“That party last night/Was awfully crazy, I wish we taped it/I danced my ass off/And had this one girl completely naked/Drink my drink and smoke my weed/But my good friends is all I need/Pass out at three, wake up at ten/Go out to eat, then do it again/Man, I love college”
While Asher Roth’s classic college party song of 2009, “I Love College” might encapsulate the college life popular culture presents and most college students wish they had, the reality is much different for most students. The cost of college, the importance of maintaining athletic and academic scholarships, classes and extracurriculars make college life a little too demanding to party Monday to Sunday. Too often, people often forget that many college students also work while maintaining a full time status.
According to a 2015 report from Georgetown University, about 14 million college students are working, and this is nothing new. In fact, over the past 25 years more than 70% of college students were also employed. However, while your vision of an employed college student might look like a bored, 20 year old looking for beer money, in actuality, 33% of employed college students are older than 30, 40% of undergraduate students are working at least 30 hours per week, and 25% of employed college students are working full time and studying full time. This is a huge commitment.
While I do have the financial privilege of not having to work which I am incredibly grateful for, I decided that this year I wanted to start working to start making my own money, to improve my resume and to interact with more people. I now work at the Polsky Tutoring Lab as a Writing Tutor and as a Student Assistant for eight hours a week, and I also working as a Community Assistant (the person at the front desk of your dorm) for 14 hours a week, although I try to sign up for an extra four hours when I can. I work approximately 22 hours a week, then, for $8.30 an hour (Ohio’s minimum wage). I am extremely lucky that both these jobs offer down time where I can do my homework, and that I don’t have to work full time to support a family.
I have found this opportunity really exciting. I love the people I work with and meet, and it’s helped me become even more efficient as I balance two jobs, three organization memberships, one organization presidency, a social life and 15 credit hours. I highly recommend other students who are not sure about working to consider finding an on-campus job because they are very flexible regarding your class schedule. It has given me an opportunity to come out of my shell even more and learn soft skills of future employment like answering the phone, reporting to authority, filling out paperwork and doing my best to help people even when I’m not sure what to do. However, my experience is not universal.
My friend and roommate, Angel, works 11 hours per week babysitting her sister’s children, cleaning her house and making dinner for $10 an hour. She feels that she is too stressed to complete her class work and make time for Running Club and Theater Guild, and often sacrifices sleep. She says that “I am so tired from work I don’t even want to go to them [her clubs] even though I enjoy and value my time spent there more than I do at work.” My friend Michael works 15 hours a week off campus at $11.25 an hour, and he also says that he struggles to get his school work done and is unable to participate in extracurriculars. He stated that he had to leave work early to get to dodgeball practice and was still late. My friend Serena used to work on campus in a similar Student Assistant role as me but because the job was built in between her classes, unlike a traditional job, she found that after two weeks that she could not take the stress of having to run from class to work to class to work and was losing to time to get her work done, as well. She ended up quitting her job.
My friends share similar stories despite having vastly different work loads, majors and jobs. According to Brigham Young University, while students who work 1-15 hours per week have a much better GPA than those who don’t work, students who work more than 16 hours have a lower GPA. This is because as seen above the student can become too stressed and find themselves struggling to manage school and work which is often an unmanageable task. This is why some schools cap student employment, at least on campus. The University of Akron caps employment at 29 hours per week. 74% of student workers are like me and believe that employment makes them more efficient, but I wonder if their jobs are as inflexible and demanding as my friends.
College is a time to not just discover yourself as the old saying goes, but it’s about developing oneself. This means putting yourself out there and signing up for the class you didn’t know you’d like or an organization you’ve never thought of before. It’s about going to lectures and meeting new people. College is about learning what you’ll need for your future whether that be how to code or how to teach, but it’s also about learning new ways to think, to analyze, to interact and how to work in a job. If you need or want a way to make money in college and seek to improve your work ethic and efficiency getting a job may be the way to go, especially if it’s flexible, but if your school work is struggling it may also be equally important to take a step back, drop an extracurricular, ask for help or if financially possible, ask for less hours or quit. It’s okay to not be able to do it all. College and young adulthood is stressful enough as it is.