Final: Working Students Balance a Busy Lifestyle

 

            Full-time college students with jobs have busy schedules that they have to balance throughout their college career. It leaves little free time for the student, and it can be extremely stressful for him or her.

           

Heath Pratt, a Health and Exercise Science junior at the University of Oklahoma, works about 30 hours a week as an IT Technician at OU’s Price College of Business. He uses his job to pay for necessities while he goes to school.

“Everybody needs money to pay for the things you want and the things you don’t have like food and gas,” says Pratt.

           

According to the Oklahoma State University Policy and Procedures, “Approximately two hours (100 minutes) of out-of-class preparation are expected for the average student for each hour in class.”

           

Dr. Joyce Allman, associate provost of academic advising at OU, uses this formula for OU students as well to recommend a plan for working students.

           

“We recommend that if a student is taking a 12-hour [school] load, they don’t work more than 10 hours a week because then that’s comes to a 46-hour work week between work and school,” says Allman, “That gives the student time still to look at their personal life.”

           

According to an article titled “ Is Your Teen Ready for a Job?” on life.familyeducation.com, “Working 13 to 20 hours a week is associated with lower grades.”

           

Dr. Allman understands the point made by the article.

“The students typically think they’ve got latitude when it comes to going to school, they don’t have latitude when it comes to showing up for the job.” Allman says, “Therefore, they show up for the job and not show up for class and the next thing you know, the grades are suffering because they’re working too many hours.”

Cameron Ibbetson, a Petroleum Engineering junior at OU, quit his job at Rib Crib to focus on academics after transferring to OU two years ago.

“I knew that if I was working and going to school at the same time, I wouldn’t have been able to excel in my classes,” Ibbetson said.

A study led by Gary R. Pike, an associate professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, explained in an article on insidehighered.com titled “The Impact of Student Employment,” says that students who work 20 hours a week had a negative impact on their grades. It did, however, say that those students tend to be more engaged than non-working students. Pike attributed that to the development of strong time management skills.

Pratt remains positive when looking at his situation.

           

“You lose a lot of free time when you have a job and you got to sacrifice quite a bit, but it works out in the in the end,” says Pratt, “If you devote enough time to study and enough time to work, you’ll be happy because you got the money and you got the grades.”

Links: 

Oklahoma State University Policy and Procedures: http://www.okstate.edu/osu_policies/2-0209.html

"Is Your Teen Ready for a Job?" on life.familyeducation.com: http://life.familyeducation.com/teen/jobs-and-chores/36446.html

"The Impact of Student Employment" on insidehighered.com: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/work

VIDEO: Zach Machen RUNS: 2:02