University between 1977 and 1982. Only worked during the summers.
Grad school 1983-85. Worked full-time (and briefly two jobs simultaneously).
I guess I was lucky. The Column’s Hotel on St. Charles Avenue was my cash cow. I could make $300 on each weekend day if I was lucky and much of that was in cash. You could drink for free after work too and it was a very nice place. I can’t say I regretted that job much except wearing a full tux during the New Orleans heat sucked and I got heat exhaustion twice. OTOH, the boss (still a friend) is an unshy, over the top gay man, and you had to be a male of a certain type to get most jobs. You even had to walk around and twirl during the interview.
I had a work-study job in the Psychology department and that led directly to my undergraduate teaching and research assistantships and led straight to an Ivy League grad school.
College jobs can lead to great things. They can also lead to great stress. I had both. I would say working was better most of the time.
I didn’t. My parents paid for school and room in full (well, it was the least they could do since they forced me to go to a certain school), and I didn’t have that many expenses; I could pay for what little I bought out of my birthday/Xmas savings. My school was also in a very small town where jobs are scarce and you need to drive to be able to get to the big town over, where there are more jobs. I can’t drive. So, no job for me. I would have really liked to have had one, though.
::raises hand::
I was one of New York City’s famous “homeless mentally ill” people in 1985, a resident of the Queens Men’s Shelter in Building 4 on Creedmoor Psych Hospital grounds. I started the fall semester at SUNY College at Old Westbury commuting from that place and back every evening.
It never occurred to me to try to get a job, either that first year or the second year when I moved into the dorms and said goodbye to the joys of disinterested custodial care.
First off, I honestly did not consider myself employable. I had been a seldom-employed fringe person more or less since reaching an age when people are expected to be self-supporting & gainfully employed, and I didn’t think a home address of “c/o the Shelter for Indigent Schizzies” and a telephone number that would ring the payphone in the hall was going to nail me a part-time job.
Second of all, I had enough problems with the social workers and the other institutional rule-flingers accomodating me being in college. They didn’t like me not being home at normal mealtime and only grudgingly refrigerated my supper; they didn’t like me missing obligatory “day programming”; their least-common-denominator way of making rules to fit everybody in the place didn’t mesh well with someone really trying to get up and out.
I could have worked more easily as a dorm student from my second year on, but I just didn’t need to. I took out a Perkins loan and that plus Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) and Pell Grant covered tuition and dorm housing and meal plan, with enough left over for a phone, used books from the bookstore, and a modicum of spending money for each month. I wanted to be able to give the schoolwork, and the school life, my full attention. It was great being there and I didn’t want anything to distract from it!
Well, I worked for one year, but the other two years I didn’t (I graduated early). I had a state scholarship that covered most of the tuition and I lived at home. Now I regret it and wished I had worked the first two years to save money and transferred somewhere away from home.
I tried. But after numorous attempts, it never worked out (no pun intended). Now, my folks doesn’t even want me to work until graduation. Strange, huh?
I didn’t need to work, as I was lucky enough to have parents who had saved up enough money to pay for our college education. There were a few years when they were paying out more money than they were actually making. They didn’t want me to work, but I did take a few very part-time jobs (like being a grader for a class, etc.) I did get research jobs over the summers.
Now that I’m in grad school, school is my work. Getting paid to go to school is a very nice thing, but it’s also 70+ hours/week on my feet. I don’t really think I could get another job on top of that. I’m already not getting enough done in lab as I would like.
Not me, but my husband. We could certainly use more money, but decided that it would be more efficient for him to take huge course loads to get it over with faster. To do this, we planned for several years, cashed in some retirement & investment accounts, and live on an exceedingly tight budget.
When I lost my job, he got a student loan and a grant. I suspect it’s possible to get through college with no other income, but it would be an austere existence with a huge debt load.
He will graduate in May with his BS in Civil Engineering, his masters in Construction Management and start his new job 2 weeks before his 50th birthday, at roughly triple what he was making 3 years ago. It hasn’t been easy, but it will be worth the effort.
No, I didn’t work in college (or in high school, though I did work summers). I made enough money in the summer to pay for my board, books, and expenses and my parents were able to pay for the rest.
Of course, we’re talking 1970-74. A term in college was less than room and board today; you could get 20 meals a week on a meal plan for about $200.
Very few people in my day worked a job while in college (other than summer jobs).
My parents weren’t rich either but as someone else said, they told me my job was to study, not work. They paid for two years at a local college where I could commute, and then I took out loans for two years at a college a few hours away.
I’m in college right now and not working. I’m surviving mainly from VA Education benefits. Things are a little tight, so I’ll probably have to get a job fairly soon.
Parents paid totally for college. Worked over the summers, but less for the money, more for having something to do, and to build work experience for my resume.
Susan
I should point out that the time I saved by not working enabled me to work at the campus radio station, where I learned the skills that got me the paying job I have now. This job also has the potential to become full-time (with benefits) in about six months. The people who work throughout college don’t get the same opportunities and thus are kind of crippled down the road.
Robin
Didn’t have to work during college because I busted my ass to get good grades in high school. I managed to get an academic scholarship that covered almost all of my tuition for four years. The 'rents didn’t have trouble covering what was left. I worked during summer and winter breaks for spending money.
I didn’t work until I dropped out of college after 1 semester from boredom. I got a job, worked that for about 2 years, then went back to school. I didn’t work again until after graduation, unless you count being a chemistry tutor.
I didn’t work in college. I was in an extremely time and schedule intensive major and people who worked really missed out on a lot- their projects were inferior, a lot harder to make, and cost them a lot more money. I figured that the measy money I could have made wasn’t worth what I would lose by not putting myself wholey in my studies. In the end it worked out and I did great in school, which I know I wouldn’t have if my attention was split.
However, I wish I hadn’t missed out on the work experience and had a little more to enter the job force with.
I don’t have a job now.
I’m doing school stuff most of the time, and if I did get a job, it would have to be an on campus job where I would only have to work a couple of hours a day. I have a fair amount of grants and scholarships, and I saved all my summer job money so I would have money during the school year to spend.
Probably next semester or next year I’ll get an on campus job.
I know a few of my classmates don’t work. Some of them babysit and/or do other random things for money (e.g., a good friend has some money from a semi-succesful band he was in in highschool and runs a music review website). Others are just coasting through on their parents money…
I worked during summers and part-time for threesemesters out of my seven semesters at university.
I lived with my parents so had no worries about bills or rent. They were very happy to give me an allowance to supplement what I made during the summer, paid my tuition (only about 1200 CAD per semester) and like many other parents, told me being a student was my job.
The first semester I worked part-time, I was only taking four classes so I thought that it was unforgivable to have three weekdays off every week and not do something with them. I worked about 15 hours per week and was completely unable to spend as much time as I wanted on my studies. Luckily, my boss was my mother, so I skipped work whenever I really needed the time for an essay or test.
I worked for 10 hours per week my last year as a research assistant in my field. This was mostly to gain more useful experience and to be able to put it on my grad school applications. It, along with some other factors, made last year pure hell.
I had grants that paid for a good part of my tuition and other expenses. I also had a few loans and work-study, but I do not work outside campus. I have a work-study job of about twenty hours every semester I have been at this university, and would work another job, but the fact that I don’t drive has limited my employability a bit in this town. I still apply for part-time off-campus jobs, though. I do not have work-study this year, but I work an on-campus, non-work-study job in its place. My parents do not contribute anything toward my expenses, nor did I ever expect them to do so. They simply can’t afford it, and the thought of them supporting me at my age is ridiculous to all three of us.