Man, what an amazing weekend. In a three day span you escaped the cops, had a 400 person toga party, got the answers to the math final through espionage, beat up the captain of the football team with one punch, and stole his girlfriend. To think this was a slow weekend! Who would have thought college would be so exciting?

The movies. As most college students know, their lives aren’t exactly how films make them out to be. Then again, no one wants to see a movie about 4 kids getting drunk off of a six pack in a crappy apartment and playing Guitar Hero. The true life of a college student may have less gigantic parties and epic showdowns, but that’s because they have other things to worry about. Students need to balance work, school, and a social lives, sometimes at the expense of one another.

Other than the students who live at home or are lucky to go to schools with plenty of dorming, a lot of students have apartments in or around Boston. Obviously, or rather hopefully, those who live at home don’t have massive parties each weekend. You know, unless the parents go out for the weekend, then clearly 37 kegs will be ordered and a pop punk band will play on the roof. Not to mention those who dorm have those pesky campus police who seem to put a damper on ragers in the 10 by 12 doubles. Most students who live in their own apartments pay their own rent as well (not even mentioning students who pay for their own tuition). Sure, some have loans and others are lucky enough to have a generous and capable family to pay it for them, but most pay themselves. That means the typical student has to work.

That’s right, a full class schedule, on top of a 40 hour work week. They neglected to show that in the movies.

Students have to do hours of reading and paper upon paper, all while making sure they have their uniforms clean and don’t show up too hung-over. This can get to be too much. Lots of jobs require a minimum amount of hours for employees. Not only that, but class can completely conflict with standard work hours. This causes students to schedule classes early, and then go to work afterwards, or condense classes all on the same day, and work on days not in class. Neither of these leaves much time at night to do homework and still get a good night’s rest. Any work they can’t fit into the standard week, they must attempt to get leftover work done on the weekend. Weekends being the only time students have time to rest and or actually have time to enjoy their lives, homework could easily suffer.

Since students work hard for their money, and because it most likely isn’t a tremendous amount of cash, the quality of necessary things they purchase may not be in the top tier of products. Students live off ramen noodles, Burger King, and Pabst’s Blue Ribbon. They reuse Solo cups for months. Even the places they could end up living may not be too safe. Locations that are known for having sketchy occupants, occasional gunfire, and constant police sirens become what students are accustomed to in the hopes of saving a few necessary hundred dollars a month on rent.

Now, even though students work a lot and may not have the best amenities, do they still find time to have fun, like movies show us?

You bet they do.

Now, they aren’t hijacking parades through the center of town and pissing off the chancellor and the biggest fraternity, but they are doing more realistic yet potentially equally hilarious activities. They could be playing flip cup with a 79-year-old man or walking a green dog at 4 in the morning or having concerts in their basements. What can students do to balance school, work, and fun?

“Endure,” says Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth in the summer blockbuster The Dark Knight (in completely unrelated context). Students need to just do their best to do all they can to keep going and still have fun. It may be hard, but they’ve been pulling it off as well as they can for a while.

Alright; maybe there’s a minor difference between Batman inadvertently causing the deaths of innocents and the average student working and yet still getting drunk on Fridays, but sometimes movies get the right idea.

It’s just a shame they never get an average college weekend correct.