I noticed quite a bit this past summer. For example, I’ve found that working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. starts to get tiring after the first month and a half. I’ve also found that driving back to The Valley anytime between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. after a full day of work makes it infinitely more difficult to want to go back to work. I’ve also discovered that or some reason, people seem to have a difficult time grasping the difference between getting something for free and working for something. It’s random and may seem irrelevant or miniscule to some people, but it’s an important distinction to make and understand. I’ve mentioned this in a few articles before but I’m a Resident Assistant.
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The definition of free is “without cost or payment” or “given or available free of charge.” The definition of work is “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result” or “mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; employment.” When you read the dictionary definition, you can see the difference between the two. So why do people like to say you’re getting something for free when in all actuality, you’re working for it?
For me, making the distinction is important because I hate it when people tell me “oh, you’re living on campus for free” or “you’re going to college for free.” No, I’m not actually. I work hard for both, I work hard as a student to be able to go to college. It’s hard to explain how hurtful it is to hear someone say. I think it’s safe to say that the same thing goes for students who have academic scholarships or athletic scholarships. We don’t go to school for free, some of us are constantly working to keep up with a good GPA or to stay on the team we’re part of. With that said, I understand why some people legitimately don’t know how hard people work. But to hear someone say that I’m living on campus for free or I’m going to college for free is frustrating because these people either don’t see me work or don’t understand how hard I do work. There have been moments where I’m up for hours; I’ve been working since my second semester of my first year and I haven’t stopped just so I can make enough money to pay for college. The fact that I have a scholarship doesn’t change that neither does my position as a resident assistant.
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The same thing happens with academic scholarships. There’s an insane amount of pressure that students put on themselves to do well in order to keep their scholarships, their grants, their financial aid in order to afford going to college. So why do we undermine that hard work by implying that people are getting things for free? It may seem small to some people, but it really does hurt to hear. More often than not, I’ve actually heard people who are close to me imply that I’m getting things for free. I’ve had someone who has watched me stress and cry and emotionally crumble and still have the audacity to imply that I do not work to live on campus. They implied that it was effortless to be a resident assistant, despite seeing everything that I’ve done. Just because we don’t necessarily see all of the work or see how intense the work can be doesn’t mean it’s easy.