The mindset behind taking classes as a student and having a job as an entry-level employee are very different. While taking classes, we want to absorb knowledge and ask questions under high intellectual demand. While working as an employee, however, we are held accountable for the tasks to which we are assigned, and should find solutions we
Toward a well-rounded Columbia experience, Photo Credit: Elia Zhang
encounter along the way either by working independently or collaboratively. Having a part-time curatorial assistant job and completing my thesis research at the same time this semester, I hope that this blog post can not only be an opportunity for me to reflect on this experience, but also provide my fellow college students with lessons and tips that I have learned along the way.
As students in New York City, we always seek ways to integrate our hands-on experiential learning with the knowledge and wisdom we acquire from the classroom. Trying out a position in an industry that we might be interested in contributing to in the future is a great way to add to the Columbia experience. As an international student, I am also grateful for the opportunity to take the Core class “Core as Praxis/Fieldwork” which inspires students to bridge the industry experience with Literature Humanities or Contemporary Civilization texts. Ultimately, I think combining research and internship during undergraduate studies can make us realize that there is no “barrier” between the seemingly out-of-the-world ivory tower and the practical day-to-day workings of society: the masterpieces in literature and the political theories we read from the Core are the authors’ critical engagement with their respective historical realities. The interlocking experience between the internal and external of the book makes life a continuous and holistic attempt to learn about both the world and ourselves.
Here is a list of challenges and solutions I have summarized from my experience. I hope this can inspire your journey toward a multifaceted learning experience.
- Maintain clear communication with your employer. One of the challenges in taking classes and having a job at the same time is to schedule one’s time around midterms or other study intensive moments in your schedule. Communicate to the employer a positive attitude to make up for the work when one has to be absent in order to go on a week-long study trip or to take time to write an essay. Most employers understand your position as a full-time student. When you know that you have to be absent for a particular Friday due to a writing project for example, let the employer know ahead of time — I would suggest one week prior so that they can allocate the tasks to other employees in the company to make sure that the scheduled projects would not be disturbed by your understandable absence.
- If possible, diversify the kinds of skills and knowledge that you would use during classes and the job or internship. This can make the whole experience more fun and will let you cultivate a well-rounded skillset. It might feel exhausting, for example, when one chooses to do art history research as a part of the undergraduate study and to take up the task of writing an equally intellectually demanding art criticism for a local gallery. But one might feel less tiresome and more engaged to do research and art-handling tasks since the two tasks ask for different skills and different kinds of intelligence. It is useful to allocate time and energy so that one does not feel like doing repetitive tasks at one time, and this can also sustain the enthusiasm we have for the very task that we decide to dedicate to at one time.
- Taking classes and having a job at the same time during college is a good opportunity to learn how to “draw the line” and set priorities. One only has a limited amount of time in a day and a limited amount of energy to excel at a certain task. Sometimes it feels pitiful or even embarrassing to admit that the energy we have to dedicate to a certain task cannot make the final result “perfect,” but taking classes and doing an internship at the same time makes me realize that what we are looking for is long-term growth rather than one single instance of success. There was a time when as a freelance journalist I knew if I were to further revise an interview article, the piece would be a lot better, but I also knew that the senior thesis gives me an invaluable opportunity to delve into an intriguing topic under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Therefore I decided that, overall, it is better to stop “perfecting” the extracurricular responsibility and further the research. Doing separate tasks such as interning while researching, I realize, can help us cultivate the habit of being aware of the large picture and therefore better plan our life and work.
These are the lessons I have learned so far as someone who has just started trying to integrate the “dichotomy” between working and being a college student. I would like to leave this blog post with the remark that I think students who have been taking classes and working at the same time (I am sure many fellow students have been doing this for longer than I have) are resilient multitaskers who deserve some praise. While the college experience is not intended to be pre-professional, nor is it guaranteed that the internships we choose to do during college will be related to our future career, living in between the academy and the industry cultivates one’s time-management, teamwork, communication, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, the ability to work under pressure, and many other kinds of skills. It is the real-world experience that makes us come back to the Core with fresh eyes every time, and it is the insights we obtain from the books that inform our decisions and enable us to contribute to the workplace.