The Hot Mess

The Hot Mess thanks these busy students for their stories:

I am going to school 15 hours a week and working 30 hours a week. It does not sound like much, but I am used to just sitting around at home doing nothing. It has made me realize that I am, in fact, a morning person. The conflict I am having is that I get home and just want to veg out in front of a TV, but I have to do schoolwork and study. I am definitely not putting a healthy amount of effort towards my schoolwork. I would definitely say I am going to get a lot of C’s and that will rule out grad school for me.

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I work 10 hours a day, starting at 4:30 p.m. and ending at 2:30 a.m. I do this 4 days a week. I also have about 15 hours of school per week, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This doesn’t sound so bad until you factor in the fact that I can’t go immediately to sleep when I get home from work, and I need to take an hour or so to wind down enough to where I can fall asleep. And let’s not forget all the time I have to spend on homework and projects outside of school. I almost never get to see my girlfriend, and I’m rarely ever able to actually spend time with any of my other friends because during the time when I don’t have class or work, I’m either sleeping or they’re at school or work.

However, since I want to get out of this shit hole of a town as soon as I possibly can, I need to work full time so I can pay tuition along with my rent and bills. This is all thanks to the wonderful people in the Department of Education who failed to realize that when putting the age restriction for being considered independent from your parents on the FAFSA, some people’s parents don’t particularly like having to drain their retirement funds to put their child through college and, therefore, won’t. Thank god that by the time I graduate from community college, I’ll be able to be considered as an independent so I can continue on to get my BA. Working and doing easy 100- and 200-level classes is one thing; working and taking classes that actually matter and require you to work hard in the class… That tends to not work so well.

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I’m currently finishing up my first semester of both actually “working” and going to school. Aside from last year when I didn’t need to work due to saving my funds from Iraq, I had been taking on average of about 20 hours of school per semester (21 in the spring, 10 in the summer, 18 in the fall).

This spring I was able to get a job working in the Emergency room as a med tech. All together, Hospital jobs, especially working as a patient care provider, are some of the best college jobs I can think of. I usually work about 20-30 hours a week. But since shifts usually range between 12+ hours long, I work maybe two or three days out of the week, bring home a nice paycheck and get whatever studying I can in when the E.R is slow.

I guess I’m one of the students that lucked out with a kick ass job; I always have a sense of sympathy for the people who do nothing but work and study.

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I can jump in on this. I have worked 25-30 hours a week for my whole college career while trying to take full time classes, lifting regularly, and taking care of fraternity responsibilities. I feel that having to work has really compromised my ability to make grades because I’m always worn out and often times too tired to lug my ass back to the library after work and class all day for studying/homework. I’m rocking a slightly sub 3.0 g.p.a. when I know I’m capable of a 3.5+. I often feel like I’m spread too thin.

However, without the job, I wouldn’t be eating (I can barely afford to feed myself 3000 calories a day as it is).

I’m about to move home with the parents or something so I don’t have to work and can focus on my grades for however many more semesters it takes for me to graduate. Organic chemistry and genetics are going to take some studying, it seems, which is something I don’t have time for right now. Something has to give.

However, I’m glad I’ve worked rather than taking out student loans so far. I would hate to be 20 grand in debt.

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At my CC, you need at least 12 credit hours to be considered a full-time student. I’ve been consistently working 20-30 hours a week on top of that at various jobs. The thing about nine credit hours being ideal for people who also work is definitely true, but if I’m not a full-time student, I won’t get any health insurance. So, for the time being, what I do is attempt the four classes, then always drop one. It sucks, and I’m afraid all these W’s are going to affect me badly. However, while some of us might be motivated/intense enough to do all of them, I find I can’t. Even taking “blow off” classes doesn’t work because they still require about five hours/week outside of the regular class time (I’m looking at you, Drawing 1).