I’ve heard horror stories about the crazy hours of the entertainment industry. Whether it’s for a film or for a video game, many people sacrifice their free time for the jobs they love. I understand the cost of following my passion by joinging the game industry, but I had never been tested as I was recently on my QA job.

My QA team was told that we would be working overtime on evenings and weekends. This meant working 9-6 on my normal game and 7-10 on a different game during the week. Then we would also work on the weekends from 9-6. This was not optional. We had to work overtime until further notice.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to work on the same game all day during those long weeks. I could work on a different game in the evenings and sometimes on the weekends, helping to reduce the monotony. In the evenings, we worked right alongside those who were not as fortunate as us – those who worked on the same game over 70 hours a week. After a few weeks of overtime, you could see the signs that these people were going crazy without a break. One of my co-workers kept a tally of how many days he worked in a row. He worked 22 days straight before Human Resources told him he had to take a couple of days off.

I try to do my best in any job I do, and my QA job has been no exception. I put a lot of effort into my work and it wears me out. I worked 11 days in a row before I had to take a day off. While I knew that I could continue coming to work, I became physically sick from the lack of sleep. I was spending nearly two hours in the car each day for my commute, but I would often be too buzzed from staring at a screen all day to fall asleep as soon as I got home.

I have no problems putting in long hours. I am prepared for that reality when I enter the field full-time after college. Before working overtime in QA, I had never experienced first-hand what it’s like to come back to work on Monday and have completely worked through the weekend, confused becuase my work week had never ended. I am not afraid to experience that again, as I know that it is what people do in order to work in a career they love. If anything, my experience of overtime had given me a greater respect for the long hours that many people put in each and every day. After all, if I come home and can only complain about playing video games all day, my life really can’t be that bad.