By Azizul Hakim
Life style of a college student can be stressful and hard at times, especially when you’re at an age when you’re not considered an adult but then again have to start taking responsibilities. As soon as you get into college, you are required to study, work, pay your expenses, look after yourself and have a good GPA. Family gatherings, friend outings, social media all those need to be taken care of too unless your parents are like multimillionaires and you don’t have to work. That’s a different story but majority of college students don’t have a lifestyle like that.
Money is nothing but pieces of paper for students. The way students use paper to write is the same way students spend money. And that can be a very big problem. No one has ever thought of it like that until now when we are scared to go outside and people are dying left and right.
College students don’t have fat bank accounts. People with a fat bank account are least worried. They have savings and they can easily survive. What about college students? Have you ever thought of saving? Was your Nike shoes and fancy clothes more important than saving? You wasting money on buying games which you barely play, was that a good investment? You took loan from the bank and invested in the stock market a couple of months ago. You know lost almost all of that money. The stock market has also crashed. You now know you are in deep trouble. You have payments due, bills to pay and food to buy but no money in your bank account. That’s when we all know we have a problem. A serious one.
You take the MTA although your college is now closed. It’s because you need to go to work. There is nothing you can do. With unemployment rising in millions, losing a job is not worth it. You have no other option but to work. You see the behavior and people around you in the MTA and you are scared to death no matter what. Coughing or sneezing may lead to a big problem. People might attack just because you coughed. Situations are bad and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Despite knowing the fact that using public transportations increases the risk of getting affected, at a point you get used to it because you are going to work. And when you go to work, you’ll eventually come in contact with other people.
Majority of college students work at restaurants or coffee shops or similar type of jobs where getting in contact with people is not so hard after all. At first you question yourself so much about the unnecessary expenses and spending you did but then you realize it’s too late now. You have no other choice but to work. As days pass by, you don’t feel comfortable at all. You feel more scared than nurses and doctors working at hospital because they know what they are dealing with. They know which patients are COVID patients and who is affected. But, what about you? You don’t know who has this virus in them. You interact with so many people. Even the person carrying the virus might not know. What if it’s your co-worker who is working beside you?
You question yourself whether you working is a good idea or not. You’re scared of taking the virus home and passing it on to your family members. But the next day, you wake up and get ready to go to work because you know those bills won’t pay themselves especially when a small part of your family spending is provided by you. Although you’re scared, you have responsibilities. You took bad decisions before while spending money and now you’re just paying the consequences.
