Work: that action everyone must do to fulfill the monetary requirements of life until a) appropriate retirement age, b) you drop dead, c) you become rich and famous, or d) you defy all logic and win the lottery. College, that place where you essentially pour blood, sweat, and tears into an education so you can make a larger income in a chosen career field. Unfortunately, the monetary requirements of life don't go on hiatus in college, and with costs of higher education in the United States, sometimes they even increase.
When university-funded work programs can only afford to pay students minimum wage for fifteen or fewer hours a week, sometimes you have to turn to employment outside your university. But that comes with its own set of problems. You may need more than fifteen hours, but working thirty-two hours in a week is mind-blowing (for lack of a better word) and horrifying. Working on-campus comes with the benefits of learning and living where you work. Working off-campus becomes a maze of transportation systems and times in between classes and homework and studying. Here are three tips to help you not be eaten alive by that chaos.
1. Know Your Schedule
After a few weeks into a new semester, a college course schedule becomes routine; but work schedules are, at the most, planned out two weeks in advance and constantly change. So when you get a new schedule put it anywhere and everywhere: on your Google calendar, on your phone, in a planner, plaster Post-It Notes on the bathroom mirror. Even bring back the old school calendar on the refrigerator because there is no worse feeling than running your life like a well-oiled machine and having the gears grind to a halt over something you completely forgot about.
2. Plan Ahead
It isn't always doable, but when you can you should try and plan ahead to avoid infinite running-around-like-a-chicken-with-your-head-cut-off syndrome.
Bless syllabi. Bless their all-knowingness and ability to (sometimes) accurately predict the future. Use them to navigate the big assignments throughout the semester to avoid pile-up around exams. If you notice in advance multiple high-importance projects with the same due date address the possibility of extensions earlier in the semester rather than later. Weeks ahead, asking for an extension looks like time management skills. Whereas asking in a neurotic email, or crying in office hours is desperate. At work, if you have a certain dress code, try and make sure to have a week's worth of outfits clean and ready to pull out of your closet. For all-day shifts take the time to pack lunches: they're cheaper and, most likely, more healthy. These are little things, but they add up to a much less stressful environment.
3. Accept Limitations
It is a sad truth that as of 2015 time turners, teleportation, and the Tardis are yet to be anything more than fiction. That being said, you can't do it all. Accept it because no matter how large of pieces college and work are of your life, they are still fragments. Maybe your studying won't get done because you go out to celebrate a friend's twenty-first birthday. Maybe you'll have to call off work for a funeral. Maybe you just need a mental health day of not leaving your bed and Netflix. Sometimes all the boxes won't get checked on you to-do list, but there are some things that are more important.
