Head2Head - Students SHOULDN'T have part-time jobs

Written by: Janna Wing '12

         Having a job takes a lot of time, effort, and responsibility. During the school year, your focus should be on your studies. As your senior year approaches, having great grades, attendance, and involvement in extra curricular activities are important in getting accepted into colleges. Student’s grades easily start dropping when the work load increases.

         Although jobs could be beneficial, high school is a busy time in a student’s life and managing time can be very difficult when dealing with the pressure of a job on top of school work.

         As students strive to find a part time job during high school they usually believe that they will work a limited amount of hours a week, but what they don’t realize is, as a minority, the employers often pressure them to put in more hours a week. During holidays, stores begin to also increase work load and as the stores get busy they will make the employees do a lot of extra hours to keep everything on track. With their already busy schedules filling up quickly, the time that students need for school work is decreasing rapidly. Students need to see that they are only part-time workers. Is it really worth getting a job that has low pay and requires little skill that does not stretch them mentally and teaches them little compared to school?

         High school is much more then lessons. The best times of high school take place after school. The time that is not spent doing hours of school work should be spent hanging with friends, family and going to school events. We are still young and should enjoy our childhoods before we have to enter the real world where work is necessary. Having a part-time job will make you miss out on these opportunities and memories that can’t be remade.

          A part-time job during the school year can be too overwhelming. During the summer would be a more appropriate time. Grades are too important for college. Students need time to experience life, grow up and become well-rounded individuals. Having a job can feel as if your being pushed into the world of work way to quickly.