How to Balance School and Work
High Horse Warning
I don't believe there's such a thing as being "too busy"
to work and go to school. I'm a very, very lazy person and
managed to juggle both. The reality is it's entirely possible to
work a 40-hour a week job and take a full course load. It's all
a matter of balance and sacrifice.
If you're considering going
back to school full-time chances are you're already working a
service sector job. That's good, it means you can work evenings
and weekends. If you can arrange to get Mondays+Wednesdays or
Tuesdays+Thursdays off then you can dedicate those two days to
school. That's 24-36 hours per week right there. You just have
to make the commitment to focus for two days.
I went with this two-day approach and it worked
perfectly. I also took 1-2 early morning classes on M/W/F. Yeah
it sucked, yeah I lost a lot of sleep, yeah it was totally worth
it. My first programming job paid more than double what Super
Crown did, my current one more than five times.
It's not hard to see how the four-year investment
pays off quickly.
Now for the sacrifice part... to make this
work you obviously have to give-up something, maybe several
things. I gave up:
- Video games, almost entirely. I doubt I
purchased a single game from 1997-1999. Once in a while I'd
fire-up the TurboDuo or Super Nintendo but that was extremely
rare. This means I missed-out on the Sony Playstation and
Nintendo 64. I caught-up a few years later but they're still two
of my least-played systems.
- Most TV shows. All I watched was
WCW Nitro, The Simpsons, and X-Files. There were all on late so
I'd catch them while working on homework. Luckily all three
shows hit their peak around this time.
- The whole club/bar
scene. I was already sick of it anyway, no real sacrifice here.
OK, that's the end of my brief high horse rant. Thanks for humoring
me.
My three favorite shows of the time would
jump the shark in the not too distant future.
Here's my blowhard opinion on when each of these shows would start their irreversible downward spiral:
The Simpsons - Alone Again, Natura-Diddly (2000-02-13):
When Maude Flanders was unceremoniously killed-off I thought the
Simpsons officially became unwatchable. It went from a smart comedy
to one filled with nonsensical plots, arbitrary/pointless celebrity
guests, and pious political statements. I absolutely loved the
first nine seasons. The tenth was OK and the eleventh just plain bad.
The previous episode in this season, Saddlesore Galactica, was the
worst episode of the show at the time. I thought things might have
bottomed-out though. After Alone Again I realized
it was not going to get any better. The Simpsons
jumped the shark
and would never return to it's classic form again (although I
haven't watched in 4-5 years so maybe it has).
X-Files - Requiem (2000-05-21): Mulder written-off the show +
Scully's pregnancy =
jumping the shark.
WCW Nitro - Fingerpoke of Doom (1999-01-04): The whole "nWo
Wolfpac" vs. "nWo Hollywood" was bad, it marked the beginning
of the end for WCW. Still, they had a chance to turn things around.
Goldberg was hugely popular and could have carried the league back
to it's previous heights. Instead,
politics won out and the belt was given to Kevin Nash. For a brief
moment it looked as though they'd come to their senses when the
Goldberg-Nash rematch was announced. Instead we were
"treated" to an idiotic stalking storyline to write-off
Goldberg and a "replacement match" of Hogan-Nash. Hogan
won the WCW title after the infamous fingerpoke and the entire
organization would ultimately fail because of it.
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