College students are no stranger to stress, especially to those of us who are full time students at Pierce. So why add on to that stress with a job that also demands 100% out of its employees?
While getting a job might be a necessity for most us, when it comes to full time students, their primary goal at Pierce should be their education and maintaining their well-being.
According to a 2017 Fall semester survey taken by the National College Health Association on an undergraduate group, when asked whether they felt overwhelmed by the by all the work they had to do in the past 12 months, a total of 86.9% said yes. On the same survey, 83.4% said they felt exhausted (by non-physical activities), and 61.4% said they felt overwhelming anxiety within the past 12 months.
With results such as these, it’s no wonder that there are endless guides both on and off the internet about college students managing their stress. But this survey mainly concerns campus life, and doesn’t explicitly state how the added stressors of maintaining a job add to the problem.
In a 2016 survey done by National Public Radio news, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, around 43% of working adults believe that their job is negatively affecting their health, with a 51% majority of workers in low-paying jobs agreeing with this statement.
Stress in and of itself is bad, yet the side-effects can be life changing. The American Psychological Association states that stress can affect the body in numerous ways, from affecting the reproductive system to being linked to inflammation in the circulatory system and other heart disease problems.
With all this in mind, being a full time college student who already deals with the stress of maintaining their grades and turning in assignments on time now must manage a job outside of school (which comes with its own responsibilities and stressors). This is a hard feat to accomplish, and it is one with many side effects.
While it is still important to have a source of income to pay for your classes, working yourself to the bone to juggle both school life and a demanding job is a stressful act that can have dangerous repercussions.
