Pugwash owes me money!

As a follow up to a 90 minute meeting yesterday, I just spent an hour sending out emails about the upcoming Pompey Guide, and 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. With lack of a better blog topic in mind, here goes...

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, we do work holidays – that’s 182 hours a year, approximately. And I've been doing it for two years now.

But every fortnight during term time we put out a newspaper, which eats an entire weekend of my time at once. Call it, roughly estimated, 22 hours per issue. We’ve put out 27 issues since I got involved, one of which I had nothing to do with. So, 22 hours x 26 issues = 527 hours devoted to the paper.

And, we put out a magazine every now and again. I think last year we had five issues, and this year we did four, plus a special issue for new students. I would say the magazine takes, on average, three or four hours of my time at once. So we’ll call it 3.5, and that means that I’ve spent 35 hours working on the magazine over the last two years.

So, when we include regular time doing admin stuff etc, the fortnightly newspapers and the magazine, Pugwash has eaten a total of 926 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...

£4417.02!!!

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? :P

Until next time, faithful readers!