At four o’clock every Monday afternoon, I leave my job in the cosmetic department of Walgreens and drive to my apartment on Alafaya Trail, where I’ll have just enough time to walk my dog, change my clothes, and drink a cup of coffee before I have to fight through rush hour traffic to get to UCF. The next three hours of my life will be spent in class.

When I get home, I’ll probably study, but I’ll try to get to bed early—because at 7 o’clock the next morning, I’ll be up and headed for the class I have to attend before my next shift. I am one of the millions of college students that are working and attending a university full time.

I’ll admit that I do this because I have to. But even if I didn’t, I still would.

Working is part of the experience you need to get while you’re in college. Ideally, you’ll find a job that is related to your intended career path— a paid internship, for example. However, if you can’t find an internship (or if you aren’t ready for one yet) you should still be working.

The reality is that most of the jobs college students can obtain are in some form of customer service. They may be unpleasant, frustrating, and at times even frightening, but these jobs will still give you skills that you need to have for your future.

In any working environment, you learn how to collaborate with others on a professional level. You’ll figure out how to budget and pay your bills using your own money. Most importantly, you will learn how to manage your time.

The number one thing I hear from unemployed students is that they don’t have enough time to tackle a college workload and a job. It’s true that college students are insanely busy; college professors are notorious for assigning massive amounts of work.

More often than not, students are tasked with reading hundreds of pages of textbook material, completing multiple major assignments in a short time frame, and attending the meetings of the clubs they’ve joined, all while struggling to maintain some semblance of a social life. But here’s the thing: life will not get easier when college is over.

Once you walk across the stage with your college diploma in hand, the world will only pick up speed. Are you getting married? Are you thinking about starting a family or trying to move to a different state? Do you want to get your pre-college body back?

Do you know how to file your own taxes, find the best home insurance policies, and get your car serviced? The answers to these questions all reveal one thing: whether you are planning a wedding, hitting the gym, or acting as your own accountant, you will be even more pressed for time after graduation than you are now.

Take the time to learn the skills you will need to manage your adult life while you still have a strong support system. You should be committing yourself 110% to becoming the best version of yourself, and part of becoming that person is getting work experience.

Working and being a full-time student is not the most fun thing in the world. Writing your essays in between shifts and trying to do your assigned reading on your lunch break is stressful and overwhelming at times. Not to mention, no one wants to give up a day at Disney World to listen to customers complain for eight hours.

However, the skills you gain from working are invaluable and will make you so much more appealing when you go to start your post college career. You will have a much more productive and stress-free adult life if you start working now. Take fifteen hours of your week and spend it working at a part time job. You won’t regret it.