I read with some nostalgia and a smile that Silber has expounded seven hours for study, eight hours for sleep and six hours for fun as the ideal student’s day. Presumably, “fun” includes time in the bath, getting dressed, buying things, getting fed, standing in line, doing the laundry, walking between everything etc. (aka “living”). Those things certainly don’t happen during the eight hours of sleep (whether eight hours of sleep happens is another thing), and I know he really is serious about the seven hours of work. That’s what he told us twenty years ago. He’s right too, seven hours a day is just, well, a day job, not much really. Most people in the workforce would give their eye teeth to get eight whole hours of sleep a night and only work seven hours a day. Its just that I don’t remember any of us being so super efficient at all the really time consuming living stuff when we were at BU. We were pretty good at fun, and tried to stay on top of study, but hours and hours of each day just sort of disapeared. It seems almost humorous from the perspective of all the things we now manage each day (careers, families, households, houses) but the gentle truth is that it takes time and experience to learn to be efficient enough to make a 70 hour work-week look not just do-able but a doddle.
Paul Shapiro UNI 82
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