Upperclassmen deal with many stressors as they approach the end of their high school careers. Juniors and seniors struggle with tough AP classes, participate in as many different extracurricular activities,  volunteer outside of schools to get their hour requirements, and study for the ACT and SAT. Along with this, many students have a job outside of school. With these numerous stressors the question arises: How do the students in these tough classes have enough time to do all of these activities along with working a job?

The main factor to the question is how these students are able to have a job while going to school is time management. Alex Hindeleh (12), who is in 3 AP classes his senior year of high school says that he “loves working at Ding Tea because it forces [him] to have good time management skills.” He does a lot of his homework at school to avoid having to stress about it late at night. He also enjoys making money each week and says “it is a rewarding feeling to have money because [he] worked so hard for it.”

While a job is stressful to have while in high school, it does have some benefits. Katrina Wynn (12), who is involved in two AP classes and yearbook in her senior year, works at Ding Tea as well and loves the working student life. She says that it has taught her “responsibility and has helped [her] with [her] communication skills.” Katrina has to deal with customers that are looking for correctly made boba. She also has to “be fast and accurate when it comes to making boba.”

I think that if possible, students should be able to work a job if they feel they can handle it. They should only be able to though if they think that they can handle both school and work because of the responsibilities of both. Overall, working a job in high school can be a difficult task. But, as assured by many of the students on campus anyone can finish the last stretch of high school if enough time and energy is put into both the job and school. To be successful in both aspects, these students have learned that they need to have good time management skills and need to be responsible. All in all, students should work a job if it is possible because of the lessons they learn while working.