All in a day's work: Mervyn O'Mahony, Societies Officer, Cork Institute of Technology.

I jump off the moped and race to my desk by nine - sometimes with a foggy head from the night before. The job of Societies Officer is never nine to five. It's nine to whenever.

I'm in charge of 45 societies over the three CIT campuses, everything from yoga to film to traditional music.

The committee from the mature students' society are waiting for me at my office when I arrive. They want to organise a trip to the greyhound stadium. And so the day kicks off.

I have to organise seven society balls every year - recently I managed to rope Micky Joe Harte in for a society ball, which drove the revellers crazy. He was reluctant at first, but I reminded him that these students were the ones who had voted him in.

It takes me a while to tune in this morning. I was out at a DramSoc play last night - The Good Doctor by Neil Simon . Once I get going, this job really energises me. I never know what I'll be doing from one day to the next. I'm studying for a degree in management at night. The basics - eating and sleeping - are getting squeezed.

At 11 a.m. I head along to a charity soccer tournament - the money raised will be my responsibility. Afterwards, I check in on the yoga class - it's the hottest thing on campus this year. It's one of the newer societies, but it's by far the most popular. Some 450 people signed up for it this term - that's one in seven of the people on campus!

I'm on lots of different committees, the Cork Arts Festival, the Fringe Arts Festival and the Health Promotion Institute. We're working to bring the principles of Minister Michael Martin's new health policies to the campus. At the moment, we're clearing all alcohol advertising from the institute. Societies can no longer look to the breweries for sponsorship and alcohol reps are no longer allowed into the college bar. The breweries are pretty cooperative, in truth.

The CIT Society Awards are coming up next week, so I have to work on the nominee shortlist. The Electronics crew are up again - they won last year - but the DramSoc could pinch it.

There's a fair amount of accounting involved in this job. I use the Sage package for most of it, but I have a background in accountancy, too, which doesn't hurt.

I'm not a nine-to-five sort of guy. When I took up this job four years ago, I went to the other extreme. I was out each night attending every society pub quiz, paintball fight, soccer match and party going - I nearly ran myself into the ground. Now, I pace it out a bit. I'm 26 years of age, after all.

After doing all the sums, I get writing. I need to prepare a Freshers' Booklet every year to tell the newbies what's going on. We go to great lengths to get them involved in societies from the start - they get good exposure to campus life and we get fresh blood for the societies. There's always the risk that an entire society committee will graduate, leaving no one to take up the reins.

Most nights I either have an event to attend or I have lectures. I rarely get home before 11 p.m. Things got a bit hairy last month when I had two balls to organise and four exams. It was scary, but I pulled it off. Pressure gets me going.

I've just set up a soccer team with a friend. Now my weekends are taken up with training and playing, but at least I'm keeping fit. I don't really have time to be an active member of any of the societies myself - I did complete the eight-week Tai Chi Club, though. I needed to get some balance in my life and the yoga society was full.