Tyrin Kelly, a first-year journalism student, said balancing work and school is not new for him.
“I used to work at Tim Hortons during high school . . . I would get up in the morning at five to go to work on the weekends to be there for six or seven hours, and then I’d go out at night,” he said. “I wasn’t going to allow work to control my life.”
Kelly said he now works at the Wild Oat Bakery on Bank Street about 20 to 25 hours a week to pay for school.
“I’m going to have to pay my debt off and I want to eventually move out and live on my own,” he said.
Kelly said that for him, finding work-life balance has been a journey.
“It was difficult at first, starting a new job and trying to balance going to university for the first time and working,” he said.
Now, he said he doesn’t find it too hard to manage.
“First year’s kind of a joke,” he said. “I don’t find it really all that difficult as long as you put in the time to study and do your readings.”
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
In a 2013 nationwide study by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services, 89 per cent of students surveyed said they felt overwhelmed. Researchers identified poor work-life balance as the culprit.
“People have to find what works, and that is not doing too much or too little,” said Larry McCloskey, director of the Paul Menton Centre. “If our expectations are not in line with that, we will be in trouble. Some students should drop down from five to four courses, some people can manage a part-time job, and others can’t.”
Alex Wiseman, a fourth-year neuroscience student at Carleton, said he agrees.
“I volunteer in two labs on campus, I have two part-time jobs, and I volunteer at the Royal Ontario Mental Health hospital,” Wiseman said. “I’m kind of the type of person who needs constant stimulation and you know, free time and me don’t mix well.”
Unlike Wiseman, who said he manages with a steady regimen of coffee and sleep, Emily Collett, a first-year forensic psychology student, said she struggles to manage work and school.
“I work a minimum of four times a week,” she said. “Sometimes I find myself on break at work and I’m doing readings because I’m trying to keep up with school.”
McCloskey said students who are struggling to find balance in their lives need support on campus.
“Being a [university] student is always a tough transition,” he said. “Clearly the mental health indicators are showing that people are struggling and there are a lot of theories as to why that is . . . but the bottom line is that people need more help.”
A 2014 study by Western University found that only 3.3 per cent of students surveyed ate well, exercised regularly, and got enough sleep.
“Life balance has a lot to do with boring stuff like getting enough sleep, exercising,” McCloskey said.
McCloskey said self-care plays a crucial role in finding balance.
“There is something to that side of things that actually not only calms you down and gives you a better perspective, but it does actually help your ability to think and problem solve,” McCloskey said.
The Fear of Missing Out
Linda Duxbury, a professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, said she is worried students may take this advice the wrong way.
“Every day is not balanced,” she said. “Let’s face it—you’re not going to have balance at the end of the term.”
Duxbury has studied the effects of poor work-life balance in the workforce for over 20 years.
“The biggest thing is how work-life balance has changed over time . . . businesses talk about work-life balance, but if you don’t work long hours, you’re not getting promoted,” she said. “During the early 2000s, women and men started getting balance by delaying having children.”
She said these life decisions influenced by poor work-life balance are leaving a small labour force to support both young children and aging parents at the same time. Duxbury said university students don’t have to end up in this situation after they graduate.
“The students who do really well in university and the ones who are successful . . . have to make themselves work for those marks,” she said.
Duxbury said students can do it all with time management.
“People have incredible workloads,” she said. “For example, my daughter, who graduated with her masters from Carleton, was an athlete and a straight-A student. She strove to do everything and she became very organized and good at managing her time.”
Kelly said sometimes, even with the best planning, you can’t do everything.
“Weekdays I work pretty late, usually until 10 or 11 and then I have to get up at eight and do readings,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the smartest thing and I could work less if I wanted to, but I don’t want to.”
Balancing Mental Health
Charissa Feres, the director of student issues and equity at the Student Alliance for Mental Health, said she knows first-hand how difficult it can be to find a balance.
“This year, I started it off with three part-time jobs and I was taking five courses in the fall semester,” Feres said. “It basically became too overwhelming for me and I had to basically quit two jobs and drop down to two courses because of how overwhelming it was and I guess how unprepared I was.”
Feres said she felt she was stuck in a vicious cycle of stress in having to work a lot to pay her tuition, but then working extra hard to keep up with school work.
“Knowing that you have to pay all this tuition, you have to work part-time to afford it and also keeping up with your schoolwork and not falling behind when it’s costing you all this money . . . It’s in those factors that the vicious cycle comes in and that just creates a lot of stress,” Feres said.
According to Feres, your work-life balance can create mental health challenges, but pre-existing mental health issues can exacerbate a poor balance.
“For example, people who are struggling with depression, which can affect the motivation to be organized . . . prevents them from getting things done at work and at school and in life,” Feres said.
Ultimately, Feres said in order to make it easier for students to find a work-life balance, university policies need to change to fit the evolving state of student life because the root of the problem that students are facing is the stressful university environment.
“Tuition is rising, yet curriculum remains the same in terms of what standard course loads are and how much tuition you pay based on courses,” Feres said. “That in itself is very stressful because you’re expected to manage this course load, and work, and do extracurriculars and whatever else you’re doing in life.”
Balance is the Word
Duxbury said he thinks working without rewarding yourself leads to poor work-life balance.
“It shouldn’t always be your social life but it also shouldn’t always be school,” she said. “For example, this week I have some pretty big deliverables, so this week won’t be good for my social life. But once I get those things done, I need to reward myself because constant, 24-hour work is not good.”
Kelly said playing music with his friends keeps him sane.
“I’m in a band with my best friends called Spell and I do my own thing with electronic music,” he said. “The only reason why I’m not as stressed out as other people is because of music and doing things I’m passionate about or I’d go insane just like everyone else.”
Kelly said he blames universities for creating this stress because they promote a poor work-life balance, especially for first years.
“It’s fucked up, and that’s the best way to put it,” he said. “I don’t think universities are too hard on students, but they place a lot of unnecessary stress on students in terms of money and grades . . . they’re on this big hamster wheel and they can’t stop.”
Spread Too Thin
Greg Bugler, human resources advisor at Carleton, said work-life balance starts with students, but universities and employers have to understand its importance as well.
“Mental health is a huge issue in the academic world today as it is in any workplace,” he said. “You have all these wonderful aspects of life but they can become stressors too, and that is what we try to do here at Carleton by being a healthy workplace and a reminder to people that you can’t just work but you’re not going to go very far in school if all you do is play.”
He said this is especially important for employers to remember when hiring students.
“There are times when students are going to be highly stressed, and you need to respect that,” he said.
Samantha Munro, Carleton’s healthy workspace co-ordinator, said understanding employers helps students find balance.
“I was a co-op student working here on campus while doing my studies, and having that flexibility and the freedom to be able to work around my school schedule helped me to ease that stress around financial pressures,” she said.
Munro said these stresses come from the expectations placed on students by universities and employers.
“There is growing competition for jobs, there are higher expectations in being involved in extracurriculars and volunteering, working, and all these other pressures,” she said. “It makes sense that stress levels are increasing.”
Kelly said finding a work-life balance comes down to knowing your limits.
“If you don’t need to, don’t push yourself to the limits, to the point where you just fall apart,” he said.
