Things I've learned during my Fulbright year:
#10 - a lot about the English language
#9 - there is such a thing as too much free time
Wrong.
But Emily, you're in Europe - can't you use all those free hours to explore, see the world, visit places most Americans don't even know exist?!
Ah, yes, wouldn't that be nice. But unfortunately, when you only work 12 hours a week, you aren't exactly getting paid buckets of money either.
Of course, you might have already realized the amount of spare time I have on my hands from posts like this, this, and especially this (For goodness sake, I'm living in Germany and the most exciting thing I had to write about is doing my laundry...). And I really am trying to appreciate rather than resent how little I have to work, because I know that one day not very far from now, I'll have a real job* with real work hours and just wish I had a little extra time. But for now I'm tackling the very serious art of wasting time (which is made especially difficult when you're internet access has a limited amount of data transfer). And while you might think that having so much free time would make you incredibly productive, I've found that it actually makes you quite lazy. Why take care of this today when I will still have plenty of time for it tomorrow (ad infinitum, on a downward cycle of nothingness)??
On the other hand, this free time hasn't been completely wasted. I have been able to do a fair amount of traveling and exploring, I've spent many hours contemplating my future (it's still in the works...), and I've basically memorized the entire series of How I Met Your Mother.
So for those of you working 50/60+ hour work weeks, I understand that you may hate me right now for complaining about the woes of having nothing to do, but I promise the other extreme is just as draining.
*maybe
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