120 Hours Per Week And No Time To “Be”
Maya Bartleson | March 28, 2024
My first alarm clock goes off at 4:00 a.m., then 4:13 a.m. and then again at 4:25 a.m. to ensure the exhaustion from the previous day does not catch up to me, keeping me asleep. I get ready in 10 minutes and then get on the way to my 5:00 a.m. shift. Monday through Friday, I am up before the sun is and clocked into work hours before most of my peers are awake.
For the last three semesters, I have been working at least 30 hours a week on top of going to college full-time. Some college students have the luxury of not working during the school year, but others, like me, have to work to pay for school or any other bills they may have. To some, working an off-campus job on top of school is manageable. At Warren Wilson College (WWC) it seems more difficult for most students on account of the amount of responsibilities they take on as students at a work college.
WWC is one of nine colleges in the United States that requires students who live on campus to partake in a work program. Students choose between a wide array of crews on campus, work and receive pay from the 120 hours a semester they put into their crew, through a discount on their tuition.
At WWC, I am a member of the volleyball team and the Athletics Communication Crew. Additionally, I work at the local Dunkin Donuts. If you combine both my outside job and the hours I must dedicate to the WWC Athletics Crew, I work at a minimum of 46 hours a week.
There are 120 hours throughout the work week. If I sleep for seven hours every day, go to all my classes and work my minimum required hours, I have 28.5 hours of “free time.” But I am a college student — I have homework, and I attempt to have a social life.
So where is my time to just breathe, to just relax and “be?”
I know how hard it is to balance all my responsibilities and how easy it is to burn out, especially as an athlete.
In high school, I was a straight-A student with a 4.0 GPA. When college hit and my work hours increased significantly, my GPA slipped. I was putting so much energy into attending class and work that, when I had free time to study and complete homework, I chose to rest.
One study displays that “employed students have higher levels of academic burnout.”
It may seem that I was lazy or unmotivated, but to be honest, I was just tired. That fatigue has not vanished, I have simply learned how to manage it in a way that prevents burnout as much as possible — I had to adapt. While I was able to learn from burnout and now know how to prevent it, some do not. The “difficulty balancing work and school obligations” leads a plethora of working students to drop out of school.
Although it may seem that students who do not work “have it easy,” these students have their own set of issues. Yes, they may have more free time but they also have the anxiety of limited finances.
Lillian DeMeglio, a freshman at WWC, explains that she is “constantly aware” of her decreasing bank account balance. Lillian, who works a summer job at home, spends the summer months working to save up for her needs during the school year.
Many non-employed students at WWC have their schedules filled with athletics, academics and work crews — working outside of the college would not be an option for them. But Lillian explains that as her year goes along, she knows that she will need an off-campus job. More and more college students need to earn money during the school year to support themselves.
The risk of working full-time in college is a subject that is continuously being studied. Based on research from Georgetown University on education and the workplace, there are significant differences in grades of students who work more than 15 hours a week versus those who work less than 15 hours.
According to Jane Hodges’ article on working students, nearly half of students who work more than 15 hours a week carry a C or below average, compared to the B or above average that students who work fewer hours obtain. This statistic is a direct result of the effects of working as a college student. The ability to manage work, classes, school work, and a healthy lifestyle can seem extremely hard, but to add on aiming for all A’s, as most students do, seems merely impossible.
With all the statistics showing the risks for students who work extra hours, some may question why they do it. Some even argue that school should be their job. But unfortunately, that’s not a possibility for most people in our generation.
Even if a student’s school was fully paid for, they still have the skyrocketing costs of car payments, insurance, gas and phone bills. To not work in this economy is impossible for someone who is financially independent, so students have to learn how to deal with the ever-growing stress of balancing life, work and school.