Students juggle full-time work with classes

By Fleur Bailey
The Guardsman

With the rise in the cost of tuition, text books and materials — long gone are the days when students could afford to live on financial aid alone.

Many students now find that having a job while going to school is more of a necessity than a preference.

In fact, the labor force participation rate (the proportion of the population working or looking for work) for recent high school graduates enrolled in college was 42 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics October 2009 Current Population Survey.

Students attending school full-time have much lower labor force participation than part-time students. Only half of all full-time students are employed, compared to 80 percent of all part-time students. Students tend to classify themselves as either students who work full-time to pay the bills, or full-time workers who take classes.

Either way, the process of balancing a semester of full-time classes and working full-time hours is something that could never be considered easy, or rather, it’s exhausting as City College student Jonathon Miller, 25, described.

The previous two semesters, Miller took 16 units at City College and worked 40 hours a week at The Cheesecake Factory in Marin.

“The whole semester was exhausting,” he said. “I never had time to study so I was always cramming at the last minute. I was just scraping by. I didn’t retain anything as the information would only go into my short term memory.”

Miller said his day would start at school at 7 a.m., when he would study before class. He would leave at 1 p.m. to “go home and breathe for an hour,” and then he’d go to work, arrive home at midnight and the next day do the whole thing again. He attended classes five days a week and had no full day off of work or school.

“It kills your mental state,” he said. “I was very unhappy. Even if I did well in exams, I didn’t remember anything so the following semester I was instantly behind. I was burnt out from the previous semester and always trying to catch up.”

As reported by Jonathon Orszag, Peter Orszag, and Diane Whitmore in “Learning and Earning: Working in College”, full-time employment may impair student performance and students who work full time are more likely to drop out of school.

Their research states that 55 percent of students working 35 or more hours per week reported that it has a negative effect on their studies, in that it limits their class schedule by reducing their choices and the number of classes they take. It also limits their access to the library.

The study shows that, if possible, it may be beneficial for students to find other ways of financing college so they can complete their degrees, maintain academic performance levels and gain the long-term benefits of a college education.

Miller said it is easier for him now that he is able to receive a student loan, and is now taking two to three classes a semester and working 25-30 hours a week.

“It wasn’t worth it for me,” he said. “I felt like I was losing myself and slipping too much with having no downtime. Now I balance the pressure to keep my sanity but make sure I don’t slack off. I’ve learned how to manage things better now, and I know what I’m capable of and what I’m not.”