Pugwash Owes me Money!
This is a historical issue for Pugwash News: it is the last one we will ever be putting out from our current location in Gun House (hopefully this time next fortnight we’ll all behappily settled across the road). It’s sort of sad, in a way, but also sort of exciting.
Anyways, as I sat here thinking about the memories in and around this office and this paper, I got to thinking about how much time and effort I’ve put into Pugwash over the last two years. Now, I’m not complaining; yes, it has driven me crazy sometimes, but it’s also been very fulfilling, and I’ve learned a lot. But I got to doing some math, and the numbers shocked me.
I would say Pugwash business takes, on average, half an hour a day, and that’s probably rounding up on a general basis. So that’s 3.5 hours a week. Times 52 weeks a year – and yes, I did work the holidays – that’s 182 hours a year, approximately. And I’ve been doing it for two and a half years now. So, just with answering emails, holding meetings and so on, Pugwash has ‘eaten’ 455 hours of my life thus far!
And every fortnight during term time we put out this fine newspaper, which takes up an entire weekend of my time at once. Call it, roughly estimated, 20 hours per issue. We’ve put out 36 issues (including this one) thus far, only three of which I had nothing to do with. So, 20 hours x 33 issues = 660 hours devoted to the paper so far in total.
And, we put out a magazine every now and again. I used to be more heavily involved in it, but this year I have had to take a step down to focus on my third year. But I think in my first year we had five issues, and last year we did four, plus a special issue for new students. I would say the magazine took, on average, four or five hours of my time at once. So we’ll call it 4.5, and that means that I spent 45 hours working on the magazine over the last two years (and none this year).
However, this year I became a member of the Media Exec, which holds meetings roughly monthly. So I will lose another eight hours or so to that over the course of this year.
So, when we include regular time doing admin stuff etc, the fortnightly newspapers, meetings, and the magazine work last year, Pugwash has consumed a total of 1168 hours of my life since October 2007, roughly. (Which is vaguely depressing, when you put it in those terms!)
Now, Pugwash is strictly a volunteer organisation, and none of us are paid. But, if they had paid me for my work, even at a minimum wage of £4.77 (for 18 – 21 year olds), they would owe me…drum roll please… £5571.36!!!
At least! I know it’s not a liveable salary by any means, but it’s not small change either, and, I’ll be honest, I could use it. Who do I see about a back payment claim for volunteer work?
Or, as a friend who was right here in the office with me for a large percentage of those hours put it: “One could argue that Pugwash (the Union) has equally given you the opportunity to write in 37 editions of the newspaper and 12 editions of the magazine. Of which there is a value of around £50,000 over the 2.5 years. You’ve edited three quarters of that, so £37,500 – which in my eyes means you owe the Students’ Union £3192.64!” Well… um. Back to work I think!
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