Not pointing fingers about your studies... relatively new to this myself, and I find that my own little fella is a *HUGE* commitment... not as bad as having a human baby though, my friends with infants in the house are run RAGGED.
Chinchilla's aren't anywhere as near as demanding as human babies, but they're pretty high maintainence among the animals... I try to allocate an hour or more every day for my little guy (used to do 2 hours a day without fail, but that's just too much for me... awww...), and you DO feel the daily reduction in free time and leisure activities. (though this is still leisure, it's a different kind)
Having owned both dogs and a chinchilla, I would say that chinchillas do give back joy so it's worth the amount of work you put in, but they have a far lower input/output ratio than a dog:
1. For a dog, you put in a *bit* of effort, and he treats you like his best friend. Spend 5 minutes a day giving him your full attention, and he worships you. "You're going to pet me??? I'm SO HAPPY!!! May I... may I PLEASE cuddle? I'll understand if you don't want to, but it means the world to me... I love you so much, please hug me and love me forever!"
2. For a chinchilla, you have to put in a LOT more effort, just to make them "not uncomfortable with you touching them". ... "Oh, hello... you want to scratch my itchy spots? Ok, I'll give you just 1 minute of my time, *IF* you do a good job! Oh you want to cuddle? I'm not really into cuddling. ... Let's play! And by play, I mean you entertain me when I feel like it, and when I get distracted I'll go do something else."
... BTW, I'm going to post that last bit on a separate thread and on facebook lol.