I’m going to be entering my sophomore year this coming fall semester and was thinking of getting a part-time job. The thing is, I’m an engineering major and I have multiple classes every day, which require a lot of work and time to be put into them (basically the math and physics classes). I’m pretty good at managing my time effectively but what I’m worried about is a lack of free time. I’m worried that if I take up a part-time job, especially a demanding one, that my grades may suffer (especially with physics!) and my social life might as well. I’m more worried about the latter than the former because managing my work load was doable my freshman year although not so sure when I have a job.
The thing is I’ve yet to ever have an official job, which at my age makes me feel lame considering I know many who have had a job, even if it was just part-time. So I need some advice-especially from former or fellow engineering students or students who have had just as rigorous of coarse load/work. Should I get a part-time job?
Have you considered getting an on-campus job? Perhaps an on-campus job that has a lot of down time? That would enable you to mange your time more effectively since you wouldn’t have to leave campus (time spent commuting) and you could potentially do homework/study at the job itself.
I have a lot of friends who hold part-time jobs on campus working front desks of various offices - most of the time, they aren’t answering phones or greeting people, so they spend time doing course-reading or reviewing notes.
A lot of the on-campus jobs that work at front desks are usually for people with financial aid requirements and who meet certain requirements, so it rules me out immediately. The jobs that I can work at without those restrictions on-campus (at least the ones I’ve found) are usually food service places like the cafeteria or starbucks. Maybe I can find some desk jobs on-campus that don’t require it if I look harder.
Fairly certain undergrad TA positions are also not available until after sophomore year but I’ll keep digging. Assuming I can’t find a desk job with down time, should I still aim for a part-time job?
I can totally relate to the feeling of thinking you’re lame because you’ve never had a job before. But if that’s really your only motivation, I worry that it’s not a sufficient one.
I had a part time job during most of my college career. My transcript bears the evidence that I actually did worse in the semesters when I didn’t have a job.
For me, the jobs offered some downtime, but not a lot, so whatever benefit I was getting, it wasn’t from effectively having blocks of “planned” study time.
For me, the most notable benefits were:
Better social life - I developed friendships with coworkers, many of whom were graduate students or older staffers. Having friendships outside my age-filtered underclassman bubble lent a sense of richness and depth to my social life.
Physical effort - I was not remotely active in sports while in college, and my only fitness program was walking across campus with a laden backpack, so the fact that the jobs required me to do some manual labor was a huge benefit both physically and mentally/emotionally.
Discipline, rhythm, escape - As someone who struggled with depression, I found that having an obligation that paid me to leave the house was a great motivator. Apart from that personal challenge, I would still have appreciated how the job added a rhythmic cadence of escape from the concerns of my schoolwork. I took an intensive course load, and having the discipline of regular time to focus my attention on something else gave me a valve through which the pressure could bleed off safely. It was effectively an ongoing mini-vacation from school!
Only you can decide for you, but do consider the possibility that a job might actually do you far more good than harm. You could do what I did, and take one less class the first semester you have a job, just to give yourself some breathing room while you try it out. Whatever you choose to do, I wish you success in it!
Do you need the money? When people need money and have to work they accept the sacrifices and adjustments in their lives required. It is a matter of doing what you have to do to make things work.
Also @DreamSchlDropout is correct in listing a high number of advantages and the fact that busy and involved students tend to do better academically.
Try it. You can always quit if you don’t actually need the money to get by, if it is too demanding for you.
I technically do not NEED the money but I’d rather work and make my own spending money and not rely on my parents all the time (Ironic because they are paying for college I know lol). Plus I think it would be a good experience and it wouldn’t look bad on a resume either.
I think the root of my worries is mainly the large work load with my courses plus lack of time for being social. Physics killed me last semester and having less free time to study for it makes me a bit nervous. I’d also have to find extra time to find when I can go to the gym now (exercise is important!) and I’ve made one of my goals in college is to build social connections, as I lacked them a bit in high school. I did pretty well my freshman year although not as much as I wanted to so it’s a work in progress still but a lack of free time I feel may also affect that too.
I guess I’ll give it a shot. I only have this one opportunity to do this, might as well take advantage of it. Even if it does become too stressful, I do have the option to quit. Still open to anymore advice and experience/stories though!
I don’t know about part-time, but I work full-time and do need the money.
It has probably been the hardest thing to do in my life to this point. I have had zero time to spend with my girlfriend. If you’re taking very hard classes in one semester, scale your courseload size accordingly. I’ve been getting pretty crappy grades these past two semesters - just C’d two classes and got an F in another. Admittedly, I took summer classes where things went x2 as fast and I had quite a bit of trouble keeping up in all three classes. It seemed like I would get caught up in one and fall behind in others. I didn’t have any days I took “off” from school. I only ever took work off to study, which is pretty sad.
This is much harder than when I took 19 units back to back with the hardest classes in my semesters of a math major in my final year to graduate on time. Thankfully I have about a month off now as classes just ended yesterday.
I didn’t understand my friend’s plight when he was doing just a part-time job when I was in college 2 years ago. Now I absolutely understand. I’ve not had much of a social life, but you study harder to make time for things later if you need to have that time.
Take a look at Malcolm Gould’s book or YouTube videos about College Success Guaranteed, he talks about how being involved and busy actually often results in better academic performance.
As a sophomore who goes to engineering school, I can really relate to this. I recently got promoted to being a laboratory manager on top of two other part time jobs so I work roughly 30 hours per week while balancing a heavy math/engineering/overwhelming course load. It is completely doable, I can say from experience. It just takes a lot of managing yourself down to the minute, and sacrificing a lot of your social life. I would say it is definitely more rewarding having these jobs than not.