Helpful tips for students balancing work, personal life and school
College students these days can be considered vastly different from students in our parents lifetime. Working full time to pay for tuition and rent, along with the “occasional” night out, can but a large strain onto a full-time student. While attending a Technical College can ease that stress, with its lower tuition costs and its blend of work-life and learning, sometimes a helpful hint can go a long way. So, here are some tips that I have come up with through researching other lists and from my own personal experience.
Schedule, schedule, schedule
Sounds simple enough, but honestly it’s the one major thing most people ignore when they first start going to college while working full-time. Having a set schedule and having it posted onto a calendar or on a whiteboard in your room can really go a long way when it comes to organizing your life. When you have everything in one place and can actually visualize your week or month it makes it a lot easier to see where you have free time to take a breather, which leads to my next tip.
Take a breather
Balancing work and school can get stressful, and that’s the last thing you need when you have all that on your plate. Now I’m not saying go and take a week off work and school and head down to Cancun every time you get stressed out, that would be counter productive. Instead, just take a little time out of every day to do something you enjoy. Whether that be working out, reading a book, or just going for a walk around Riverside Park, taking a small amount of time to relax can go a long way.
Have a support system
Being a college student, you’re going to have one thing in common with the rest of the people you go to school with: you all know the struggle. Let’s be honest, no one has ever had an easy time in college. There is always something that happens that makes you feel like you can’t do it anymore, or are going to fail that class. So having a good support system can go a long way, and what better place to look for that system then with the people you go to school with. Family can be a good support system, but sometimes they just don’t understand the stress you can be going through. Having like minded people that are going through the same thing as you can be a great way to let some steam out and get your thoughts out there. Plus, it never hurts to make more friends, right?
Flexibility is key
Work and school schedules are tough to balance out, and we all know that school will not flex when it comes to that. So finding a good job that allows you to have a flexible schedule is one of the most helpful things you can have. If you live in a college town, you’ll usually be able to find jobs that understand what college life is like and can help you out when it comes to your schedule. Not only is it good to have a flexible job schedule, but also a job that goes with your degree. More for the Technical College aspect, being able to use your job as an assignment or example in class can help relieve some of that work load. Not only that, but it can be a great motivator for doing better at your job, which is going to look great to your employers.
Focus
Depending on what you’re degree plans are, you may or may not have a long road ahead of you. So focus on the finish line, and use that as your motivation to keep moving forward. Having a good job that you enjoy and a degree that you’re exited to obtain are great ways to motivate yourself and make your life feel a little better when things get rough. All the tips mentioned above tie into this, so you could say its the most important one of them all.
Balance is the best way to summarize all of this, and a balancing act it is. Work, school, personal life; it can get pretty hectic at times. But having that balance can save you a lot of struggle and stress down the road. In the end, it’s your life and your future; so go and make the best of it.
For more information from the sources used, visit the sites shown below:
http://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/college-life/working-full-time-and-going-to-college/
http://www.makingsenseofcents.com/2015/10/tips-for-working-students-in-college.html