By: Sarah Boutin
As each college semester begins, students try to create a checklist of what they need to start off the semester right: food, toiletries, books and for most—jobs.
Most students work while attending college. Students seek jobs to help pay for tuition, gain work experience, want money to spend, or just want to keep busy. With the stress of a university workload and various work hours, it can take a toll not only on yourself, but also your grades.
Students want to enjoy the college life experience which can include attending sports games, dances, events or just hanging with friends. Working students either get caught up in the college life or in their work life.
Jericho Lingo, senior mechanical engineering major at Riverside City College, said he tends to prioritize work than school because it is not as difficult as college.
“I get more stressed out about school because I do not manage that as much as I do with work. With work, I do not have to think about much whereas school, I have to micromanage many things,” Lingo said. “School is still a bit difficult due to all the new material that I learn about and I try to get a good enough grasp of it in the allocated time I am given.”
Most jobs students get are either on campus, food services or retail jobs. These are some of the easiest areas to get jobs in which is why most students vie for them. Though with those easy jobs it means that they may be only getting minimum wage. If students need to help earn money to pay for tuition or bills, it can be expensive, so you see students try to put more work hours in just to help pay. This distracts them from schoolwork.
Lisa Singer, associate director of employer relations at California Baptist University’s Career Center, said the jobs students get should be easy enough where it does not affect their studies.
“If those students must work, by all means it should be a job that they do not have to think about before they leave. School is a priority, try to work a schedule where it is easy, and it still allows you to have some space,” Singer said.
Students can burn out coping with the stress of trying to balance studies, work and a social life. There are students who were “perfect” students who had good grades in high school, but entering college is another thing. The shift can catch many students by surprise and their grades can reflect that. If those students start to get bad grades there are unfortunate times where they may think to dropout. According to the Chicago Tribune, “working more than that can exhaust students, interfere with their studies and lead to high dropout rates.”
A positive quality that can come out of having a job is discipline. If students work more than 20 hours added on to their schoolwork, then they may acquire good time management skills. It is all up to the student and how well they balance.
Qiantong Huang, sophomore music major at CBU, said having no job gives her more time to focus on her studies.
“Without having a job, I noticed that I participate in a lot of activities that I know I would not be able to. I can go out with my friends, play basketball but also study. Since I am not from here, I need all the studying I can get because it is hard to understand some things. I usually have many hours of studying,” Huang said.
Students without jobs have more time to focus on their studies while working students must plan things out and hope that everything works out in their favor.
A lot of factors could contribute to why college student’s grades are failing, but a main reason is working. As someone who has two jobs with a fifteen-unit course load, the struggle is definitely real for working students. Some students must work during college, and it is not their fault. Balancing a college workload must be essentially to any student, especially working ones or else their grades might be in jeopardy.
College Lifestyle 