School and Part-Time Jobs Have Teenagers Working Overtime 

As students go through the motions of getting older, personal and financial independence and the freedom to buy cute clothes or support one’s hobbies becomes more and more of a priority. So, as school work and the emotional burdens of being a high school student weigh heavier and heavier, a third of American students take on the additional responsibility of working part-time. 

While parents come home from their eight-hour shift, their teens may be returning from a 14-hour shift consisting of school and work to a pile of homework at home. This rigorous schedule with little reward, aside from a paycheck, can take a considerable toll on students’ mental health, sleep schedule, and even physical health as a result of the other two. Not only is this experience exhausting for the kids, but it also makes schoolwork extremely difficult; trying to get homework done after the shift can take hours away from that night's sleep, which only makes the next day more tiring, creating a sort of negative feedback loop and severe burnout.

“It’s definitely degrading my body,” says JC Lounsbery, a senior currently working two jobs. “I’ve had large changes in appetite, and I’ve become even more susceptible to sickness than before.”

Lounsbery is one of the busiest people I know, because, on top of his mostly AP schedule, he works anywhere from three to five hours after school as a receptionist, during which he tries to chip away at homework whenever possible. And then on the weekends, he’s a cook at a local restaurant. The most tragic part of JC’s interview was that, when asked why he takes on so much responsibility, he replied that it’s largely a distraction from his personal life.

Preexisting mental health or other personal issues can play a large role in how students handle balancing school and work, a sentiment reflected by some of the students who wrote in for The New York Times article “What Students Are Saying About Having a Part-Time Job While in School”. Many students voiced that, while a part-time job is an undeniably valuable experience, not everyone can manage the workload or mental strain well enough to sacrifice time that could be spent on extracurriculars or just living life. 

All work and no play is not just a disheartening cycle for JC, or random write-ins from The New York Times, or even myself. Among the negative consequences on our social lives, burnout seems to degrade performance in school as well. 

An article titled “Effects of Part-Time Work on School Achievement During High School” from the Taylor and Francis Educational Research Journal aimed to investigate whether or not there was any quantifiable evidence of this in 2007. The authors used students’ aspirations, engagement in school, and homelives as controls and turned aspects of their school/work lives (grades, working hours, etc.) into descriptive statistics. Ultimately, the research concluded that, while the variance was small, the numbers were significant enough to determine that longer work hours result in negative impacts on students’ grades. 

The study clarifies, “Our results show some noteworthy patterns. Students who had never worked scored significantly  higher on academic engagement and academic effort and significantly lower on lack of motivation than did the other two groups of working students.” 

This excerpt then continues to say this same pattern also applies to self-reported grades, with nonworking students scoring higher.

The Taylor and Francis article, in particular, references several other studies for its findings regarding the effects of work on students. For me, discovering research like this felt very reassuring, as I was under the impression that I was no longer smart. It was relieving to know that my fears of falling behind were not just inadequacy.

Much like JC, I’ve struggled with sleep deprivation for years, and similar to him, my busy schedule has only made it worse. I work four out of seven days of the week, every other day including weekdays and weekends. Unfortunately, I happen to be one of the 1.2 million teenagers in the US who work in food service and don’t have the opportunity to work on my schoolwork during these hours.

As I drudge into the night after my shift to complete my AP essays or various projects, I doom myself to another five hours of sleep to last me through my 14-hour shift. During school, I doze off and often scramble to catch up on lessons, or I find myself so drained that I can’t bring myself to finish work during my classes.

Even with anecdotes and research to validate my struggles, it still feels like complaining. The point is not to discourage young people from seeking job opportunities or financial independence. Instead, it is crucial to raise awareness and empathy for the effort and strain exhibited by our classmates, students, or children.