I am a 27 year old second-year university student. I had a career job for almost six years and, upon deciding that it just wasn’t the life for me, went back to school in a completely unrelated direction.
Now, I am doing very well (never less than a 3.1 GPA and as high as a 3.7), but I am still getting a lot of grief from my family for not working full-time as I go through school. In their opinion, I am too old to be living on loans. I do work approximately 15 hours a week during school, but loans are my main source of income. It’s partially because I feel that more work would interfere with my studies (my present job has done so already), but also because I am really enjoying the student lifestyle in comparison to the rat-race I lived in before. This is what bothers my family.
I admit that I see their point, but, as someone who has been working full-time since three days after high-school graduation, am I being immature in my desire to live a little bit? I do not spend money freely and live a very meager lifestyle in an attempt to display some maturity here, but I can’t deny the allure of sleeping until 10am.
Both of my parents are very traditional “work until you die” types and I am certainly not. So, am I acting like a child here?
Goodness, no. I can’t imagine trying to juggle full-time work and full-time school even now, and I’m a grad student who has gotten all the required coursework out of the way. I really wouldn’t recommend it if you’re taking a standard courseload. You need that extra time to keep up with the reading load and assignments for your courses.
More to the point, why is this your family’s business? You’re 27 and, if I’m reading this right, you’re financing your education yourself. How you do so is not their concern.
And no, it’s certainly not immature to take some time off from working full-time – whether it’s for study, or travel, or general sanity – as long as you can support yourself and your dependants. Work is how you finance your life; it shouldn’t be your life.
I started grad school last August after about 7 years in the work force.
I considered working full time while in school and realized that I’d miss out on a lot by doing it, and I’d struggle with balancing work and school. So, the first semester I didn’t work at all. I lived on savings from my corporate pigdog job and student loans. Toward the end of second semester I took on a part time (8-15 hours a week) job in the library. Not enough to interfere with my school work, but enough to feel productive. This summer - a few more hours here and there, but only 2 classes.
Now this fall, I’ll have a little more going on since I have a graduate assistantship (10 hours) and will continue to work in the library. But I’m still going to be working part time, because school is my full time job at the moment.
Enjoy school. Learn a lot, but enjoy it too. It’s worth it.
You are paying dearly for this education, and it is ridiculous to put that investment in any sort of jeopardy for the sake of the pennies you’d earn by working more. You know your limits, and you know how much you can work without putting your education in danger. Doing anything else is just a waste of time and money. School is your job and it is a worthy one. I didn’t work during my time in school. And I graduated with honors. I think that in my particular case (with my major) this was linked.
I will say that living entirely off of loans is a bit sketchy. I don’t know how much you are taking out, but if you are living entirely off of loans and going to a four-year college, I’d guess it’s between $30-$50k. Of course people are going to raise their eyebrows when they see you acting so carefree about that kind of debt. Paying back loans will kick your ass and keep you poor for a long, long time. Not even bankrupcy can get you out of the student-loan hole. This won’t be too much of a problem if you are in a field that will land you a cushy job, or if you don’t plan on doing stuff like buying a house or a new car for the next twenty years.
But if you are planning on having kids in the next ten years, please keep them in mind. This could very well be poverty that you can’t escape. I’ve known kids growing up in households with parents in professional jobs (teaching, counciling, even a lawyer) that never managed to live anything more than a barebones existance (as in living in studio apartments, sharing cars with relatives, eating peanut butter sandwiches for dinner) because they were making huge student loan payments every month. It happens. Once you are out of school, having a $30K student loan is no different than having a $30K credit card debt caused by you deciding to quit your job and spend a couple months shopping at botiques.