There’s an unspoken rule that your junior year of high school is when you start looking for work. It’s not something that’s directly told to us, but usually, by then, there are enough expenses for us to have to cover. It’s either going into retail, babysitting or telling your friends you can’t go out because you’re broke. You’ll have to join the workforce one day and the end of high school seems like as good a time as any — until you begin making the transition into college.

Suddenly your essays aren’t five paragraphs anymore. You can’t start slacking as the semester ends just because your APs are done. But your manager still expects you in as soon as your classes end for the same six-hour shift. So balancing school and work becomes an exhausting puzzle, equipped with the weirdest and most tiring moments.

The most frequent of these moments being…

Staying up until two or three or four in the morning because you had an evening shift and it ended late. Some nights that means coming home and passing out immediately. Other nights that means having a conversation with your local barista about why you’re asking them for five shots of espresso in your coffee at 11 in the evening. Ten-page papers don’t take pity on you and won’t write themselves just because you’ve been at work the entire day.

When you try to fix your schedule so that you won’t haveto work the entire day…

Trying to negotiate your schedule with your manager at the beginning of the semester is probably the weirdest part of balancing school and work. Not only are you going to have to call out and reschedule shifts as they inevitably collide with your classes as well as your activities. But putting together your new semester schedule means knowing that at some point you’ll be sitting in the office and telling your manager that you can’t work Saturdays but you can totally take a three-hour shift at 7 a.m. Monday morning.

That shift is going to be the bane of your existence for the rest of the semester.

Trust me. One of the worst things about balancing work and school is the fact that you’re never going to get to sleep in ever again. If you want to fit both things into your day, you’ll have to wake up unbearable early – whether it’s for a morning class or for a morning shift. Getting up at six to head out at seven is going to have you considering

1) if you really, truly need the money, or

2) how bad would it be to just drop out now.