Strike A Balance
With the cost of tuition on the rise, it is becoming increasingly difficult for students to fund their pursuit of higher education. Some students are lucky enough to get their tuition partially or fully covered by grants or scholarships. Those who are less fortunate have to exhaust all other options to ensure that they can attend the classes they need to graduate. This includes taking out student loans or working while attending school to make ends meet. In fact, about 80% of college students are employed (Riggert, Boyle, Petrosko, Ash, & Rude-Parkins, 2006).
Before I even started college, my counselor suggested that I quit working and focus exclusively on obtaining good grades my freshman year. While I had scholarships that covered tuition and books and while I had the opportunity to live at home for free, I was still responsible for paying my car insurance, fueling up my car, and feeding myself (along with paying any other expenses that came up during the school year). So, I had to work in order to cover expenses.
It didn’t take me long to realize that balancing work and education was not going to be an easy task. I had to completely change the way I organized my time and reevaluate my study habits. When I was in high school, I did not have to study to do well in all of my classes. I went into college with the mentality that things weren’t going to be that different. Boy, was I wrong! It is imperative to remain on top of your work in college. There were numerous times during my first year when I was swamped with the sheer amount of work that I needed to complete. Diverting time from schoolwork to earn money meant I couldn’t get it all done. My slacking off came back to bite me at the end of the semester. The worst was when I had to practically teach myself an entire semester of bio stats in two weeks. I actually came out of that class on top, but it taught me a valuable lesson about prioritizing my time and constantly reviewing course material.
Now, I try to prime my brain for class by skimming through the chapter we are going to cover or, at the very least, by looking through that day’s PowerPoint. Then, after class gets out, I start my homework as soon as possible before I forget everything we went over. Finally, I review that lecture’s PowerPoint just before skimming the new material for the next class. By following these steps religiously and not letting my work pile up, I am taking control of my learning and saving myself trouble in the long run. My mind doesn’t have time to forget any of the information, and remembering the previous material comes in handy when it’s time to learn new things.
It took me a while to learn how to prioritize my time between work and school. One day in my junior year, I came to the realization that I should be treating college like a full-time job. Although it was important for me to show up at Egg Works in order to pay my bills, I was not going to be working there for the rest of my life. After that realization, I started looking at work like a stepping stone. It was only there to let me live a comfortable life, while my main focus was on schoolwork.
On the other hand, working part-time has benefits beyond getting paid. Part-time work improves academic performance. The National Center for Education Statistics found that performance of student workers actually increases up until the students work over 20 hours a week (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). The researchers compared student workers to students that did not have a job. The results suggested that, since time is a finite thing, students who have a lot on their plate are forced to be more productive with the time they allot for any given task. Having witnessed first-hand the time crunch that is inevitable when going to school and working, I attribute the improvement in my time management skills to working part-time.
I have worked part-time through my entire undergraduate career. So I know it is entirely possible to put yourself through school and make money on the side, contrary to what my counselor said. However, working while going to school comes at a cost. There were numerous instances when I had to skip review sessions that were hosted on weekends because I could not miss work. The major problem I found working part-time was that if I missed a day, I had to forfeit a quarter of my income for those two weeks. When there are bills that need to be paid, this is not a viable option.
I found the best way to balance work and school was to schedule everything school-related during the week and reserve the weekends for working. After work, I found it helpful to review all of my notes and start on the homework that was due the following week. While there were some weekends in which more schoolwork got done than others, this division helped me maintain a good work-school balance. This schedule wasn’t always possible, and so an alternative was to devote my mornings to work and my evenings to school. I am a big proponent of giving any task at hand a hundred percent of my attention. Using one of these two schedules, I was able to focus solely on the task at hand, whether that be performing well at work or writing my best essay.
References
Riggert, S.C., Boyle, M., Petrosko, J. M., Ash, D., & Rude-Parkins, C. (2006). Student employment and higher education: Empiricism and contradiction. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 6392.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2016). Digest of Education Statistics, 2014 (NCES 2016-006), Chapter 3.
Jennifer Frazee joined the Interactive Measurement Group in Summer 2017. She plans to graduate Spring 2019 with a B.A. in Psychology, B.S. in Pre-Professional Biology and a minor in Neuroscience. She hopes to go to medical school and pursue a career as a radiologist.