Personal Narrative - Working While Attending College Essay

I’m raised in an environment filled with negative stereotypes, high dropout rates, fewer resources, and low expectations. As a Mexican American from the San Fernando Valley, educational opportunities do not come often. In middle school it massed into my head that going to college is my way towards success. Soon it became the only option for me and as a result, I joined Project Grad to begin my journey towards college. They introduced me to the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference during my junior year. After applying and attending, the conference eliminated the label that Latinos are not college material. Subsequently, I grabbed as many opportunities as I could. In my junior my school did not put me in any AP classes. Therefore, I went to go

Darolia (2013) places itself in a theoretical context which concerns the link between time use and student outcomes. Darolia notes that students have a fixed amount of time to accomplish various tasks (e.g., academic work, extracurriculars, and social activities). Working while in school further limits a student’s time constraint; as a consequence, work-study can injure the quality of those aforementioned activities. In order to ground his point, Darolia cites the work of Kalenkoski and Pabilonia (2010) which asserts that work has a negative impact on first-semester GPA for full and part-time college students. However, Darolia notes that work can positively affect student outcomes, because work encourages students to engage in better time-management practices. He does not directly support this in his paper; but, he cites a study which asserts a positive association between FWS and credit completion (another indicator of student

This argument analysis paper examines the article, “Manual Labor, All Night Long: The Reality of Paying for College” written by Alena Semuels in 2015. This article discusses how different types of students use different resources to pay for college. It also examines how working while in college can affect a student’s grades and whether or not they graduate.

In order to get a decent paying job, you have to have a college degree. Many people will not be able to go to college full time because they have to work part-time or full-time to be able to afford college and can not move on to a higher paying job with out it. Low income students have always struggled with college bills. Financial and political forces are making it harder than ever to get a college degree, which is crucial to getting a high paying job (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1). It is extremely difficult to get a job and go to college full or part time, just to have a higher paying job. Many students hope to avoid a soaring loan debt. They work long hours; take courses part-time and are commuting to college rather than living on campus. These compromises greatly reduce chances of earning a college degree in a timely manner if at all (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1). As a result, students must rely on even larger loan debt to get through school. Many students have to put off getting their degree and some never go back to get it.

Over the past twenty-five years, college costs have accumulatively risen four-hundred percent. The percent of parents who contribute to their child’s student debt has dropped from thirty-seven percent to twenty-seven percent, compared to three years ago. Due to the lack of aid, most students have to try to balance a job and school at the same time resulting in eighty-five percent of college students working at least twenty hours a week. It has also been noted that students who work twenty hours or more a week while attending classes at the same time are less likely to graduate due to the high stress environment. Sixty-two percent of college students who drop out were responsible for their own college education. Even when students drop out, thirty percent are still faced with college debt, creating a loophole impossible to recover

they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please

While many students will have to spend lots of money paying for college, I will be earning paychecks. I know that it will take some time before I earn paychecks large enough to pay for a house of my own, but I am confident that with hard work and patience I will be living independently sooner than I would if I attended college. In his article, “10 Rules for Going to College When Nobody Expected you to,” Joe Rodriquez actually said, “don’t worry too much about the high cost of college tuition”(12). On the contrary, the high cost of college tuition is something that everyone should worry about. It’s easy to say “don’t worry about it” when you are not the person who has to pay for something. There are news stories all of the time that talk about the enormous amount of students who have debt that they can’t pay because of the lack of jobs for college graduates. College tuitions costs have risen drastically over the past decades. Going to college is good idea for students who know the job they want requires a degree. If a student is unsure about their future career, then they should consider working for a while before they spend money on college

Before part-time studies were introduced in institutions, employed people were suffering because they got no other alternative that they go for to pursue their studies. Since they only have time after 5 o’clock when they knock off and during the weekends. When part-time implemented, many

Taking a lot of classes and to graduate at a 4- year university isn't a choice for all students. Students who works full time, also to help a sick family member or to manage the own learning are worried about college classes. Students don’t have to worry about giving up on a job because of college. They will have time to do more of college work, and if students don’t have a way of doing community college and having a job they can talk with someone on campus and the campus staff will help students manage a organize

First, our family's dynamics. Right, wrong, or indifferent, our family has dynamics that may not be in play in your "typical" student's family. I say this as a precursor to this... I believe your priorities and ours may not always match, but hopefully the success of Emma, the child of topic, does match. First of all, my husband and I both work advanced careers. Many days I leave as early as 6am and get home as late as 6pm, and some days, I work until 9pm or later. Jeremy and I switch off working late many times as well. I have two children with special needs and have hundreds of appointments each year to attend, which also means at times, I work in

Recent college graduates who are working full-time earn about $15,000 more annually than their peers, who have only a high school diploma. Jobs that only require a high school diploma or GED will not pay as much as the jobs requiring employees to have a bachelor or even higher, so graduating college with a degree is almost required in today’s society. Consequently, students are forced to choose the lesser of two evils: pay the great price to go to college with the possibility of suffering an enormous amount of student debt, or earn far less over a lifetime and undergo a greater likelihood of being unemployed for long periods, without the prospect of finding a reliable job. When looking at the two options, college still seems to always win because despite the recent struggles of college graduates, investing your time in a college degree may be more

full-time work, tens of thousands of these college students are likely to drop out of

The first cause of students dropping out of college is due to the fact that they are unable to balance their work and school together. A questionnaire was completed by 42 first- and second-year students from a single degree program at the end of Semester 2. Findings - Within this group, 83 per cent of students worked at some point during term-time of their degree program. In total 58 per cent of those students who worked did so to either cover or contribute to basic costs of living. While the majority of students felt they could balance work and study, half of all students questioned felt that working could have a negative impact on their degree classification (Working to live). Even full-time

After the initial stumbling block more commonly known as residential life, I faced the towering challenge of settling into classes. Once I had registered (which was itself something of a dilemma), I had in my hand a sheet of abbreviations that rivaled a military briefing or a computer manual. My first class, on a Thursday morning, was located in a building called CBW, which stood for Classroom Building West. Surely the

What has my journey to graduation been like for me? My journey has been a crazy, fun-filled learning adventure. I met many goals and accomplishments I set for myself but I also faced some challenges on the way. For example, I finally met my goal of graduating with a 4.6 GPA and maintaining it. Also, I accomplished completing my last four years of grade school and now I am on the way to college. My last year has been interesting and there are many goals, accomplishments and challenges I can reflect on.