Five Ways to Survive Going Back to School and Working Part-Time

Continuing education can have a major impact on your administrative career and your life as a whole. Many part-time clerical workers turn to night classes so they can maintain their jobs while still earning their degrees. This combination of work and school can put a noticeable strain on your lifestyle when you choose to pursue higher education, and it is important to carefully balance your work and school lives to ensure you make the most of each. Effective time management offers plenty of ways to help survive the rigors of life as a student and a clerical worker. Whether you are taking night classes or attending studies on your day off, you need to ensure that you manage your time wisely as a working student.

1. One way to help ease the load of working and learning is to divide your time cleanly between each activity. Set aside a specific time of the day for work-related activity, including necessary setup or cleanup periods, and another for classes and study. Taking night classes can definitely help with this dichotomy, but it falls on you to maintain it.
    
2. Another way of dealing with this is to schedule classes on days when you don't have work, and vice versa. Instead of dividing your days into work and study sessions, this lets you divide your week.
    
3. Unfortunately, the world doesn't turn off so you can focus entirely on work and studies. You probably have commitments to family, coworkers, or employers that will require a flexible schedule. One way to deal with these is to try and schedule specific times for family events, even if it's just a family dinner or quick phone call, as part of your normal routine. Night classes can cause you to study late and sleep in as much as possible, so you may need another way of balancing your personal commitments.
    
4. Try scheduling family time and special projects on weekends when you can make the most of your hours outside of the working student paradigm.
    
5. Clerical work covers a lot of different duties, from scheduling appointments to handling multitasking operations that involve workers at all levels of a company, and studying can be just as hectic based on your class load and schedule. A final way of keeping yourself sane as you attend night classes or daily courses is to make sure that you schedule time for yourself. Even if it is just a few hours a week, allow yourself time to rest and decompress. Some private time, away from the commitments of family and work or school, can help give you the edge you need to remain focused in your other activities.

These five ways of managing your time can help you get the most out of your studies and day-to-day administrative work. Taking time for yourself is just as important as scheduling family commitments and work projects. Dividing your time between work and school, through either flexible night-and-day scheduling or a weekly schedule, can help you balance night classes and daily work and survive this hectic period in your life.

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