by Drew Howerton, section editor

I took a big step into adulthood recently when I got a job. For the past year or so, my parents have kind of been on me about getting one, because they had jobs when they were younger than me. They’re old fashioned like that, I suppose.

I was really adamant about working somewhere that would benefit my career in technology. I  was lucky enough to find work at a local technology company, so it’s a good entry point into the field I would like to work in one day. I get paid a little more than minimum wage, and I only work four hours a day, four days a week. It’s easy work but still engaging, and most importantly, I don’t have to deal with customers directly. Stuff gets sent to me, I fix it, and send it back, with no interaction with people looking for a secret menu or asking me for clothes in a size that don’t exist.

My only issue with having a job right now is that currently, I have another job that’s way more important to me. This job is a lot different: I don’t get to take days off unless I’m sick, and I can’t choose my hours. I don’t get paid either, except in experience. I have about seven different bosses, and my tasks are pretty varied and can be pretty challenging at times. That job of course, is school.

For the first time in my life, school is not my priority anymore. Normally, when I would get home from school, I would have a good chunk of time to do homework and anything I didn’t feel like doing immediately after school could be done later in the evening. Now, I get out of school and go straight to work. Since I don’t work enough hours to qualify for a break, I don’t have time at work for homework, so that has to wait until I get home, which is usually around 8:30 or so. By that time, I can do some homework but I usually end up staying awake past 11:00. I can pull an all-nighter just as well as any other person my age can, but I really do need sleep sometimes, and that leaves me waking up in the morning with homework that needs to be done.

I suppose that having a job should be helping me manage my time better. I find myself using an free time at school to do homework, but sometimes I do homework during lessons because I’m a wreck, and if I’m doing homework for another class when I should be taking notes, I’m clearly not learning very much. I’m really lucky that I don’t take a ton of homework-intensive classes, because the homework I do have is generally easy, just time consuming. I’m in AP US History, and we have to read a chapter from the textbook every week and take a quiz over it. That’s pretty easy, but now I don’t have a solid chunk of time to read a textbook chapter, and so I either read it all the night before the quiz is due and cram, or just skim the book and don’t get the full set of information.

When I tell my friends about my job being a time suck, my friends usually respond with something along the lines of, “But hey, it’s nice to get paid, right?” Yes, it is pretty nice to get paid. Having a job can be pretty awesome at times. I enjoy what I do for the most part, and I get paid enough to treat myself every now and then. I don’t have to ask my parents for money, and after my car insurance payments, I have some money to spend on stuff I want. And I admit that I have it pretty good with my job compared to some people I know. I have friends who work long hours after school, and have actually no time to do schoolwork at all. My last girlfriend worked an eight hour shift after school, and it was pretty hard for her. My friends who work in retail have no shortage of horror stories about angry customers and cruel management, which I can’t always relate to.

But despite this, it would a lot nicer if parts of my life weren’t kind of suffering in the process. I always imagined that the transition to my late teenage years would be gradual and slow. I saw myself gradually easing myself into adulthood, getting my toes wet before I dove into the deep end. But now I’m worrying about managing my money, making sure I work enough hours, and planning for things way in advance, all on top of keeping my grades up so I can advance in my field. There are times when I have an hour left in my shift and I feel like my feet are going to fall off, when I feel so overwhelmed that thinking about my schedule for the week ahead feels like drowning.

But on these days, when I feel like I can’t take it, like giving up, I stop and think for a minute. And then I remind myself and realize that if I have made it this far, I can keep going further. I guess this is growing up.