Having a part time job, school, and a social life is the “key” to life, but how much is too much? Can a sixteen year old really be a hard worker, keep an A-B average, and have a social life outside of school?

Having a balance between them all is a tough thing to do. If you have a job, then you want a lot of hours because the more hours that you have the more money you have. If you have have a lot of hours, then you miss out on opportunities to be a teenager; and miss things like going to hang out with friends and goof off. If you decide to have a lot of hours and hang out with friends then your grades are affected negatively. So how do you decide?

 

I am a junior, I have a part time job, and, shockingly, I do have somewhat of a social life.

I work about 20 to 30 hours a week. It may not seem like a lot but when you have to get up at 6:30 a.m. and you don’t go to bed until about 2:00 a.m., it starts to catch up to you. It starts to take control of your life; you are always tired; and you feel like a zombie after a while.

I love my job–it’s just really hard to keep my grades from slipping when the only thing I want to do is sleep.

My social life is just all kinds of crazy. I have to plan things on my days of, which is only once maybe twice a week if I’m lucky. When you have to plan everything around your schedule you run into obstacles such as its raining or your friend has plans already, or maybe even you are just too tired to get out of bed that day.

 School also interferes with my social life.

I have biology, creative writing, journalism, and then English. So if I’m not working, then I’m struggling to get my assignments done.

Three of my classes I write, and when you are that tired your brain is not functioning normally. You can’t focus on the words that you are trying to put into sentences. I don’t know how many times I have reread something that I wrote and been like, “Um what was I trying to say!?”  So how do I do it? How do I balance everything?

Personally, it comes this way: school, work, then friends.

Some of you might have other opinions, but for me this is how it is. School is very important to me; I need to have an education to live out my dreams and to have as many opportunities as possible.

My work comes second because the only reason I got a job was to save up for college, which when life happens, there really isn’t that much saving and way more spending.

Then comes my “social life”(not that I had much of one before I had a job).  I really don’t have one now, but I chose for it to be that way because I have my own priorities.

I balance everything by taking one of my days that I have off and spending it all by myself, I read, sleep, or go for a nice long run. I take myself away from everything that is stressful and escape it for a few hours. It reminds me that not everything is crazy.

When I do this, I finally feel relaxed. When I’m ready to continue with school or work, I’m a hundred times more refreshed. I actually get things done and it feels nice