5 Ways Being Both a Full-Time Student and Full-Time Worker Is Not As Bad As You Think

Nowadays there is an abundance of pressure surrounding the professional development field. Everyone needs to know everything about anything, and jobs descriptions request both a professional degree and significant levels of experience. Sometimes, it seems that the only way to meet a job’s requirements is to be in two places at once for years at a time. I am currently living that situation; I am both a full-time student and a full-time worker. While it may sound like I have time for nothing else, that is not necessarily true. Sure sacrifices are made, but there are plenty of benefits of this professionally-centered version of “double-dipping.”

1. The things you learn in class translate directly to work.

I am currently a digital marketing communications coordinator and also enrolled in an Internet marketing class. Every Monday in class I stop the professor multiple times and ask questions that focus not just on the theory of how XYZ marketing campaign is supposed to be run, but that also focus closely on the tactical execution of the idea. This serves to help develop for me a natural buffer that keeps me a couple steps ahead of the demands of my work life.

2. I know what I need to know for work and what I can easily discard.

At the end of the day, work clocks in as way more important than school–it is the way I can afford to eat and pay rent, after all. So when a professor starts getting into details about how to do a corporate financial audit, I know that I can just get the gist of what is being taught, because odds are I will never be put on the spot to do something similar at work. I work at a non-profit in digital communications–what are the odds I am the one called on to audit our books? Little to none.

3. One of my two dual roles will be over soon.

Schools run on semesters and don’t have class over the summer, right? So my role as a dual full-time student and full-time worker will end in early May, just in time for me to relax on Chicago’s beaches and go camping in New Hampshire. The fact that it won’t be like this forever makes it clear that, at least in one of my roles, the goal is to merely survive, because the payoff will be worth it in the form of lifetime earnings increasing by an average of 30% or so.

4. I am doing this just for me.

Every once in a while, a young person like me will start fearing what musician Amanda Palmer calls “the adult police.” The adult police is her term for the imaginary parental figure or governmental authority that is responsible for ensuring everyone over a certain age is playing by a specific set of rules. Being both a full-time student and full-time worker makes it clear to me that there is no such thing as the adult police, because there is no way anyone who is trying to hold adults to certain standards would make me do what I am doing. The benefits of it accrue to me, and only to me.

5. Professors understand that work comes first.

At least in my particular MBA program, most of the professors are aware that we are there to learn practical skills which can be implement on a day-to-day basis. So that means no research papers that don’t focus on selling a product, and it means that they do as much as they can to entertain and engage us. It also means that the standards for grading are based on what can be slapped together at work or on a weekend while hungover. It means that if you do what they ask, you will get the grade.

And that’s what I do every day, both as a full-time student and a full-time worker. Just get the grade and keep moving. It’s hard to hit a moving target, don’t ya know?

Featured photo credit: Seth Wilson via flickr.com

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