Being a student living away from home is exceptionally hard, you face new challenges you haven’t faced before. You’ve got the challenge of what to eat (lucky for you we’ve already got a blog on how to manage that), the challenge of balancing work and social lives (Atozmed has got a blog for this too! We really do spoil you guys), but the biggest challenge for me was that of personal finances. Living away from home forces you to understand the true value of a pound- something which I took for granted before university. Whether you need to job to cover your expenses or simply as disposable income, having a job at university is not a bad thing- as long as it doesn’t affect your studies. Medicine is an intense course, and one of its benefits is that it is a “vocational” course. This means you will have a job at the end of it – if all goes well. So the worry is not building experience for your CV (which is beneficial) but instead to make money.

Personally, I had many jobs during my time at university (not all at the same time though🤣)- one of which was voluntary work for a mental health charity. The three questions I asked myself when searching for a job were the following:

1) Is it worth my time?
This is not only to do with how much you’re getting paid but also how much studying you could be doing during the time you’re working. Something I call opportunity cost. Going into university I found myself procrastinating a lot of the time (we’ve got a blog on this too!). Therefore I knew the hours I was working I probably wasn’t going to do anything substantial. However that varies from person to person. Your main priority should be university work, if you’ve got extra time then find a job.

2) How flexible are my hours?
We all know life at university can be unpredictable at times. Be it random assignments, emergencies or simply some spontaneous social events. A job that can work round you will help you immensely with your personal finances as well as your work life balance. I’ve had two part time jobs, one as a sale assistant and another as a tutor. My time as sales assistant was extremely tough, I had very little flexibility when it came to my work hours and it put an immense amount of stress onto my university work- I wouldn’t recommend retail work if you’re looking for flexibility. My time as tutor was much better as I got to choose my work hours and how much I wanted to take on. The underlying point is to choose a job that allows flexibility with its hours and generosity with its pay.

3) Why am I getting this job?
If you’ve got a strong why, the how will be inevitable. Whether you want disposable income or you need to cover your expenses, make sure you know why you’re working. If not, you may become demotivated and the quality of your work will go down. If you stop enjoying what you’re doing it’s going to take a toll on your mental health. Getting a job is great but if that job will lead to greater spending then you’ll get stuck in the rat race of working harder for more money, putting stress on your university work.

With that being said, I hope this blog was helpful in giving some ideas as to how to cope with work and life at university. It will be hard but also fruitful if you manage to find a job that works for you. As always if you have any questions feel free to get in touch!