My cousin is currently working a full time job and going back to school for some retraining after losing her job in an industry heavily impacted by the recession. Watching her struggle with keeping both her job performance and her studies from flagging, prompted me to look online for some ideas from others on how to balance work and studies. I will share with you what I recently shared with her. Here are some pretty common strategies for work/study balance that I encountered among the experiences of others posted online.
1) Be Organized –Whether you prefer an oldschool notepad, a traditional day planner or a fancy new PDA, it is critical to keep track of your obligations to both job and school.
2) Take an Incremental Approach – Don’t begin by trying to handle overtime at work and a full course load. Start out with a little less and see how you’re able to handle the load. If you have the bandwidth you can add more work hours or credits to your course load.
3) Balance the Difficulty of Your Classes – Select your classes wisely each semester. Mix some harder classes with some easier ones and you’ll find working and studying to be more sustainable. Taking all the tough classes together at the same time can lead to burnout!
4) Transcript Management – Keep on top of your credits. Especially if you’re attending different schools in pursuit of your educational goals. Even some credits you may have earned 10 years ago may still be transferable.
And if you’re currently a student of Allen School Online, then you’re on the right track because you’re already doing the last frequently mentioned strategy:
5) Consider Online Schools – The freedom and flexibility of taking online courses can really help out if you are working full time, taking care of children or both.
3 Responses to “Balancing Work and Studies”
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Anthony, I just found this blog today and after reading all of your wonderfully informative, funny and supportive postings, I wanted to tell you this is much appreciated and will be a plethora of information for our students. I am the Director of Online Career Services here in Phoenix and wanted to thank you for your expertise and inventiveness on topics and for making me smile. Can’t wait for the next one!
This is such a great subject. I recently went to a conference for my work called “Womens network conference” for 2009. It is a network meeting for employees working for this particular company I work for, ( and no its not JUST for women!). One of the speakers talked about “work-life balance” and how to achieve such a thing. She had researched online from different sites who offered a way to find this balance. Some were quite surprising. And by surprising, I mean not helpful at all! Anyway, work-life balance, to me, is finding that perfect happy medium between work and any other extra-curricular activities that make you happy, whether it be school, sports, friends, etc. There has got to be a perfect way to work hard and still enjoy life to the fullest.
The electronic health care record is definitely redefining data collection. This form of data management is streamlining data information and improving the effectiveness of the patients’ medical record. The electronic data collection allows for real time information to be shared when minutes count, the physician and nursing staff can see important pieces of the patients puzzle at just one glance. Further advantages are in the speed of sharing billing information with the third party payers and insurance companies approving the procedures and treatments for the patients.