Working while attending school full time can be quite stressful, so I give kudos to all of the students who are a part of this group. It definitely takes time to adjust to balancing everything, as well as maintaining the energy to get through work and classes, but it can be done with the right amount of hours and the right starting time for each shift.
This is my first semester working while attending school full time, and boy does it take a lot of energy to keep chugging along through the day, which is why I think that employers shouldn’t be allowed to give more than 20 hours a week to their employees who are attending school. For me, just working 16 hours is a stretch, especially with the times of each shift that I work.
Along with keeping the hours to a minimum, the times that each shift starts shouldn’t start before 8 a.m.because most of us college students are barely awake by then, even if we have an early morning class. I definitely relate to this because I work two days a week from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m., and then I go straight to my 10 a.m. class. By 11 a.m., I’m so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open, even with several cups of coffee.
Tara Miller can be reached at [email protected].