Work Ethic

At the close of every academic year, everyone of us once again faces the decision what they want to do with the vast amount of free time ahead of us. Work? Travel? Do nothing and celebrate it? In talks with friends, I’ve found it interesting how most of them have chosen one of the first two options, few the third one and none of them openly talks about pursuing interests in their respective fields of study. Like reading a book they didn’t have the time to read during the semester. Like realizing a project. Like working hard on improving in fields they didn’t feel they’d mastered yet. I then realized that I was looking forward to many easy-going days as well, during which I probably wouldn’t think too much about university-related problems. I also was seduced by the allure of doing nothing (besides working, that is). 

When I realized this, I started wondering why that was. We all were studying, assumably, to one day make the things we learn, or some of them, our profession. When that time comes, we wouldn’t have free summers either and wouldn’t think about it twice. Was it just a last enjoying of freedom before the drill of working life finally kicked in? There were some points to be made for this case and I still think it hits the nail pretty much on the head. But if that’s the case, what does that mean in consequence? Does it mean that we don’t like to work? That we fear the moment we officially enter the work force as the end of our dreams and freedoms? And what does this say about us? Are we more spoiled than the previous generation, simply lazy, or is ours a more acute awareness of the importance of a fulfilled private life? 

It all comes down to how you define and value the term “work ethos”.

 It starts at school, where students who study hard and perform well often end up marginalized and despised by their peers. They’re perceived as boring know-it-alls who lack the fantasy to do anything other than memorizing what they’re supposed to memorize. While this is an unfair and typically juvenile view of the matter, I believe that remnants of it stay with us as we grow older. We become suspicious of those who say they like their profession and classify them is dull people even though they often lead lives far more interesting than ours. We gloat at their failings and believe that people who strongly identify with their jobs lack in a sense of freedom, entertaining a sense of servitude we look down upon. 

Meanwhile, we overlook that it is our own lack of purpose and conviction that tends to make us not believe that others could have it. This seems to me a decidedly European phenomenon. We pride ourselves on being more intellectual, more reflective than Americans, but more often than not it is hesitancy and fear of change that makes us back off and stand still. We value the status quo where other nations detest it. Austria in particular is a prime example of this. 

What can be done about this stasis and apathy? The right would say, and many economists back them up, that people in European welfare states are offered too many incentives not to be proactive. Money is being paid to young families, the jobless and infirm, to students, homeowners and renters, giving them sufficient security to not strive to improve their own fate. Educating them to be passive. One does not necessarily have to share this view and condemn all state-led welfare models, but an intellectually honest person has to admit that the right does have a point. Although the Benjamin Franklin type who evolves from a poor no-name to the father of a nation is indeed rare, the values of life-long education, self-improvement and hard work shouldn’t be and can be found more often in conservative circles. 

To come back to where I started from, what would a summer well spent for a university student look like? A few suggestions: 

·         Try to read as much as you can and as widely as you can. Don’t stay in your comfort zone, occasionally pick a book or two with numbers in it. Also, try to measure how long it takes you to finish a book. The summer is long. You can get a lot of reading done if you’re really determined. 

·         Travel, but travel wisely. Avoid Ibiza. Find the niches. Discover the dirty back alleys and little-known music stores in cities you wouldn’t normally go to. 

·         Socialize, but not every day and not where there’s loud music and cheap booze. Try to learn as much as you can from other people and share your own experiences. 

·         Work. Don’t be satisfied with studying and living off your parents’ or other people’s money. Make your own bucks. And while you may try to get that prestigious internship, don’t simply do nothing when it doesn’t work out. Explore jobs you’ve never thought about much. Meet the people doing them and expand your horizon. You will see that university is a very isolated place.

·         Pursue interests you don’t have time for during the year. Learn to play an instrument. Write poetry. Paint. Let the creative juices flow and see where they take you.

·         Take your time to lean back and think about your life, where you come from, where you want to go and what needs to be done. Then do it. 

It’s not necessary and probably not possible to shove all these suggestions into one summer, but if you take up just two or three, you will find that at the end of the summer you feel much better about yourself, more fulfilled and capable than before and this feeling will give you a boost in your studies.

It’s imperative to remember that as students we are in a position of special responsibility, but also of special privilege, and it would be a shame not to use it.