Working while in University

I was lucky in where I was born, and where I decided to go to university. During my time in university I still lived with my parents, and here in Quebec for the longest time, university education has been very inexpensive. This allowed me, because I worked during university, to finish university without a student debt. Obviously if you have to go away to attend university you will have that additional cost, and especially if you are not in Quebec, you will likely be paying considerably more for your education, however, there are still advantages to working while in school.

• No matter how much you earn doing your job, it can be used to offset how much you will have to borrow. Even if it only lowers your debt by a few thousand dollars, those are dollars that you won't have to pay later on.
• Someone working fifteen to twenty hours a week and being a full time student will have very little extra time. Having only a small amount of extra time will help to really focus the student as they will have only a fixed number of hours to do their homework and studying. This will by its very nature teach the student time management skills that will be to their benefit later on in life.
• A student's CV, once they graduate, will already have an entry in the 'Previous Employment' section. Job interviewers will be impressed by the fact that the student had a job and studied at the same time - it shows a level of proficiency and organization that other candidates may not have.
• The working student will not have as much time for debauchery as they will be either at work or at school or asleep for the most part. The students themselves will not be too thrilled at this prospect, but this will certainly make the parent happier.

About that last point, while I did work three out of the four years I was at university, I still managed to have a social life, I still had friends and went to the occasional party, I just didn't see them quite as often as I would have liked. This taught me a level of responsibility that I may not have otherwise learned - I had to behave reasonably responsible in order to keep my job and to continue to do well in school.

The impetus for me to write this hub is for what happened in my third year. I worked through years one and two, left my job near the end of my second year, did not work during the third year, but then started a summer job in between my third and fourth years that I was able to negotiate as a part time position during my fourth year. My best grades were in the years I worked. In that third year I had my worst grades because I had a lot of time on my hands. Since I had so much time, I kept putting off homework and studying and ended up not doing some because it got too late and I fell too far behind. When I was working, I would try as much as I could to do homework as soon as it was assigned so that I wouldn't fall behind in any of my courses.

To conclude, I recommend, if at all possible, that a student should work during their university time so that they can learn how to focus better on their studies and reduce the amount of distraction time available.

Please note that while I used the term university exclusively here, this hub could apply equally to college.