immediate. You are constantly working as hard as you can just to keep up. It's a pretty overwhelming feeling to realize that you have to make time for work in one of the other courses as well. Lots of people keep putting it off; they don't know how to time manage so they don't do the work for the other classes. Then, of course, they get a low mark.

We do most of the work in the Studio itself. It's open all the time, and the actual class lasts for four hours a day. But there's always a good number of people there. The only no-man's zone is between 4 am and 6 am: the late-night people have finally gone, and the early morning people aren't awake yet. Even so, there are still people there. Often they're working on a cumulative project, a project for which you have to do everything on your own from designing the project through to completing it, and it's a huge deal.

Eventually, your body gets used to the long hours. One thing worth mentioning is that if you are going to pull an all-nighter, it can be a bad thing to take a break or a nap; you know that as soon as you do, you're done for. So you just keep going. Other times, a break can be helpful because you can't focus, and you can't think about anything except taking a break so it can rejuvenate you. You just have to know yourself well enough to decide whether to take one or not. It's a cliche, but time-management and staying focused are skills people say they have developed. You do get used to all the work and sometimes it’s the pressure that helps you work faster and time manage better. Working without nearly enough sleep, though, is one of those things that when you've done it enough, you can kind of zombie into it. It's terrible really, how normal it can become.

For me, working for weeks at a time without any real break and without enough sleep is not the hardest thing because there is no choice involved. It’s the times when the extreme demands are sporadic that are a real problem. Then I’m not used to the all-nighters, and the gear-switching becomes difficult. I have to tell myself that I need to sacrifice my free time to do some work. When I haven't had any free time for several weeks, I forget what it's like; maybe I'm half miserable all the time, but at least I'm used to it. Some people find that a project they've come up with needs them to work 24 hours for days at a time. The only way to do that is to take amphetamines, so that's what they have to do. It’s very common here and I didn’t expect that, maybe because I came from a place where I didn’t see much of that kind of thing.

Another problem is that in our program, there are two different kinds of work. One kind involves intensive thinking through a situation such as creating a design. But the other kind requires mechanical and repetitive work, often for hours at a time to finish the project. Both kinds of task are quite intense, and of course, there's never enough time. My brain gets out of sync. I might be in a creative mood, but that's not what I have to do at the time. Or I might be in a really dead mood, so the mechanical stuff would suit me, but I have to design something. What can help is to find a system where I have some of each kind to do. I have two things in process at the same time, one creative, the other mechanical. Then there are some options open.

People say they've developed the skills to cope with the workload. But then they can't tell you what the skills are, except in useless clichés like "You have to develop time-management strategies". I can't articulate it either. Maybe it's just a matter of living through it all and getting used to it. Then too, if you really want something enough, you'll find a way to do it.