The Student Room Group

PT job during the 1st year of uni

I’m beginning my 1st year of uni this September and will be studying engineering. I’m lucky that my parents are generous enough to support me with food and accommodation costs but I would like to lessen the burden I place on them. I applied for some jobs and recently got a job offer from a nightclub around 8-10 hours a week, 11pm to 4am weekends only. I just wanted to ask for advice from people who had a job whilst they were studying, will it be too much? Given my course difficultly, did it affect your social life? For example societies and clubs. Should I take it? Or just focus on studying and enjoying my 1st year.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks.
Original post by bakedonions54
I’m beginning my 1st year of uni this September and will be studying engineering. I’m lucky that my parents are generous enough to support me with food and accommodation costs but I would like to lessen the burden I place on them. I applied for some jobs and recently got a job offer from a nightclub around 8-10 hours a week, 11pm to 4am weekends only. I just wanted to ask for advice from people who had a job whilst they were studying, will it be too much? Given my course difficultly, did it affect your social life? For example societies and clubs. Should I take it? Or just focus on studying and enjoying my 1st year.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks.

Hi @bakedonions54

First of all, huge congratulations on your university offer, you must be so excited to start your degree!

It's also lovely that you are considering part time work to help your parents.

I haven't worked alongside my studies as I have additional medical conditions, but I know many who have and so hopefully I can give you a bit of advice.

From the sounds of the job you have been offered, I can't see it having too much of an impact, it is at a good time of the day in which you wouldn't typically be missing out on much (except the opportunity to go clubbing yourself!).

I think the question you would have to consider is whether you'd be able to balance all of the tings you want to do at university. Given the difficulty of engineering, you might want to consider how much time you need to devote to your studies, but you'd certainly have time during the week to study if you organise your time well.

In addition, you'd want to consider where societies/clubs fit into this - most societies are during the week, so you wouldn't necessarily miss out on any society events, but again if you are studying more during the week you'd have to consider whether you can realistically fit in going to a society.

So in summary, your job wouldn't make you miss out on anything unless you decided you needed to to concentrate on your studies.

There is an argument for just focusing on your studies and 1st year especially since you'll be adjusting to university life alongside everything else, but a job is certainly not out of the question, especially as you have the motivation to work.

Finally, you might want to consider jobs that are available on campus such as working in the students union as this has been very effective for students as this often fits well around studies, but it sounds like you have a good offer already.

I hope this has given you a good bit of perspective, let me know if you have any other questions.

I hope you have a wonderful start in September,
Gabby
most people get a pt job in a restaurant or tescos - working for up to 20 hours in the evenings and weekends. Working as a bouncer will mean you will miss out on the social events that run on fridays and saturdays.
Reply 3
Unis usually have on-campus jobs that will be advertised either via their careers service or the students union. Examples :
Jobs (thesubath.com)
Student jobs : University of Sussex
Campus Jobs | University of Reading
Etc,

Quick Reply