The Life Of A College Student Is Pretty Awesome, Report Reveals (INFOGRAPHIC)

College students may complain about lack of sleep, excessive workloads and stress, but in general, life as a co-ed is pretty good.

A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics details how an average college student spends his or her day. According to the report, titled "Back to College" (PDF), the biggest chunk of a student's day is spent in bed sleeping (no word on whether lecture-sleeping, library-sleeping or lawn-sleeping was factored into this number). And surprise, surprise: the least amount of time is spent grooming.

Check out the below graphic for the full lowdown on a student's day. Does this measure up to a typical 24 hours in your life? Let us know in the comments section.

Comments

[misnomer]

09:24 AM on 09/27/2010

This is certainly not the life of a normal college, since most of us would kill to get that much sleep. However, that's not to say college isn't awesome. Just because it isn't easy doesn't mean that we hate it or that it makes us miserable.

and by the way: where do extracurriculars fit into this graph?

http://studentswhostillhavesouls.blogspot.com

[etucsitj]

10:47 AM on 09/24/2010

I am a liberal arts student at a state college and I'm even more busy than my nursing friends. On average, I get 6 hours of sleep, spend 3 hours in class, 4 hours at work, 7 hours studying and/or doing homework, and the rest is spent driving/eating etc. The liberal arts are very job competitive and you have to have some sort of job or internship if you even have hopes of getting into the industry. That's my backing for liberal arts majors. As for this article, I don't know who these students are but they probably don't belong in college.

[Artufex]

07:57 PM on 09/20/2010

That's kind of disheartening, but this is an average, right? The "average" isn't necessarily the "normal". Isn't there a statistic about how 40% of college students don't finish? They could skew the chart greatly.

[Bradley Green]

10:57 AM on 09/20/2010

I would say I had quite a bit of fun in college, and my opinion counts more than all of yours because I am the guy on the far right of the article's photo.

[Ravi Abunijad]

09:58 AM on 09/20/2010

While this might be "average" data as in the mean of quantitative information, I sincerely doubt it is "typical." College students tend to have notably different habits; basically, some people come to party and scrape by their courses, others are buried in studies and work most of the time. For most institutions, you would not do very well in most majors if you only spent a few hours a day on educational activities.

[farmilyman]

06:22 AM on 09/20/2010

...........and then the bills come due.

[Black Guy at Cornell]

02:13 AM on 09/20/2010

This is an AVERAGE, remember. For every Ivy League double major taking 20 hours of upper-level classes you have a Communications major at a state school taking 13 hours of introductory classes, PE and Rocks for Jocks. I get about 5 hours of sleep a day, I have no formal job so to speak (tutoring and editing and freelance writing are hit and miss), I'm extremely involved on campus and I have ungodly piles of reading to complete every night. The life of the AVERAGE college student is pretty awesome; at the same time the AVERAGE college student will most likely be stuck in the rat race looking for middling employment with the rest of the AVERAGE students that had an "awesome" time in college.

That's not to say that college should be miserable - not at all. But if you're a college student and you go to sleep every night thinking "this is so easy" or "this is so awesome", you're doing it wrong.

[azatrox]

12:12 AM on 09/20/2010

All those with negative comments about college students seem to have missed the point that the chart reflects AVERAGES. So the average time spent on learning activities is 3.6 hours per day. During busy times, that may go up to 6-8 hours (more?). And yes, there may even be days when it's zero (heaven forbid a college student should have a weekend off). Same goes for working and sleeping.

And if this represents the average student, then what does a serious student's day look like? Less sleep? More studying?

[degenerate1991]

10:23 PM on 09/19/2010

I take 15 hours a week and, on average, work 20-25 hours a week. Truth be told, I don't spend much time studying, though I spend more time reading and writing papers (I'm a history/economics double major.). I spend at minimum 6 hours a week additionally (reading and routine work), plus any additional work for exams/papers. I have almost no social life, which means that the idle time is often spent either trying to distract myself, or lonely and depressed (I didn't have a job last year, and it was hell.).

What I think these numbers miss is the inconsistency of the workload (I'll admit that better time management would help, and I'll spare blaming ADHD for it.). . Some weeks, I have tons of idle time, while others I'm frantically busy. Also, my work schedule varies wildly, from being off or working as little as two hours, to a 15 hour day on a home gameday (I'm a pizza delivery driver.), closing and getting off at 5:30 AM. Staying over or going home early is routine, thus the work schedule is next to useless.. Also, sporadically getting off work early the next morning plays hell with an already fragile (i.e. wrought with bouts of insomnia) sleep cycle, let alone the occasional all-nighters. Sleep is either feast or famine. Oh, and I never go to parties or the like. If I could buy alcohol, I'd probably be drinking alone.

[exmate]

09:02 PM on 09/19/2010

tomorrow's leaders lol

[mass maritimer]

04:01 PM on 09/19/2010

Maritime Academy Break Down

7 hours in classes
1.5 hours at meals
3 hours cleaning
2.5 hours sports
1 hour grooming and changing uniforms four times a day
3 hours in mandatory study hours
6 hours sleeping
2 hours complaining about not going to a real school
1 hour marching
2 hours of extra duty

[SangZe]

03:58 PM on 09/19/2010

College in the U.S. is little more than expensive baby-sitting for middle and upper class children.

[Bryn Idaho Ohlgren]

08:28 AM on 09/19/2010

I go to a work college and our days look NOTHING like that. Last night (a Saturday) I worked most of the night with homeless women and only got five hours of sleep. I agree that many college experiences revolve around partying and a sprinkle of school, but this article disregards those of us who are actually working hard.

[guendy]

01:15 AM on 09/19/2010

College was definitely one of the best times of my life. If I had realized then how awesome it was at the time I would have spent way more than four years there....

[ilovemyprez]

06:26 PM on 09/18/2010

I partied way more than I slept.