By Anna Gonzales |Staff Writer|
The role of being a full-time student while holding a job may seem dreadful but I have flourished from my experiences and improved upon my personal capabilities.
Holding a job while attending school with over 16 units has provided me with further motivation to obtain good grades and continue on my road to attain a Bachelor’s in Communications.
While the journey may have led to a positive outcome, the adventure was not all rainbows and sunshine.
For a four-month period, I was unemployed while attending school and noticed a significant drop in my grades.
The extra time I had to study and work on assignments may have seemed like a blessing, but it ended up being a curse.
I became less focused and less motivated to do well in my classes because I devoted more of my time to social activities rather than my studies.
Every free opportunity I had became an interference, like shopping for a new dress for the weekend, taking a cat nap, and going out to lunch with friends—it all took precedence over studying for my courses.
I had to choose between studying for a mid-term or heading over to El Torito with my friends for Taco Tuesday.
The choice of attending Taco Tuesday became my priority over studying due to my lack of a sharpened time-management perception.
The terrible and dreadful job market at the time was another reason as to why I remained less motivated than I should have been.
The task of searching for employment left me with little hope that I would find something to keep me afloat.
While endlessly sending out resumes to companies, I ran into little luck with landing job interviews.
Months later, I was fortunate enough to walk into Mountain Mike’s Pizza for an interview and left with a cashier position, which later turned into a shift lead position.
Holding a job while attending school helped me improve my time management and narrowed my focused on doing well in all aspects of my life.
A connection through my family positioned me into a job at Hanesbrands Inc. where I was afforded the opportunity to work with a widely-known brand and earn more money while obtaining my undergraduate degree.
There are certain expectations that must be met while attending school full-time and maintaining employment that kept me motivated to succeed.
These included strict time management, a requirement to be attentive at all times, and a responsibility to produce quality work.
Problems like rushing to class to make sure I arrived on time and avoiding necessary assignments no longer posed an issue for me after finding employment.
A larger responsibility to be self-disciplined was placed on my shoulders at work, as I do not have an immediate supervisor in close proximity to monitor my daily activities during the work day.
Greater expectations of being more creative and innovative were placed on me, improving my self-motivation to succeed because I yearned for the recognition of being a professional, business-minded woman.
The newly sparked creativity helped me set up a fit event with the purpose of promoting a brand-new product launch of a Playtex bra without any direction from my supervisors.
All of these freshly revived qualities quickly carried over into my academic career.
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