Balancing a Part-time job

I have worked part-time tutoring friends on the lead up to exams and marking books in a study centre as well as cleaning or doing an extra paid chore for my parents. Most recently I have worked for three months at a theme park painting children's faces. They have been rewarding although they come with challenges.

Advantages:

• You get money!

This has meant I'm able to buy things I want (mostly books and stationery) but also I can save for a gap year or travelling next summer. Having been used to a bank card with often less than £5 on it I found a job gave me more freedom. I could also be more generous.

• You gain confidence.

Working in customer service I am often approached by members of the public with their questions and problems. This has improved my confidence because I can usually answer them, e.g. by directing them to the closest toilet. When I don't know the answer I point them to someone who can help. This has been rewarding, knowing that I have made someone's day run smoothly. Using a card reader on the till is a nice adult feeling too. (Or maybe that's just me.)

• You learn discipline.

My last job meant getting up early every Saturday and getting back with sore feet late for dinner. My mum was much more keen on this than I was. She was convinced that it was giving me a taste of the hard work of adult life. It certainly did give me practice being disciplined.
Looks good on a CV
I think people make a bigger deal of this than it is. Teachers put so much pressure on us to have dazzling CVs. In reality, I'm unlikely to mention anything I've done this early on in a Personal Statement unless it's really relevant to what I'm applying for. In lower school, I did a huge number of extracurricular activities with this motive. But I've not mentioned most of them in any applications.

Disadvantages:

• Less time to study

When I had a part-time job that was only a few hours after school twice a week this didn't really affect me. However with my last job I worked full Saturday's and 4 day weeks in the holidays. This had a real effect on my studies. I wasn't able to keep up with revision and my homework was clearly rushed. This impacted my grades. Now that I have left that job I need to make the workup.

• Missing out on social life or hobbies

I missed out on hanging out at my friend's house on Saturdays like we used to. On the bus back sometimes they called me and I heard that they were hanging out together but I couldn't go. I knew that was what I signed up for but it was still a sacrifice to make. It was one of the main reasons I decided to leave my job.

• Low pay

It is worth researching the legal minimum wage for your age group and seeing what different jobs will pay. I have known people who were paid under the legal wage. I left my last job because it didn't feel worth my time. I saw supermarkets advertising with higher wages and started making double the money per hour by tutoring.

Advice:
 Don't just apply for the first job you see. Think outside the box for what you could do. Babysitting can pay well. What contacts do you have? Does anyone want gardening, dog walking or childcare? What are your skills?

Try to find work that you will enjoy as much as possible. If you speak another language there are apps online that can pay you to teach people it. Could you make things to sell on Etsy or something similar? Be aware that if you are trying to start a business rather than working for one the financial risks are much higher.

Look at your weekly schedule and think realistically about how much time you would work. I made the mistake of booking in work without considering study time or my need for rest. You need to rest. It isn't healthy to work too hard. I'm still trying to tell myself this.
I looked at my calculator with the monthly sum I would make and figured I could work full Saturday's and almost full time in holidays, ignoring the school work that needed to be done. I told myself I would get up early and do it before I caught the bus. I thought I could see friends in the evening sometimes. In reality, I barely ever got more than 20 minutes of work done in the morning and as soon as I got home I fell onto my bed and only got up for dinner.

Consider how far away a job is from your house. Will you have to pay for transport there? How long will it take? This may be different on different days of the week. It should be factored into your decisions.

Then, apply for the jobs you want. You will get rejected time and time again unless you're very lucky.  I got rejected from the low-end supermarket near me and joked that in the future when I'm a CEO (which I have no plans of being) I can give inspirational speeches about the failure being the first step to success or something. It was a bad start. I then got rejected from a hospital. Probably because at the interview I basically said I wanted to work there for the money and nothing else. Interview tips are for another article, not one I'm qualified to write. Eventually, I got this job at the theme park and took it even with the low wage and travel time. Keep filling out those annoying online forms and eventually, it will pay off. If you copy and paste what you write in them to another document you can reuse it for similar parts of another question.

All the best!
Hannah​