College Life: Getting a job to Survive or Suffer to get a job

To work to pay your bills or to work to begin your career path? Although this is a question that haunts most working people, it's most obvious to the struggling college student.

Being a college student doesn't only mean stressing over papers or eating ramen noodles everyday, but also trying to find ways on how to make it day-to-day with the continuous increased cost of transportation, food, and essential (and sometimes not) products. And with being able to pay for all of these everyday needs comes the questions on how broken, tired, and often ready to give up students are going to be able to afford all of this. The answer seems simple: go find a job! Anywhere will do as long as you're still in school, still living under your parents roof, and if you have no desire to do anything beyond that job.

Oops, that last part slipped out, but now that we're talking about it, it's true. By no means do I mean that you can't find a rewarding job/career in a retail or customer service job, especially since they will most definitely help you pay your bills, but you will have spent all this time in college and, possibly, graduate school just to stay and end up in the same job that has been helping you pay your bills since day one of freshman year? This is the problem: it's ingrained in society and in our minds that to get a well-paying job in the field that we studied we have to get an internship (mostly unpaid or for credit), be able to show that we were busy by either volunteering and/or getting involved on-campus (again all unpaid for), and even going above and beyond with that one professor that you work so closely your work becomes an independent study (again unpaid for).

Do you see the pattern here? Everything that requires us to get a well-paying and rewarding job after four years of stress, contemplating dropping out, and the occasional hiding away from the world is UNPAID! Which, just to bring us full circle, means we can't pay for our everyday necessary things that, you know, only keeps us alive. (Insert sarcastic and obvious eye roll here).

There are so many memes about applying for an entry-level job but needing 6+ years of experience. That's one part of the job-market problem, but even if we're able to get that job that can pay enough, it usually takes a toll on our school and study time. Now, if you're that type of person that can ace an exam without studying or write a twenty-page research paper right before class, congrats. But that's not the case with most of the student spectrum, so what's your decision? Getting a job to be able to live or get a job that is going to add some spice to your resume?

My answer to that is I don't know. What are we supposed to do? When someone finds the answer please let me know! But in the mean time just hang in there. Figure out what your priorities are and what you can do to make sure you're still taking care of yourself.