Working in college can look different for many people. Some people have a part time job, some work full time and others have the option of working only when they are needed or at a temp job. For students in master programs, they sometimes have the option of working as a graduate assistant for their university, in which the money they make goes toward paying tuition for their degree. In any case, having the stress of a job in addition to your studies is not for the faint of heart.
Since the beginning of my college career, I have been surrounded by hardworking people who have chosen to work in college rather than make college their career. At my community college, most of the people in my classes were in their late 20s and early 30s and had been members of the working community since they left high school.
If you took a poll at my former community college asking how many people went to school full time while working, the vast majority of the population would say that they do. Here at ETSU, that number is smaller, but if you took the same poll at UT or another extremely large school, the numbers would be even smaller.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to working though college.
Some of the benefits of working through college are:
Consistent income – Having pocket change never hurt anybody. Having a job during the college years helps in keeping the financial issues at bay, in addition to all of the other things you have going on. It is nice to have enough money to buy lunch for yourself or a friend or to go on a weekend trip and be able to afford it.
Real life experience – especially if you work in the field that you are getting your degree in, you gain valuable experience in how to deal with difficult customers, lead a team, work in management positions and even work in projects that help you excel in your career.
Increased responsibilities – Remember when you were younger and you wanted a dog, but your parents compromised and told you to take care of a fish first? Well having a job in college is kind of like the fish, and the dog is what you get when you graduate. You take the things you learned from the in-college job, and you apply those same principles to maintaining your post-graduation job, except this time you have experience, so you are able to grow more in that field.
Alternately, some of the disadvantages of working in college are:
Having less free time – I know that I mentioned being able to take a weekend trip in the pros sections of this article, but one of the cons is that if you work and go to school full time, those weekend trips will be few and far between, simply because you will probably be working on the weekends as most jobs require that you work at least two weekends per month.
Lots of deadlines – Depending on the line of work that you are in, there are several different expectations of you as an employee. If you work in retail, the food service industry or healthcare, you are expected to be present at all times for your job with no distractions from what you are paid to do. This can be difficult, especially when you have an exam coming up or need to study to better understand a concept.
This is all coming from the perspective of someone who has worked full time and gone to school full time for their entire college career. Most of these things are what I have observed from myself or from what others have told me. I had a stressful time with balancing work, school and family life, but here I am at the end of my senior year, and I would not change my experience for the world.
