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Students balance job responsibilities with school

While the majority of students must balance academics with a sport or other extra-curricular activity, junior Lily Le juggles four jobs in addition to a sport and school.

Le is just one of the working students who find themselves stuck between school and work. These students are forced to focus on prioritization in order to efficiently balance their added responsibilities.

Le is a café manager, a tutor, a personal fitness trainer, and a food handler. Those are only a few of the responsibilities she takes on during a normal week.

“You appreciate things more if you earn them yourself,” said Le, who said that she has to pay for things such as her phone bill, Wi-Fi, car insurance, and occasionally groceries.

Sometimes after a long day of school and work, Le is tired, so she then has to wake up early the next morning to finish her homework.

Le said that she sometimes has to cancel work and give up necessary daily activities in order to meet her demanding schedule.

JUNIOR LILY LE PREPARES lunch for students. She works in the cafeteria five days a week on top of several other jobs and responsibilities.
Junior Lily Le prepares lunch for students. She works in the cafeteria five days a week on top of several other jobs and responsibilities.

Junior Michael Stolberg faces the same challenges. He balances two jobs – one at Kentfield Tutoring and the other at Emporio Rulli.

According to Stolberg, one of the keys to being able to balance school and work is knowing your limits. Working hours should be scheduled to fit easily into your routine.

Most working students are well aware of the time and energy commitments made when taking on a job. Sophomore Rachel Ahn takes that into consideration and limits her working hours to only on the weekend.

“I think it takes practice to find the balance, and mistakes will be made before you can,” Ahn said.

Many working students are burdened with other time-consuming activities as well. Ahn is a member of the crew team and Le participates in wrestling and Ultimate Frisbee. Stolberg does Ultimate as well.

Senior Shannon Hare has been working at Urban Outfitters for the past three months. With a comfortable school schedule and flexible working environment, Hare said she doesn’t struggle with juggling school and work but enjoys doing both.

She said she can’t work as much as she would like. She and Stolberg said they believe that school limits their working hours, a restriction non-student workers don’t have to face.

Le believes in order to succeed in areas like school and work, a person must make sacrifices in other areas of his or her life.

“You need to be willing to limit your social life,” Le said.

Prioritization is important to balancing many activities or jobs, like Le but even with these skills she has to make sacrifices in areas like her social life.

Interest, curiosity, and the need to distinguish oneself in college admissions leads students like Le, Hare and Ahn to take on the working world as well as tackle the normal workload of school.

“My favorite part of work is dealing with a new challenge every day and learning to overcome them.”

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Logan Peters, Author