<p>If you have financial aid, part of which is work study, and you play a div I sport for Princeton, with a difficult major, will you be able to have a life? Or, is this suicide? I know this depends on several things, but in general what do you think?</p>
<p>I think it depends in part on the work study job. Some involve sitting at a counter, where you can study at the same time. Others involve active service with no opportunity to study.
I think the answer will also vary depending on the year-round expectations of your coach. Of course, you will adjust your schedule to be lighter during your traveling season, but some coaches have greater year-round demands than others.
Bottom line: talk to members of the team you’ll be joining…ask the coach to connect you with players in the difficult major, and players who also juggle work-study.<br>
I’m guessing that “having a life” with three major time commitments is hard, but possible. You have already balanced academics and your sport successfully through high school.</p>
<p>Thanks, that helps</p>
<p>It depends. On the major, on the job, on the sport. Let’s go worst-case: you’re a ChemE or ORFE major (physics or math are harder, but I doubt anyone who didn’t like a lot would major, thus making the workload relatively less ridiculous), working in the dining hall (no time to study) and on a team with an especially heavy schedule. That would be tough. Doable, but very tough.</p>
<p>However, you could be on a slightly less time-consuming time (all teams are very time-consuming, though), and even still majoring in ORFE or something get a job at a desk at a more out-of-the-way library. This requires a bit of effort since by default students are generally assigned to the dining hall, but if you can get a library desk job it’s a great gig. Lots of studying, little actual work.</p>
<p>I’m on a team here and I am a future ORFE major (so we’ll see how the workload goes next year) and also work (on and off) as a bartender for the formal services agency on campus. Definitely doable.</p>
<p>S is a math major doing a year round sport and work study. The first two years he was working in the dining hall and now he’s a tutor. He goes out every Fri and Sat night - lots of parties but not a heavy drinker.</p>
<p>He has never worked the 7 recommended hours work study, he generally does 3 or 4. You can talk to the financial aid office if you can’t do the full hours because of a sport. They are very flexible and may offer you more in a grant or a loan if you need it.</p>
<p>Also, he’s very good at managing his time and gets school work done whenever he has free time. He also takes lots of naps.</p>
<p>All of this has been helpful.</p>
<p>I don’t think being an ORFE is the worst case… :-)</p>
<p>Anyway, I was a CS BSE major, played in the top 3 spots in the team for 4 years, and had to work as a part of my FA. It was tight, but doable and I believe I did have SOME life during my years :-)</p>
<p>I think it’s a different thing between a major that’s hard and a major that has lots of works. I wouldn’t say CS/EE are harder than Math/Physics, but I think workloadwise CC/EE could get worse. In my opinion, classes with projects pretty much require the same amount of time even if everything went smoothly all the way, while the psets in Math/Physics could take you no time if you’re a genius (well, I wasn’t one of those anyway, I did take an upper level math class as well and I remember spending 4 days on one single problem haha).</p>
<p>It really depends on the classes you’re taking + your sports schedule. Some classes have weekly problem set. Some classes have only big projects/papers/exams at the the end so you can slack off the first half of the semester. Some classes have labs. Some have ALL. You’ll have to plan this carefully with your sports schedule. For an example, if your sports is spring seasons only, you might want to take hard classes in fall and do lots of works on the side so you can have easy semester for spring. Remember that you can usually vary your work hours during the semester (talk to the manager), so you can come work more when you’re off-season and the class workload is not too bad.</p>
<p>Regarding the work, they’ll probably assign everyone to dining hall in the beginning. It’s not that bad (I love the fact that I can sometimes bring back desserts to my room after work :-P) and the dining hall workers were usually very close to each other. However, it’s not that great regarding time efficiency as you can’t do anything else during your shift. Getting a desk job and you can mostly spend 60%+ of your time for studying/homework (however, it pays less, compared to the dining hall work I believe). I did work for the dinning hall freshman year for the fall semester, after that I switched to the work at computer center, which pays pretty well and I can do a lot of my own works during the shift. In the first 2 years, I usually worked around 4-5 hrs/week. But then I got in a pretty good summer internship so I saved a good amount of money for the remaining academic year, and I worked for only just 1-2 hrs/week in my last 2 years.</p>