Background⌗

What I do every day for five years (one year for high-school level classes in middle school, four years in high school) goes to building a college application. Every school day goes to increasing some magic number which somehow affects my ability to go to college. Every “holiday” could be used for studying for the SAT, working on a project which could be put on a college application, or learning more about the college application process.

Or I could spend every day like it’s a holiday.

The only problem is that we all suffer from a fear of missing out of things we aren’t doing right now. In the future I don’t want to look back and think “If I had studied more and joined more clubs in school, I would have gotten into a better college and be in a better financial situation now.” In the present I think about “If I had enjoyed the time I had with my family and friends, I would have got to know who they are as a person.”

Right now I’ve been more focused on the former. I believe doing more extracurricular activies and working hard to get all 100s will somehow make me more happier in the future. I’m aiming for the 100.0000 weighted 100-point GPA on my transcript. However, I’m also well-aware of the sunk cost fallacy and plan continuation bias, the tendency for people to continue a plan even when it’d be better to give up. I’ve also recently learned about karoshi, deaths from overworking. I decided it’d be interesting to track the time I spend on school-related activities.

Results⌗

Time tracker details

This is my first time using Hugo so I don’t know how to use it To help the visually impaired, the images here are larger than normal.

An observant reader will notice that the times for each day add up to more than 24 hours. This is because I just add more hours to the day if I need more time multiple tasks can occur at the same time. The untracked time is free time.

Sleep for each day is measured by the amount of sleep occuring from midnight to when I wake up to when I go to when I sleep to midnight, plus any naps that occur between then.

Day Amount of sleep Free time School (with extracurricular activities) School (with extracurricular activities, homework and practice time) Notes
Friday, 25th of August 3 hours and 6 minutes 1 hour and 55 minutes 16 hours and 32 minutes 16 hours and 46 minutes The band was on a news broadcast. This event was optional but is still included in school hours. Since it’s an outlier, it won’t be included in the weekly working hours measurement.
Saturday, 26th of August 13 hours and 56 minutes 10 hours and 3 minutes None None I got a lot of sleep this day. I guess it shows how sleep deprived I am during the school week.
Sunday, 27th of August 7 hours and 12 minutes 14 hours and 11 minutes None 2 hours and 35 minutes
Monday, 28th of August 8 hours and 19 minutes 3 hours and 55 minutes 7 hours and 57 minutes 12 hours and 8 minutes
Tuesday, 29th of August 7 hours and 12 minutes 3 hours and 49 minutes 10 hours and 12 minutes 12 hours and 35 minutes
Wednesday, 30th of August 5 hours and 52 minutes 2 hours and 33 minutes 11 hours and 25 minutes 15 hours and 20 minutes
Thursday, 31st of August 5 hours and 33 minutes 2 hours and 39 minutes 13 hours and 32 minutes 17 hours and 14 minutes
Friday, 1st of September 5 hours and 31 minutes 54 minutes 14 hours and 14 minutes 16 hours and 57 minutes A football game occured today. Football games are required.

Weekly working hours⌗

I consider band and other extracurricular activities to be practically required since they’re a large factor for getting into good colleges. A 7-day week from Saturday to Friday results in working about 57 hours on school and band alone. This does not include homework.

The average American adult works for about 39 hours a week.

A lot of people’s responses to students saying they don’t have enough free time is that students use social media too much. However, the time required to be at school far exceeds normal working hours. No amount of time management can reduce the hours I’m required to be at school.

Now I would still fail school if I just ignored the homework. With the homework, I work for about 75 hours a week. This is almost double the amount the average American works. This calculation adds the time spent doing homework done during other classes in addition to the time spent in school. For example, if a class is 50 minutes and I do some other class’ homework for 20 minutes during class, the total time spent would be 70 minutes. I believe this is fair since I need to pay twice the amount of attention. Also, the time summaries from the app don’t provide further details to change this. Outside of school hours, I’m not completely focused while doing homework, which adds to the number. If you don’t like this, refer to the origianl 57 hour figure.

The Texas minimum wage is $7.25/hour. Overtime pay starts after 40 work hours and gives 1.5x the regular wage per hour. If this was a regular job, I would be getting about $670 per week when paid minimum wage. Instead I’m paying money to be at school.