Ever since Marko and I got married and started living on our own, completely independently, in Germany, we have been getting all kinds of comments, not only about the way we live, but also about the way we support ourselves. Somehow, many people seem to think we are just “playing” at family, marriage and parenthood, rather than being grown-ups who, together, sometimes manage the impossible.
All else aside, the biggest problem is actually that Marko and I are both still studying. Never mind that we each already finished a degree in Serbia: many people simply can’t understand why we are “wasting time” on yet another degree, a postgraduate one at that. When do we even plan to stop learning? Isn’t it high time we “took our bread into our own hands” (which is supposed to mean that we finally start to WORK)?
And that’s where I start to fume.
No, Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees
Do we live off our parents, in their apartment and on their salaries? NO! We live a thousand-plus kilometers away from both sets of parents, in OUR apartment, well, a rented one, but one that we pay for ourselves. Here, by the way, it’s perfectly normal for people to rent a house or an apartment their whole lives; they simply aren’t weighed down by owning things, but more on that another time.
From the very beginning, Marko and I knew what we were getting into, and we knew it wouldn’t be easy, especially financially. We fought for everything ON OUR OWN, and we have always paid all our bills conscientiously and on time.
However tight money sometimes gets, we have learned to enjoy what we have.
Don’t get me wrong, we don’t live in poverty, but it’s not quite the way people from the Balkans imagine life in Germany either. I have the feeling most of them think that just because you live in Germany, you must be swimming in money, and it’s your duty to help everyone back home and send them presents. But no, sadly, the trees in front of our building still grow leaves, not money.
Life here is much nicer and more carefree, everything runs like clockwork, which makes it much easier to get organized, but also to live within your means.
As for me, I have the most beautiful office in the world: the reading room!
And if right now we don’t earn our bread from our own work (studying), what does that mean? That we’re begging? Or that our success at university earned us scholarships? I’d say the latter. Nothing fell from the sky for anyone, and it didn’t for us either. Hours spent over books, whether in the reading room or at home, stress before exams and all the other problems real students know, the ones who truly study to learn, not just to get a diploma and then do whatever and be proud of having it behind them.
In the beginning, we both received scholarships, which weren’t very high, so we had to work alongside our studies. The most important role was played by good organization and endless mutual understanding. We knew when we had to work, when we had to focus more on studying, and when we could also enjoy ourselves. And we never complained to anyone. What we have is what we have. It’s ours, and that’s that. And we don’t go around constantly asking others: Do you have money? How are you going to pay your bills? When are you finally going to start working? And so on.
For Heaven’s Sake, How Much Longer Will You Study?!
And when we add that this isn’t the end and that we’re planning to do PhDs afterward, that’s when people really lose it and start asking for heaven’s sake, how much longer.
As far as I’m concerned, my whole life, and even that is too short to learn everything I’d like to know.
Mental Work Is Physically Unbearable
No, you can’t study forever, and you shouldn’t, but you can build an academic career. Studying is a job per se. There are no fixed working hours, no boss breathing down your neck (or maybe there is?), no paycheck every month, but it is a job. And self-discipline and good organization are the key to success.
Our working hours run from when the reading room opens at 8 a.m. until it closes at 10 p.m. And when things get “busy,” the work continues at home late into the night. Weekends are mostly a theoretical concept, because no, an exam won’t pass itself, a paper won’t write itself, and they don’t care that it’s Sunday.
Don’t get me wrong, I have enormous respect for everyone who works, those without a college degree and those with one. I just think that everyone makes their own choice based on their wishes and possibilities. Some people don’t like studying and realize they’re not made for it, so they don’t do it and start working earlier instead. That’s absolutely fine. But there are also those of us who would love to keep learning for the rest of our lives, and for whom this kind of work is the best fit.
I guess the point is to spend our whole lives doing what we love, and if learning is what we love, then let us learn, whether it’s tied to a degree or not. After all, working at a university is work too, isn’t it? Or does only hard physical labor count as a “real job”?
S-Mama
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