By Nick Cook | web editor
Some students have to work multiple jobs to pay for school, rent, and other necessities. While it’s necessary to have these jobs to stay out of debt, what is the mental and physical cost of working multiple jobs while attending college full-time? Most of the time it is a struggle, but it is a necessary struggle that is tolerated.
I wake up every day at 5:20 a.m. to let my body wake up, and I sit on my phone for a few minutes. Around 5:40 a.m., I begin to get up, get dressed and prepare breakfast. I leave my apartment around 6:40 a.m. to make sure I get to work on time. I then work three to five hours, depending on the day, before returning to my apartment to change briefly and eat a snack.
I then return to campus for the rest of the day, alternating between classes and work at the Lariat. Monday and Tuesday are my worst days, and they really make me look forward to the rest of the week.
These days, I don’t leave campus until 7 p.m., only to have more homework waiting for me when I get home. Even though I can leave around 5 p.m. the rest of the week, that’s still not a lot of time to do my homework.
It takes a lot of mental toughness to hold multiple jobs and go to class every day. Between waking up around 5 a.m. and going to bed around 11 p.m., it starts to be hard to stay awake in class or to want to do anything. There are times when I only take a few hours to relax, but then I feel like a failure for not having done my homework and I fall behind in my classes.
Weekends are when I try to do most of my homework, so I can be lazy most of the time during the week. However, being able to sleep and take a mental break over the weekends means I don’t do as much as I normally would like.
Physically, it is also a fight. It’s not easy to sleep about six hours every night and work three to five hours every morning building Collins Hall. The construction itself is tiring and time-consuming, but add nine hours of extra lessons and five hours of homework and study, and your days start to drag on.
You are tired and your legs are starting to ache. You just want to go home and collapse in bed. Everything becomes a fight as the week progresses.
The distance between classrooms and classrooms seems to be getting longer every day.