If I only had more free time...

1. A: Do university lecturers get paid as much as professors?
2. B: No, they get paid a lot less....and they don't have any job security, either.
3. A: What about during school breaks? Do they get paid during school breaks?
4. B: No.
5. A: It sounds tough. There must be other ways to earn money like tutoring... or in the future, I guess, when you're a professor, you'll make a lot.
6. B: (No answer.)
7. C: I don't think you get it. Some people really aren't that interested in money. Enough to get by, of course, but beyond that... there are things that are worth more than money, at least for me, like time. My dream is a little cabin deep in the forest next to a stream, quiet, with a large library...and an internet connection, of course. I think college lecturers, or at least professors must have a lot of free time to think.

Questions:

1. What would you do if you had more free time?
• Play computer games like Starcraft with your son or a friend?
• Play Go-Stop?
• Go out with friends or your wife to a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, a club, the theatre, a movie?
• Take up a time-consuming sport like golf or fly fishing?
• Go to a baseball games with your son? Or friend?
• Surf the internet? If so, what would you look for?
• Read a novel?
• Read more newspapers and magazines?
• Travel to foreign countries?
• Learn how to program computers?
• Arts: painting, drawing, or poetry, short stories, movie scripts, acting
2. Perhaps you're one of those people that doesn't consider free time a scarce luxury, but rather a necessity. For example, Socrates probably didn't have a boss nagging him all the time to get his work done. He was known for long spontaneous rambling conversations (dialogues).
3. Perhaps your work is so fun that if you had more free time, you'd just end up working more?
4. Do you think there ever was a time in the past when there was a tradeoff between income and time? That is, you could choose to work less and have more time that you could use as you see fit or work more, receive more income, and have less time at your disposal?
5. Do you ever like time to just think? Perhaps while taking a leisurely drive or walk, perhaps while writing a letter to a friend, a poem, or something else?
6. Are you curious about anything? What about devoting time to satisfying this curiousity? A lot of people go travelling just because they've only seen a place on TV and want to see what it's really like.