<p>I'm starting to panic and feel a little overwhelmed about how I'm going to pay for my life while I am in school.</p>
<p>It seems like most people work 8-15 hours a week . . . does anyone on here work more than that? I worked between 45 and 60 hour/week in community college, but Cal is so different (I took lower div classes at Cal the past two semesters and am in summer sessions now). I could probably get away with working 36 to 40 hours/week in the fall. </p>
<p>My job stresses me out to the point that I lose sleep, but I'm also losing sleep over the thought of taking time off and figuring out how I am going to pay.</p>
<p>Wow, 36-40 hours a week is full-time. In my opinion, there’s simply no way for you to sustain a healthy academic lifestyle if you’re working 8 hours a day during the week. Especially when exams come around, you’re going to be wishing you had more time to study. </p>
<p>Can’t you take on loans? Focus on school now, then pay them off after you graduate.</p>
<p>Where did u work in SF? Is it hard to work in SF since it’s a 30-60 min Bart ride or did u bring ur car? I want to work there but I dont really need to if it’s too much.</p>
<p>I did 20hrs/week last semester and took four classes (2 MCB, 2 breadth) and that was already pretty difficult, not to mention no time for fun. </p>
<p>I guess fulltime is possible if you can work out your schedule so that you don’t have too much class/they aren’t spread out, but even then, I think you should scale back a bit for the fall semester and see how it goes. Or if your employer is willing, to give you some flexibility over when you work (more hours on the light weeks, fewer around midterms).</p>
<p>Depending on where you want to work in SF, the BART ride can be fairly short (30 min for financial district/union square, car ride about the same). If you’re thinking UCSF, that can take 1.5-2 hrs by public transportation but only 40min-1hr by car depending on traffic.</p>
<p>I guess I’m kind of trying to justify taking the loans. My employer does give me COMPLETE flexibility to work when I want, but being that I’m in a management/supervisory position I could not do my job in less than 40 hours a week (and that’s a stretch, usually I need far more time). Things would be totally different if this was a low stress/low responsibility job, but it’s not. </p>
<p>The truth is I don’t want to work at all, but I feel so guilty for taking out loans for some reason. I feel like I’m supposed to be working to pay for my life and taking out loans is “cheating” or something - even though pretty much everyone does it. I just keep hearing these horror stories about people with 90,000, 150,000, 275,000 dollar debt and no job! I get nervous!!!</p>
<p>UGH what is wrong with me! Even as I read this back I sound crazy to myself.</p>
<p>Focus on school and doing your best at them. Good grades gives you options on grad school and opens up more doors for future jobs if you plan on quitting the one your at.</p>
<p>On top of that, there are jobs that help with student loans. It’s like free money for people that took out loans, people who actually worked during and had little to no debt afterward have little benefit from those programs.</p>