Full-Time School, Full-Time Work

Ever since my freshman year in college, I had heard of these crazy college students who worked full-time and went to school full-time. I never expected to be one of them, but I wondered how it was done. During junior year I decided to try it out and discovered a few things.

In my situation, I was working a summer job full-time that I decided was easy enough that I could balance it with school. This is the first key to success. Do not try this with a physically or mentally exhausting job. I was doing office paperwork, where simple geometry was the most effort your mind had to put out. This job was 40 hours a week, thus meeting the full-time requirement, but did not often have overtime. After 3 months on the job, you could think about anything while doing the work.

The second key to success was picking classes wisely. I looked at the classes that I had left. Unfortunately, by junior year, not many “easy” classes were left. However, I did have some options. I avoided classes with busy work like the plague. Any class with a lab was out of the question. Math classes, even the easiest of math classes, were ruled out due to the amount of homework. In depth science courses were ruled out due to the sheer amount of reading. Online classes were preferable, so that I could use spare time to watch lectures and complete assignments. Unfortunately, the pickings on online courses were slim. The next best bet to an online course, was one that allowed you to pass without doing much more than just attending lectures and taking exams. In the end, I picked an animal diseases course online, as well as economics and psychology lectures, and a karate class for good measure. The in-person lecture courses were both 4 units, the online course was 3 units, and the karate course brought in the extra unit to make the 12 unit full-time student requirement. This brought me right to the minimum of being considered a full-time worker and a full-time student.