Student life is not as easy as people may think, especially when you begin to study at the university.

For students, it is always challenging as you make a transition from high school classes to something much more different than usual, as higher education can be. As if you go from childhood to adulthood, you grow up and find out something newer and greater than you have already learnt and known before. As how it goes being an academic student - as things may suddenly change – you may probably need to work whether it is part-time or full-time so as you can fund your studies and complete them successfully.   

Here we are talking of the concept of “work-study-life balance” rather than a simple “study-life balance”. For students who are not granted a fully-funded scholarship program - because even partially funded, they always need to search for a job to provide for their needs as students - more particularly those who pursue a master’s degree or doctorate. These are the ones who sometimes engage in a full-time job while undergraduate students are more likely to choose a part-time job due to the tight and fixed timetables.

The real challenge in becoming a working student is that undergraduates are often seen to be short on time. This is because they may struggle with managing their time and schedule, balancing their energy and handling stress. They need to juggle with increasing their academic performance by completing all the credits per semester and committing to finishing all the tasks allocated as an employee. Some students may even be found facing hard times leading to depression, and burn-out. In a study conducted by Gorgulho, et al. (2012) on the effects of working while in school, it has been shown that employee students struggled with maintaining a healthy and balanced life: they lack of sleep, they have poor eating habits, and they appear to be easily contracted by a chronic disease. 50 percent of students surveyed at a university reported to be sleep deprived (“Delayed Sleep and Sleep Loss in University Students”, 2015) and 35 percent of college students were estimated to be at risk for being overweight due to their poor nutrition (Huang, et al., 2003)

Faratiana, a master’s student at the University of Antananarivo who has already been a trainee and employee shares to us her experience on how she handles her study while working: “truth be told it is somehow difficult, mainly at the beginning, when you have no experience yet at juggling studies and work. But I was lucky enough as my boss at that time was very understanding of the fact that I was still a college student and that studies should always come first. Thus, they allowed me to monthly or even weekly arrange my work schedule according to the availability that my studies conferred me. Sometimes I had to attend extra classes, and I had to work extra hours or work even during Saturday mornings. When you juggle with work and study, you have to set an order of priority. What task in what time is more important? I remember we were assigned urgent tasks to complete at work, and because I knew it was vital I had to make the choice of skipping classes at the University. When you miss class like that,  you must count on your classmates’ support and borrow their notes”.

Sources: sites.psu.edu / “Quality of diet of working college students”, Bartira Gorgulho et al. 2012. / “Learning capability and storage capacity of two-hidden-layer feedforward networks”, Guang-Bin Huang. 2003 / “Delayed sleep and sleep loss in university students”, Leon C. Lack. 1986.