Drexel is the place to develop a work ethic June 3, 2008
Posted by gaubstopper in Uncategorized.trackback
From Michelle Marchesano:
My first part-time job in college was for the writing center as a
tutor, starting my second year. I was lucky enough to have my parents
take care of my rent and books, so this position was mainly for
supplemental income — not to drain my parents or my bank account! I
found working for the University was helpful with creating
relationships with professors outside the classroom and gaining
perspective on the administrative side of student life.
It’s important to note that I was drawn to this employment more for
academic reasons/experience than money. Students who work part-time
jobs to pay for college and day-to-day expenses while enrolled full
time are likely to have a much different experience with full-time
school and part-time work than I had. For example, students working at
local restaurants and bars have much more labor intensive tasks to
complete and rigid schedules to maintain. While they certainly make
more money, their managers are far less sympathetic to their juggling
act of school and work. Students working to part-time to live can
become faced with trade-offs like making rent or getting a paper in on
time. In such times, they rely on the professor to have the real-world
experience and empathy to work with them on abstract deadlines.
In the final term of my senior year, I added an unpaid internship for
20 hours a week to my 12 credit course load and tutoring schedule.
With my major collegiate assignments behind me, I was able to handle
this schedule without too much trouble. However, I frequently would
think of my hectic prior months pulling together research and writing
for my senior seminar and other classes and wonder how students who had
kept a schedule (fuller than mine!) like this up for several years.
Particularly my roommate. She had been commuting between her assistant
paralegal job in Center City and classes at Drexel for as long as I had
known her. I saw her fall behind in some school tasks and spend long
nights attempting to get back on track. She was certainly not lacking
intelligence or ambition, but I saw her struggle with some of her
professors who were unyielding on deadlines. One professor in
particular would admit that her papers were “A” quality, but reduce
them to “C” s because they were late — despite my roommate trying to
mitigate grade deductions through frequent e-mail contact and office
visits to keep the professor informed of both her schedule and
progress.
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I generally work between 20-30 hours (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and take about 15 credit hours of school. I am pursuing a bachelor in computer engineering on top of working at a job in the same field.
My GPA has been around a 3.4 average and I feel like I have a decent social life. Does this mean I go out and party five nights a week or play 15 plus hours weekly of video games? No. Most weeknights/Sundays are generally spent studying/eating/sleeping. I dedicate several hours a week to band-related stuff, (we play shows every other weekend on top of practice), so more often than not my weekends are partially spoken for. I generally fill in the remaining hours with going out, vegetating, etc.
With this being said, I see plenty of people working jobs and failing many of the same classes I am in. At first this made me feel like I was some sort of ultra-genius, but when I went in the library to see them chatting/bitching/whining for hours on end about their classwork (as opposed to, you know, DOING the said classwork), things became abundantly clear.
The only real advice I can give anyone who is attending college and working more than 10 hours is to shut the hell up, pay attention in class, and DO your goddamn work when there is time between classes. You’d be amazed at what acts of blankly clicking on Facebook or chatting on AIM substituted with doing actual classwork can do for your grades.
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I’m wicked glad I found a job that’s compatible with a student life; I’m working for my university’s theater department as a stagehand, so I can work whenever I have time. If I’m not too busy with class, I can work 50 hours that week (I guess that’s not really part time, is it?), but if I have exams or papers to work on, I can just not work at all, or only work 10 hours.
However, even with this schedule, it’s a pain when professors cancel things at the last minute, or change plans without telling us in time. For example, I was supposed to have a Biochem final a couple hours ago, so I chose not to work a nice long well-paying shift that would’ve netted me almost $100 in overtime pay. I get there and there’s a note saying the final is postponed till tomorrow, when I am signed up to work. I complained to the professor, and he said it was my problem, and that college is for studying, not working. Well, smartass, how am I supposed to pay for the former without a healthy amount of the latter?
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Well, I graduated two years ago, and the only differences in my free time now are that I actually want to work my ass off that much because I care what I’m doing (rewarding job instead of bullshit lectures) and that I have a nicer place to spend the little bit of downtime I have (relatively nice apartment vs. 80-year-old dormitory).
And, to state the obvious that nobody’s stated yet, the degree sure is a hell of a lot more useful to me now than my WONDERFULLY ENRICHING EXPERIENCE at whatever worthless part-time jobs I had is.
Working is all well and good. Really, though, it shouldn’t be a very hard decision between working toward your degree for you own personal fulfillment/an actual chance at a career you like later and having the spare change to be able to go out to a bar or buy a new iPod with every generation. Suck it the hell up and put school first. You’re an adult and you should be able to manage your own time, not expect someone else to manage it for you. To be poor as a college student between the ages of 18-25 or so is nothing to be ashamed of and it never will be.
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I just work full-time right now because I need to save up for a better car to make the commute to school next semester and it’s pretty safe to say that I’m not excited about going back. I love school, I love learning new things and I’ve always done well academically but this is the first time I’ll be taking a full course load since high school (I just turned 21) and along with my 9-5 job and several hobbies that I’m not willing to drop, I’m going to be swamped.
Starting in September, this is basically how a typical day will go for me Monday-Friday. I’ll wake up at 5 a.m. and start making breakfast before I go to the gym. While I’m eating I’ll either just watch the news or do homework, this will probably be my only down time during the day. Then I’ll go to the gym and workout for an hour or so and come home and shower and eat again before I go to work at 9 a.m. Thankfully I have a lot of downtime at work so I’ll have the chance to get some homework done when things are slow. After work I’ll have to drive to school and I’ll probably be there from about 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. or so before I go home and go to sleep, just to repeat the next day. On Fridays I usually get off kind of early so that leaves time to get more homework out of the way. Since I won’t usually have much time to do homework on weekdays that’s probably going to take up most of my weekend.
Overall this doesn’t sound too bad, but when I have to fit in spending time with the girlfriend and my needy friends things will probably get kind of hectic. Thankfully though I’m not much of a stresser at all and I can keep my cool when things are PILED up so I should be able to get through it all without many gray hairs. I hope… =/
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I work about 50 hours a week and have taken about 10 hrs/semester for my first year of law school. Its not exactly fun, but its possible (I have next to no social life, but work/school have both gone well). The only time it gets really bad is when work gets busy and I end up having to work late/weekends around Test time. Murphy’s law holds true in these cases. Comparatively, I finished finals last week and now its dead around here and I’m typing on the internet all day. Typical. Professors are pretty good about missing classes, but obviously I am graded upon the same rubric as anyone else in the class, so anything I miss is still ultimately to my detriment.
I occasionally, around test time/paper time get frustrated with those in my class that are working way less than me but have the same school schedule. I basically blow all my vacation/sick time around finals to study, but I still end up with only a day or two of “dedicated” study days, as opposed to the amount my fellows have. However, it is important to remember, as has been alluded to, we all get the same 24 hours, and if you choose to work (and ostensibly reap the benefits: be they money, or more in my case, experience) and go to school, well, that is your choice.
I think it’s interesting to ask for stories about this because the “stories” of doing both are usually just people bitching or patting themselves on the back as hard as possible, rather than anything substantive. I find one of the hardest parts about doing both is that when you talk with friends/relatives/go on dates, there is usually not a good answer to the question of “do you have any good stories?” or even “what do you do for fun?” and it can be a little tough to talk about your life without either falling into the bitching/speech-of-self
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