Living the College Life: How Much Should I Work at a Part-Time Job?

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Adam Lucido (Montana State University"Billings) recalls the spring semester of his freshman year, when he had a nice block of empty space on his schedule Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It made sense, then, to fill up those hours by work­ing at the Italian restaurant near campus where he was employed. He'd be finished in time those days to attend an evening class, English 301"Business Communication. But something happened between serving all that pasta and the start of class. He was exhausted, and frequently skipped the class. Adam still managed to do well in his assignments, so he wasn't overly concerned. But playing hooky caught up to him. "The instructor stated, You do good work, but I couldn't overlook six absences,' from which he handed me my final grade on a piece of paper with C' on it."

Lesson learned.

In the semesters that followed, Adam says he scheduled his work in such a way that it wouldn't interfere with classes. He resisted the temptation to fill all the open boxes on his schedule grid with work because he saw that some of those boxes needed to stay empty.

Students' semester grades don't just reflect how well they did in class"they show how well they balanced their lives. Few things can motivate students to reassess the relative importance of their jobs like a bad grade, or worse"a string of bad grades that lands them on academic probation.

Brittany Duke, who's paying her own way through school, admits that it's tempting to think you can always put in more hours on the job. But there's a limit, at which point schoolwork is among the first thing to suffer. She suggests working as much as possible during the summer, when school is usually not a factor in the equation, and trying to stretch that money through a good portion of the school year. Once classes have resumed, she says, plan your schedule so that you work as little as you need to.