Now one might think, why the hell should a student life be luxurious? And that’s true for most students the daily student life is fun or maybe stressful but definitely not very luxurious. But the luxury I am referring to is time and flexibility. And also, being the only one affected by one’s own mistakes. The main takeaway from my short excurse to the real working life was; when do people bring away their packages? What a frustrating realization that the opening hours of your nearest post office fall right in your daily working hours, and you have to use your lunch break running with a package in the one hand and a sandwich in the other. Or your favorite coffee place only opens up when you already have to sit in the office.
It might sound silly to all the people out there already working nine to five on a regular basis. And don’t take me wrong I loved everything about my time at the agency. I made amazing experiences and learned a lot about the gap between theory and praxis. But I would have never thought about all the small things that change with having a full-time job. The flexibility we have as students where we can do most of the studying and paper writing on our own schedule – for me is a luxury that will definitely be missed.
Of course, this experience was intensified by the fact that my university courses over the past two years have been fully online which gave me even more freedom and flexibility. In my qualitative research done for this internship, I studied employee satisfaction and the factors that contribute to it. One of the main findings was that employees’ work-life balance has significantly improved since they were able to work remotely. Now that employees are now able to choose their workplace based on convenience and needs and have access to all work-related materials 24/7 a new era of flexibility is opened not only to freelancers and self-employed people but also normal nine to fivers. This flexibility enables employees to adjust their schedule at least a little bit to their private schedules. Of course, many concerns were raised about the productivity and even I could not imagine that working from home while cooking, doing laundry, and driving the kids to school would be as productive as working in a clean office without distractions but turns out I’m not the only one proving with my research that remote working actually boosts productivity. Can’t wait to see how employers adjust their policies now that the pandemic comes to an end!